
Ask HN: Getting a CS "degree" via MIT OpenCourseWare? - rfnslyr
Long story short I went to a local small college and had a very miserable 2&#x2F;4 years. $20k gone and I didn&#x27;t learn a thing.<p>I want a proper CS education, but I messed up my high school and theres no way I&#x27;m getting into any good schools locally.<p>I was discussing with my parents and thinking of dedicating a few years to signing up and passing a full CS degree curriculum via MIT OpenCourseWare. I&#x27;m currently a mobile consultant and have been in the field for awhile, I&#x27;m mainly doing this to get some sort of accreditation in my field beyond just high school and university is out of the picture and to get a more in depth proper understanding of computer science.<p>I want to be able to take a complex problem and design an elegant solution to it. Right now I&#x27;m just a code monkey with no real world application beyond &quot;code this according to spec&quot;.<p>How would potential employers view this?<p>Has anyone done this before and been hired?
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dobbsbob
They are excellent courses if your primary interest is elec engineering. 6.004
is prob the best course I took, all the lectures are online and course
material from 2012. Of course you are missing recitation for many courses and
TA access though. The assignments for 6.857 and lecture notes are really good
for self learning too. As for a job you would have to prove your skills with a
portfolio which is a repository of code you've done and develop for some open
source project you are interested in. You might find job offers come to you by
being helpful on their dev mailing list and somebody notices.

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cubecul
Scott Young, a blogger, did this ([http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-
challenge/](http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/)), but not to make
himself more attractive to potential employers. He covered the equivalent of a
CS degree at MIT in one year, where "covered" means passing. Highly recommend
reading about it and watching a few progress videos to get his method down.

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jakelin
Please notice you won't get a degree from MIT OpenCourseWare.

"No registration, no enrollment, and no grades or credits are offered" from
[http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/](http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-
started-with-ocw/)

But It is worthing to spend time on online courses now. I have finished some
courses on [https://www.coursera.org/](https://www.coursera.org/) and
[https://www.udemy.com](https://www.udemy.com). I can always learn from the
best. I finished my Bachelor's degree and Master's degree more than a decade
ago. If I were able to access those course at that time, I wouldn't go to
schools to waste my time and my parents' and my money. But that's a personal
choice.

And I don't think my degrees matter much for job seeking nowadays. You can
easily demonstrate your abilities by developing apps or contributing to Open
Source projects.

~~~
rfnslyr
Nobody in the real world cares about open source projects from my personal
experience. I realize I won't get a degree, just wondering if people have ever
been hired after spending time on something like this.

~~~
argonaut
Define "real-world." Open-source projects are highly relevant in terms of
getting exposure and connections. If you contribute to a project used by a
company, that can be a big plus, for example. Or if you contribute to a
project, you can then probably get internal referrals from other contributors
at the companies they work at.

~~~
derekp7
I think that depends on the type of company -- a number of old-school
companies would be scared off by open-source contributors. For example, back
when I was at Motorola (way before the split, and before Google bought out the
cell phone section), part of the employment contract was that anything
creative you think of at work or at home) belongs to the company, so
technically you couldn't work on any side projects without them owning it. Not
that it was legally enforceable or that they ever tried to enforce it...

Also, even today there are a number of companies (esp. in the midwest) that
won't let any open source software inside, unless it comes from a paid vendor
(like Red Hat).

~~~
argonaut
Read my first sentence.

~~~
rfnslyr
I work in the corporate world. The reason it's frowned upon is because
employers rather see complete projects that you did rather than a bit of
random code here and there in an open source project.

~~~
ethanbond
"the corporate world" is a pretty large place spanning companies that will
hire people based solely upon open source contributions as well as companies
that will disqualify people based solely upon open source contributions.

It's a pretty meaningless statement to say "in the real world, no one cares
about open source" when your definition of "real world" is one fraction of one
fraction of the real world (specific companies within the corporate world).

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usea
How sure are you that university is out of the picture? I failed most of high
school and then dropped out. Eventually I decided to go to university, where I
got a CS degree. I had to take a remedial Math course my first semester that
didn't count towards graduation, but overall college was fairly easy and
rewarding. I did graduate with student loan debt, which I'm still repaying. I
got a job doing programming right after graduation and I've been thriving.

The only thing university admissions required was some kind of high school
equivalency and ACT or SAT scores. I took the GED and ACT, and my scores
exceeded placement requirements by a huge margin. Your mileage may vary
outside of the US.

Are you certain you don't meet admissions requirements for any nearby
universities? Have you checked, or are you just assuming?

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brudgers
To the degree it is about a credential, Western Governor's University is a
reasonably priced option - http:\\\www.wgu.edu

While MIT might offer good courses, they're designed to be tough for a very
select group of the best prepared students even with the support resources
such as Teaching Assistants and labs and peer students and professors with
office hours that are accessible only on campus. Without those, it can only be
tougher. In my opinion, tougher to the level that a multi-year project has a
low chance of success even for a person of above average motivation and
intelligence.

Personally, I think a CS education from an average school will probably better
prepare anyone motivated enough to have a chance of completing a full slate of
MIT courses as self study. You can always get a graduate degree someplace more
selective.

~~~
dragonwriter
> To the degree it is about a credential, Western Governor's University is a
> reasonably priced option - http:\\\www.wgu.edu

Not if you want a CS degree, which WGU doesn't offer (WGU does offer a variety
of _IT_ degrees, which may be an acceptable substiture, or even the preferred
option for some people, but its certainly not even remotely the same thing as
a CS degree.)

~~~
brudgers
I agree that the difference is important to the degree that the concern is
over education rather than about credentials. That's why I also mentioned the
value of a CS degree from a less prestigious institution when the student is
highly motivated.

But if we're just talking about credentials, then a relevant degree plus
experience gives anyone who wants to hire the OP a green light.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I agree that the difference is important to the degree that the concern is
> over education rather than about credentials.

The difference is important if the concern is about credentials, too; when the
concern is about credentials, then exactly _what_ the degree is in can be
_very_ important.

CS and IT mean different things, _including_ (perhaps _especially_ ) to people
who are evaluating credentials. (In some cases, IT may be preferred, in other
cases, CS may be.)

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dragonwriter
Related to the question here, MITx is offering a MOOC-based certificate (one
of edX's inaugual XSeries certificates) in Foundations of Computer Science --
but the first class that is required for the series has already finished.

[https://www.edx.org/xseries](https://www.edx.org/xseries)

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jkldotio
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the cheapest path to a degree
in the United States is to:

1\. make sure your local state university offers cheap tuition to residents

2\. make sure they accept credit transfers from community colleges, get it in
writing

3\. do 1-2 years in community college

4\. transfer those to the state university and do the final years there at the
cheaper tuition rate

You'd then exit with a solid computer science degree on the cheap. Speaking as
someone from outside the USA most of the state universities are highly
regarded.

Another option might be a BSc in Computing and Information Systems (does this
count as CS to purists? does that matter if you aren't going on to higher
studies?) from the University of London, Goldsmiths in this case, for just
under 5000 pounds.[1]

However if your experience in the local small college was miserable you have
to be brutally honest with yourself about what the real reasons were for not
completing there as they will likely apply to anything you do elsewhere. The
lowest risk option in that case is to perhaps take some uncredited core CS
curriculum from OpenCourseWare, Coursera, Udacity and edX over 2014 and just
see how you go. Then, if it works out, you will then be in a position to blitz
a credited distance, community/state or online option that might arise in
2015+. The risk, at least in terms of "money on the line", of the community
college moving to state university option is fairly low as well.

Finally, as someone with graduate degrees and who is working on a PhD in a
different discipline to CompSci, I'd say you shouldn't get too caught up in
worrying about degrees if it doesn't match up with you personally. There are
reasonable, although often smaller than claimed or imagined, financial and
personal benefits from doing a degree though and you should take another shot,
or two, at it to make sure it's not for you (so long as the risk is low
regarding debt, there is virtually no risk in watching lectures and reading
textbooks as the time spent won't be wasted).

[1][http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/g...](http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/goldsmiths/bsc-
computing-information-systems-bsc-diploma-work-entry-route) The courses seem
perhaps a tad dry but it seems to cover the core mathematics, statistics,
databases, algorithms and has some nice looking electives.

~~~
akulbe
There is an even cheaper way to do it, that I'm _AMAZED_ doesn't get more
attention. Credit by exam.

The two options I used, that covered one year of school for me, in about 4
months... CLEP and DANTES.

CLEP - [http://clep.collegeboard.org](http://clep.collegeboard.org) DANTES -
[http://getcollegecredit.com](http://getcollegecredit.com)

the tl;dr version: take exam on $SUBJECT, pass exam, get credit.

The fine print:

a. the exams cost money, typically $100 - 150

b. there is typically a limit on how many credit-by-exam credits a receiving
institution will accept (for me, it was 30 semester hours, or 1 year's worth)
- for _how many_ and _which_ credits you can get - you need to research with
the receiving institution!!!

c. Usually, these are NOT easy exams, but the margin for passing exams varies,
but typically it's a ridiculously low margin, like 50-60%. I guess the
rationale is that the average college student retains only 50-60% of the
material they were taught, at best. (my conjecture, not fact!)

TOTALLY doable!!!

~~~
hmsimha
This is great, and something I looked into when I was pursuing my bachelors,
but it's important to note this is something ONLY worth considering after
finishing a relevant udacity/mit course, and then making sure the syllabus
matches up with that of the local university's teacher's that will be
administering the exam.

Also, at my school, which was a mediocre local university, I believe you still
needed 70% to pass an examination for accreditation.

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lauradhamilton
Speaking as a hiring manager, I would hire a person with such a "degree." Even
better if some open source experience, contract experience, sysadmin
experience, etc.

Depends on location. Markets in SF and NY particularly are very strong. Maybe
don't try this in Tennessee.

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chany2
I am pretty sure (depending on what company you want to work for), "degrees"
and "education" doesn't matter anymore.

If you can do several passion projects of your own, no GOOD employer would
discredit you.

But I recommend, double down. Create something you love (no business intention
behind it) while taking the MIT course.

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x0054
I have a friend who got Red Heat accreditation and got a string of jobs based
on it. Now he is in SF doing very well for him self. He had nothing but HS
degree.

But I am very interested what others think on this topic as well, so please up
vote.

