Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree? 370
First time accepted submitter AnOminusCowHerd (3399855) writes "I have an Associates degree in programming and systems analysis, and over a decade of experience in the field. I work primarily as a contractor, so I'm finding a new job/contract every year or two. And every year, it gets harder to convince potential employers/clients that 10-12 years of hands-on experience doing what they need done, trumps an additional 2 years of general IT education.
So, I'd like to get a Bachelor's degree (preferably IT-related, ideally CS, accredited of course). If I can actually learn something interesting and useful in the process, that would be a perk, but mainly, I just want a BSCS to add to my resume. I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding."
So, I'd like to get a Bachelor's degree (preferably IT-related, ideally CS, accredited of course). If I can actually learn something interesting and useful in the process, that would be a perk, but mainly, I just want a BSCS to add to my resume. I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding."
Check out WGU (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.wgu.edu/ [wgu.edu]
Solid course material. Industry standard certs tied to the courses as finals, and fully accredited.
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Seems so (Score:3)
Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree?
Yes, it seems like a free education can be had just by posting the right ask slashdot questions.
A few things to consider (Score:3)
I don't know much about on-line options.
I got my degree from a local state university that has a lot of non-traditional/part-time students. I'd suggest seeing what colleges in your area are like that.
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The Earl Scheib Institute (Score:4, Funny)
Cars painted while you study.
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Community college (Score:2)
It's relatively fast and easy to take community college courses at your own pace. You can then transfer to a full university for your final year and get the BA/BS.
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Start with where you got your associates (Score:2)
If your associate's place doesn't transfer anywhere at all, the good news is that your options are all open, and the bad news is that you'll have to do two years of work over again. (The other bad news is that it's a sign that no other college likes the college you got your 2 year degree from, for some reason, which either speaks to the quality of education that you
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He should also be aware that some schools will discount the value of old credits. Requiring testing (at least) for coursework more then 5 or 10 years old.
Further he should look for flexibility in testing for industry experience. It really sucks taking a class in a subject you know better then the teacher. Imagine taking a database course from a teacher that loves higher normal forms (read as: 'has never run a real world database').
Second-class colleges (Score:2)
The other bad news is that it's a sign that no other college likes the college you got your 2 year degree from, for some reason, which either speaks to the quality of education that you received or to some underlying college political issue, and you won't know which without digging a bit
In the USA, there are two tiers of institutions of higher education: regionally accredited schools and nationally accredited schools [wikipedia.org]. Regionally accredited institutions tend to be more prestigious and more academic as opposed to vocational. Credits from nationally accredited schools seldom transfer to regionally accredited schools, and students have sued over this [nwsource.com].
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Fastest Way to Carnegie Mellon? (Score:2)
A lot of practice!!
Ba-dum-da.
No seriously, there is a shortcut... Private colleges who are funded by shady government-backed loans. Didn't we just have this discussion? Or was the answer "Plastics!"?
Easy (Score:2)
Send me a cheque for $300 and I'll send you a Degree.
Know what you're asking for (Score:4, Insightful)
By the principle of "Quality, price, speed, pick any two," when you ask for price and speed, just know what you're asking for.
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Now, where'd I put those mods points...
State Schools (Score:2)
Apply to a local state funded university. Talk with an admissions counselor about your goals and how well your associates will transfer (10 years old, the answer is usually Not At All). State schools provide the best bang for the buck. It also helps that their programs tend to be quite good. You also have to accept the fact that this isn't going to be convenient or easy. If it was easy to get a degree worth the paper it was printed on, everybody would have one.
If you just want to throw money at the pro
Hi... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hi, I want to pretend that I've done a bunch of academic learning, because I feel that I have the right to the title because I have some experience.
Hint: Bachelors degrees are different from experience. Experience is valuable, but it's not the same thing as academic learning, in the same way as academic learning is valuable, but not the same thing as experience. If you want a bachelor's degree... go and do one.
Re:Hi... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have met a number of people who are rock solid programmers and have a deep understanding of technologies. People who can program device drivers in their sleep and have implemented a godawful number of systems over the years. People who have licked networking or embedded systems or whatever (take your pick).
Naturally, they assume that CS is the same as IT, and enter CS programs to get a degree.
And then, I have seen them fail miserably as they realize that programming does not equal discrete math, graph theory, or computational complexity. Usually, it's been a while since they've been out of school, so even simple things like Graphics 101 with vector math and basic physics isn't quite a cakewalk. Plus, I have found that they are quite limited by their own experience and biases (mostly because they've had a lifetime to learn bad habits) and find it quite hard to reconcile real world experience with the academia.
You can especially see this with older, more experienced folks in a class teaching, say, Operating Systems, Architecture, Data Structures, or Compiler Design. And it is not necessarily their fault -- their real world experience sometimes does contradict what's recommended in the "ivory tower" world. Networking is often quite the opposite, though -- it is one of those fields where real world experience proves valuable, and the experienced folks learn a little something about the math behind network routing and such.
Honestly, whenever I see someone with experience wanting to study CS, I just recommend that they get a degree in something like MIS simply because it is a way for you to move up, and it is a lot easier -- handing computer science at a later stage in your life is usually significantly harder unless you've been keeping yourself mentally challenged in math and related subjects. You are in a very different place mentally in your early 30s than you are in your late teens.
Re:Hi... (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is very true. In my experience, actual work is about getting the job done well enough to serve a particular purpose while academic work was more likely to require delving deeper. The deeper academic delving sometimes really pays off when the real job requires just getting something to work right, right now.
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Obviously, your degree was not in English.
Co-op programs (Score:2)
not so fast, not so easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheapest Colleges (Score:2)
Obviously, your local state school is probably the cheapest.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/09/cheapest-colleges-13-standup-schools-that-cost-less-than-5-000/
Both are meaningless... (Score:3)
every year, it gets harder to convince potential employers/clients that 10-12 years of hands-on experience doing what they need done, trumps an additional 2 years of general IT education.
Both are pretty meaningless if you don't actually have the necessary knowledge to do the job properly. There are plenty of people with degrees that don't know anything. There are plenty of people with lots of experience that don't know anything. I know lots of people who talk a good game, and can't deliver. There are plenty of people paying for software development that don;t know what good software is, and that's what allows these hacks to survive. The fact that you want to get a BS in computer science with doing the least amount of effort, makes me not want to hire you. What it says to me, is that you don't think the knowledge gained by going through a real CS program is very important. There is also quite a difference in quality between "accredited" computer science programs, and most employers are aware this difference. Maybe you think you know the material already, but I have literally never seen a single "self-taught" person who knew a damn about proper software engineering. Maybe you are a genius and an exception, but I also wouldn't take the word of some self-proclaimed CS/IT genius. Everyone who does computers thinks their a genius, myself included. It's a psychological disorder that's rampant in the field.
Don't be surprised if a fastest cheapest accredited degree (i.e. where you learn the least), doesn't yield the results you were hoping for.
Where are the online Computer Science degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always wondered what it is that prevents us from creating a fully accredited* Computer Science Degree (bachelor's) completely online, for cheap. I'm not talking code-school, I mean let's learn Computer Science, with all the math and non-shortcuts that entails. The "industry" might want programmers, but *I* want to be more than that, and I'd like a formal education to get it without spending $30-40k/semester and would prefer to do it at my own pace while I continue working in the field. Perhaps this needs to be a Y Combinator style start-up. Courses from Algebra (yes, Algebra), Geometry, Trig, first principles kind of stuff focusing on the WHYS not just rote memorization. Sure, you'd still need the social sciences and what not (and I would be happy to just take those at the local community college for $cheap and transfer them in), but the real meat at the real school. Hell, it doesn't even have to be accredited if you actually learn something.
This also brings me to self-taught computer scientists: I've begun an adventure down "Teach myself math from scratch" lane because, at age 40, I'm still rather annoyed at my math education in high school. I was more concerned about learning to the test, not the concepts, and that's haunted me ever since. Anyone have recommendations for learning math starting from, say, Algebra I or II level (high school) that will actually teach in a way that will be useful rather than taking a test? Stuff that will carry over into future classes as the proper building blocks, etc?
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It's a master's degree program from what I can tell. I'd rather start at the undergraduate level. What's sad is that even though I denigrate my math skills/comprehension I've still probably forgotten more than most non-STEM people have ever learned. SIGH.
What does it mean when your biggest regret from high school at age 40 is I wish I hadn't slept through Algebra II & Advanced Math instead of "I wish I had asked Suzy out" or, I dunno, gone out for the wrestling team? :)
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I've always wondered what it is that prevents us from creating a fully accredited* Computer Science Degree (bachelor's) completely online, for cheap.
The "For Cheap" part is the only thing.
Florida State University has (had?) an actual online Computer Science degree (AA had to be completed offline). It was actually Computer Science, too.
Algebra through Calc + Discrete and Calc-based Statistics for the math;
Operating Systems and Programming Languages (design and concepts of, not just usage)
Programming Instruction in OO (C++, not Java - gets them points in my book, may reduce them in yours) and Functional (LISP). Even some assembly for the OS course (MIPS).
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WTF is an "Associates In Programming"? How... (Score:2)
...does an accredited (presumably) school come up with that? That sounds like a trade school degree. Might as well be self-taught.
When did people stop going to college to get "educated" as opposed to "resumated"?
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Oh, and get off my lawn... ;)
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I can tell by your syntax that you learned to code in the early 90s....
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Good god, take a remedial writing class, please.
Check out SUNY Empire State College (Score:2)
Lie (Score:2)
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Worked for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Gets you access to all those "4 year degree" tech jobs, plus a whole slew of other tech jobs that you didn't know existed. That's what I did because I didn't want to pigeonhole myself into a field that is rife with bubbles and outsourcing. Worse case scenario, if at some point I can't find work writing code, I can try to get a job with the power company, a telco, etc.
Keep your costs down (Score:2)
CLEP + Any University that accepts CLEP credit... (Score:2)
Get your company to pay for it (Score:2)
Get a job. (Score:2)
upper peninsula of Michigan (Score:4, Interesting)
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That plus industry certifications.
We are a RHCE shop and look at all these happy clients who use Redhat, or the staff has X MCSE and MCSA holders and here's our list of happy people with windows servers.
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and he didn't mention "legal" anywhere
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As far as I know, there are no laws requiring people to be honest on their resumes. They will obviously get fired if caught, but not arrested and charged with a crime.
Re:A printer and a template (Score:5, Interesting)
I once interviewed for one of the big investment banks (not gonna give a name, but its one of the big evil wall street banks that everyone knows about). That one has the usual silly "4 year degree with 3.0 GPA or we don't even talk to you, no exception, not even if you're a well known superstar in the software world" rule.
I didn't know that, and I only have a 3 year degree (from a country where thats common). I aced the interview as that particular job wasn't even very computer science-ish, and they had been looking for someone for months to fill that position. Then they noticed the little issue of me not having the mandatory degree.
The hiring manager (not someone from an agency, but someone on their payroll) just modified my resume without telling me and passed it over to HR for final signoff. I got hired.
Fast forward a year, they're updating the HRIS system and verifying that all the info is correct. I get an email from HR asking me to confirm that I indeed have a 4 year bachelor with 3.0 GPA from Big Name College XYZ with my boss CCed.
My boss quickly replied, before I had time to go "WTF?!", that I indeed had such a degree.
Needless to say, him and I had a little talk afterward. That was awkward.
Re:A printer and a template (Score:5, Insightful)
Great that your boss is watching out for you, yikes that your company has to lie to itself to hire and keep qualified personnel.
Something's broken, and it's beyond individuals to fix it ...
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Don't know which other country you're talking about, but a UK 3 year honours degree is considered equivalent to a 4 year US degree.
I don't think "4 year" is to be taken literally.
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Easier to make it literal on the paperwork, instead of convincing HR of the equivalency.
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The type of degree isn't relevant for a lot of stuff, especially when it comes to immigration or certain employers.
In this case, that employer worked simply with post-secondary years, and counted a master as 6 and PhD as 10. So someone who did 2 bachelors in 6 years was equivalent to someone with a master. What happened before that, or which country or type of degree you had, was irrelevent.
For immigration, its total years of schooling. So how long high school takes in your particular country is relevant. h
Computer screening (Score:2)
Maybe there was a Computer CV screening, and the boss, instead of bothering to hassle with the programming, just made the three into a four?
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I got a BS and MS from a here to be un-named University. A few weeks before graduation, I also got a parking ticket, which I contested. I got an un-official copy of my 6 years of transcripts before the ticket was done with the appeals system. I got my first job without even showing the unofficial transcripts, worked there for 12 years while the Uni sent me probably 100 letters demanding $20 payment for the ticket, informing me that my records are frozen until such time as the ticket is paid.
Next job was
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Only in Texas is "engineer" a protected word. The rest of the world knows that a "software engineer" is different than an aerospace engineer
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Forgery is 'something'.
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And yet, the summary says:
To me this sounds like how it reads ... someone wants the letters to put on their resume to make it look better.
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I'd say, fastest and cheapest:
BSCS - right there on the keyboard, slap those letters on the resume and you're good to go.
Does the degree need to come from an accredited institution?
Most CS employees I know mostly BS their way through everything they do, anyway.
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Time is money, actually, when I turned 30, time became more valuable than money.
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Maybe he was looking for an answer more like, this [hp.com]. It would be far faster and cheaper. You really can't beat 14 cpm (certificates per minute) with the more traditional routes.
Fast, Cheap, High Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
As with everything else, Pick two.
Re:Fast, Cheap, High Quality (Score:4, Insightful)
As with everything else, Pick two.
Not all options actually hug the tradeoff curve(well, in three variables, I suppose it's some sort of surface; but same idea) all that closely (if at all), so it's still a partially legitimate question... (Which state school is basically north of 10k/yr for beer pong and date rape and which one is an affordable and decent college? Is that ad for SOMEBODY TECHNICAL INSTITUTE a total scam? How much of the expense of a traditional campus can I skip without ending up in a 'MOOC' that might as well just be watching a couple of youtube videos, only more expensive?).
That said, I'd be...a trifle nervous... about anyone who "eh, just wants to get a fast, cheap, CS degree, y'know?". Unless you have purely mercenary motives(and a fairly solid estimate of how much more you could be earning if you had one from a school of a given caliber, in which case crunch the cost of going to school, opportunity and direct, compare to expected increased future earnings, and go on your value-rational-homo-economicus way...), you don't get a CS degree, definitely not a CS degree that you wouldn't be ashamed of, just for the CV.
If you are already a programmer, you know enough about CS-like things that 'CS for enrounding you as a person and enrichment' will be irrelevant, so you have two choices: Do you want to take actual, big-kid, CS for people who want a better grasp of a deeply hairy area of mathematics? Or would you be better off skipping that and focusing on software engineering/development related skills that will make your practical-applied-programming more solid, more maintainable, generally better on the logistics side?
Hard math just seems like a bad place for dabblers: If you just skate, you'll be wasted on anybody who just wants a coder, now(since they don't care about your fancy theoretical education, just your work experience); and equally wasted on anybody who wants to pick your brain, see how you think; because faking knowledge of hard subjects is hard.
This really seems like a " Do, or do not." affair.
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I've thought about going back to school for a CS degree. I've been working the field for about 20 years, and I still don't have a degree. "fast, cheap, and high quality" would be exactly what I want. I don't have the time to spend 2 to 4 years pursuing a degree. It would just be a stupid choice for me right now. I can stop working, or reduce my hours to get my degree, so I can pretty much get right back into the job I already have at the same payrate, but then I'll have new student loans to pay off.
If
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He did. Fast and cheap. Do you have some actual advice?
This guy is in a situation where he knows how to do the job, but some HR person wants to see a check next to the "BS" line. Yes, the BS line. Quality isn't important so long as he can legitimately put BS CS on his resume.
My brother is in construction and they won't promote him further without a bachelors. What kind? Doesn't matter, really. He just needs to get a degree from somewhere accredited, the sooner the better, so some paper-pusher can approve it
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Yea, I was going through Computer Learning Center back in the 80's. Couldn't even get a glance from IBM but the person with a 4 year degree in Animal Husbandry got an offer. Even though I did much better in the classes and even taught one session for extra credit.
The degree doesn't matter as long as it's a degree.
[John]
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As with everything else, Pick two.
Does that count for girlfriends as well?
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As far as the original requirements - fast, cheap, accredite
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I am willing to bet most companies will not bother to see if your college is accredited just as long as it sounds collegey.
For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
For people with experience a college degree gets past that resume filter.
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For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
Man don't say things like that. That is a good way to get a major black spot in your resume. This business is smaller than some people realize. Next time you try getting a job it will probably be of the kind where you say 'do you want that with fries or not?'.
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For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
Man don't say things like that. That is a good way to get a major black spot in your resume.
Nonsense. Even if you get caught (unlikely), there is very little chance that it will hurt you in your next interview. Do you really think HR people have nothing better to do than to build and maintain blacklists for the benefit of their competitors?
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No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
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No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
And any smart one simply refers the request to HR, especially if they fired you. No one ants to open themsvez up to a lawsuit.
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Thanks to some combination of FERPA and the Office of the Bursar's desire to extract fees, actually getting the details of a student's stay at a given school is a pain. By contrast,
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I am willing to bet most companies will not bother to see if your college is accredited just as long as it sounds collegey.
I would not bet on that. More likely, if they haven't heard of the school they will trash the resume unless your experience is eye catching.
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I've never understood the point of a degree from a non-accredited institution. If the university isn't accredited, I'd probably be better off licensing an official Miskatonic University degree plaque from HP Lovecraft's estate.
The parent nailed it. I'd see about the reimbursement item.
Also, sometimes OS certificates can get one in the door as well. A CCIE can get one in the door, similar with a MCSE. For the tech people, it doesn't mean as much, but the HR department are the people that round-file resum
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I took three. I did 90 credits at Mesa Community College, who operates a very solid Cisco Network Academy affiliate, and 30 credits at Northern Arizona University for my bachelors in IT Management. Both are public colleges and accredited. It's cheap because you get the discount community college rates for 90 credits, and then only have to do the core credits for the university portion (skipping all of the fluff such as liberal arts, because they recognize that you already did the fluff at community college;
Re:Apply to a local university (Score:4, Interesting)
You often can get a decent rate at part time taking some classes at your local state University. You can often take classes before you are admitted to the school. Usually after you prove that you know your stuff and get a few good grades, the school will normally let you in the program.
As for experience. Experience does matter, however from my own personal experience hiring developers, a college education usually gets employees that don't have those odd holes in their skills, which makes bringing up to speed sometimes a little more difficult.
These gaps vary from person to person... However some of the common ones are.
1. Not understanding details of data structures. Why am I getting a negative number when it is clearly 5 billion!
2. Recursion seems magical. I admit it, in college it took me a bit to get Recursion, after a class in LISP it cleared it right up. Also when you get the details realizing how often the system is stacking stuff together means there is a limit on how much Recursion magic you can do.
3. IPC (Inter Process Communications) Dealing with threads can get sketchy if you don't have a way to get them to talk.
4. Complex Boolean logic with short circuit evaluation. Yep after that one function returned true that second function won't run in your or clause. You know that one for some reason you made to update some data.
Now for those of you without degree who feel insulted by this, don't be this is what I find are often the most common issues. There are a lot of really good developers without degrees, many who I will admit who could kick my butt at coding. But for a company trying to hire, it is normally better to weed out some good employees then it is to hire a bad one.
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I'd add a couple:
5: Locks and integrity. You have two threads updating one variable. Without some sort of transaction/lock/mutex/semaphore system, one can get very unpredictable results. This is a subset of #3 above, but variable manipulation can be a basic thing overlooked.
6: Choosing the proper variable type in a strongly typed language. Yes, one can always use long doubles for every floating point calculation, similar with long longs... but when a counter never gets past 16, it wastes space. Yes,
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As you noted #5 was a subset of #3
Also I would say #6 is a subset of #1. If you don't understand data structures those long doubles and long longs seems like the best choice if you really don't know why there are so many different types.
Re:Apply to a local university (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps an actual answer to his question.
First off, make sure your Associates degree is a transferable associates degree. The fact that you say it is in "Programming and Systems Analysis" instead of just Associates in Arts or Associates in Science leads me to believe it isn't a very transferable degree. You would have needed things like 3 communications classes (English, Speech, etc), 6 behavioral sciences / humanities courses, 2 science classes, and 2 math classes. If it is a transferable degree, then you are half way there.
If it is not transferable, you can try to use CLEP tests to get past many required classes. I was able to get past two humanities courses that weren't part of my associates this way. If you can't pass the tests because you are a bad test taker or something, community college classes are your best bet. It will be easy to pass those classes but it will take a while this way.
If you aren't able to go to college for two years during daytime hours, it will be a bit harder to finish the last 60 credit hours. When I needed a BS while working in 2009 I was forced to use University of Phoenix, but now there are many better options at real schools. I followed up my BS with an MS at a real school, so I didn't mind going to a degree mill. But a quick internet search can find numerous online BS programs at real brick and mortar schools.
I do not suggest going to a diploma mill unless you are going to follow up with a real MS. The government is likely to start cracking down on programs like UoP and Devry soon, and those schools will probably obtain even worse reputations than they already have when that happens. That said, I did get a job with a 50% pay increase by just listing I was 12 credit hours away from my UoP BS degree, so it was useful to me all by itself (my boss later confirmed my resume would never have reached her desk if I hadn't listed I was close to my BS).
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My gut tells me the education is just the "official" or "least objectionable" thing employers are finding to either negotiate a lower salary or show him the door.
Kinda like when you buy a car and find some nitpick thing to get the guy to knock a little off the price.
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,,, and if he doesn't have a trust fund?
When all employers demand the same thing (Score:2)
If this is the attitude then you do not want to work there
When it becomes a choice of either "there", 5 different employers with the same policy as "there", or minimum wage, it becomes hard to make ends meet.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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It isn't "IT", but there are degrees in IS, along the lines of business management. This is another path, likely a profitable one since it gets one closer to PM/PHB types of jobs... those are the jobs that will stay even after the corporate axemen come to visit with the pink slips.
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It's a business degree. That should tell you everything. PHB training academe.
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MBA has mod points.
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I had a similar though, fast and cheap is the wrong mindset. Sit down and research the local (or online) schools and degree programs available to you. Dig into the courses and see what topics are taught. Look for a program that will compliment your career goals. Some schools may accept your associates degree coursework, but make sure you ask up front since credits do expire. You are probably looking at a minimum of 2 years to complete a decent program. It could be a long, miserable road if you pick a
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My resume doesn't have any education listed on it either. It never has. Knowing the subject matter is far more important than the piece of paper saying I spent a few years at a school.
If they ask about it, I only discuss it loosely. Yes, I have gone to college. No, I don't have a degree. I started working, and stayed with working rather than school. I've never been pressed for any educational details, like what college/university, how long, etc, etc.
Usually, if I get in for an interview, I have the
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I have an Associates degree
I think what you're looking for is "associates degree from a 2 year technical college"
No, OP is looking for something sufficient for employment.
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Went to DeVry; you know he's not the brightest bulb in the pack.