
The Declining Value of a CS Master's Degree (2013) - meri_dian
https://blog.regehr.org/archives/953
======
CryoLogic
There is very little a MS in CS can teach you that a BS in CS with some free
time and books can't pick up. Look at this list from UChicago:
[https://masters.cs.uchicago.edu/page/12-course-ms-
specializa...](https://masters.cs.uchicago.edu/page/12-course-ms-
specialization-program)

Basically your masters program is giving you a choice of 9-12 courses split
between:

1\. Algorithms .

2\. Your choice of a primer in Java, C, Python or Swift .

3\. Databases, Compilers, Networking, Comp Arch, Functional Programming OS,
Distributed Systems .

4\. IoS, Product Management, UX, Intro to Software Engineering, Advanced C++,
OOP, Android Dev, Web Dev Etc. etc.

I really don't see anything on that list that is worth paying for a years
worth of classes for. Half of that list you already take in undergrad, and the
other 40% you should be able to pick up with a book and basic experience and
not need a class.

Maybe 10% of those classes you would be at an advantage in the classroom?

~~~
esturk
Graduate courses are geared towards research and the generation of knowledge
instead of just a consumer. It's probably the biggest difference most students
don't get. Yeah, you can look up anything that someone else has done before
but what something original that you can add?

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Graduate courses are geared towards research

Nope, only PhD courses. In the US, Master’s programs are widely understood to
be “professional” programs, i.e. geared towards private sector.

~~~
madengr
There were no PhD courses when I was in grad school. There were grad and
undergrad courses. The advent of online MS has turned it into professional
programs.

------
theparanoid
Regehr is beating around the bush. In my MS it was about 65% Indian BS
students and 35% local students (various backgrounds). The local students were
working professionals and the Indian students just wanted the credential.

The cause is simple, an MS is very advantageous when applying for an H-1B.

~~~
praneshp
> The cause is simple, an MS is very advantageous when applying for an H1-B.

Not really. It's okay, I guess.

~~~
cgmg
> The Immigration Act of 1990 limits to 65,000 the number of foreign nationals
> who may be issued a visa or otherwise provided H-1B status each fiscal year
> (FY). An additional 20,000 H-1Bs are available to foreign nationals holding
> a master's or higher degree from U.S. universities.

> Those who have the U.S. master's exemption have two chances to be selected
> in the lottery: first, a lottery is held to award the 20,000 visas available
> to master's degree holders, and those not selected are then entered in the
> regular lottery for the other 65,000 visas. Those without a U.S. master's
> are entered only in the second, regular, lottery.

That is definitely a non-negligible advantage.

~~~
praneshp
I agree it's non-negligible. It's not a very big advantage.

------
toolslive
That's a very US centric view, especially: 'Whereas MS degrees used to be a
means for departments to begin vetting future PhD students,...'

This was never the case in Europe, where if you have only a bachelor, people
assume something went wrong. The target at university always was a Master's
degree. The PhD, something you did for your mother, or if you wanted to pursue
an academic career.

~~~
adzicg
This is not my experience in the UK (not sure if you consider UK part of
Europe, though :).

If anything, it was the opposite, people I worked with would consider anything
better than Bachelors in CS on a candidate’s CV (eg MS or PhD) as a signal
that they wasted too much time in their life before starting with real work in
the industry.

[edited for clarity]

~~~
tanilama
I doubt that. Bachelor is not sufficient for a lot of areas in CS, like
DB/Distributed System/Machine Leanring, etc.

~~~
cpburns2009
You can't seriously believe that a degree in CS, let alone a higher degree
such as a PhD, is required for any of those things, do you? Unless you're
working in theoretical areas of CS, or want to check off the PhD requirement
for one of the big tech companies, then that sounds extremely pompous.

~~~
tanilama
Why wouldn't I? For ML, without an advanced degree, you are seriously
disadvantaged from the very beginning. That is my first hand experience. For
those areas I listed, it is not adequate to contribute much during the
bachelor's. To edge towards the frontier, it simply will take more time.

~~~
cpburns2009
For Machine Learning, provided you're actually working on the core algorithms,
sure, a CS degree could help you have the requisite knowledge. But for
databases and distributed systems? Domain knowledge would get you much further
than what you learn from a CS degree.

------
gota
When I read the title I assumed this was going to be a very different piece,
as I've recently been discussing with friends and colleagues about how degrees
in general are going to be less and less important over time. This is a
digression on the topic of the original post, so I'm sorry if I shouldn't be
posting it here.

The reasoning goes: the reasons why we need degrees are _certification_ and
_reputation_. By certification I mean that we only let people who we all trust
practice medicine, as that kills people directly otherwise. So we restrict the
people who can to those with the appropriate degrees.

The second point is more relevant to most other careers. A degree is nothing
but a more reputable institution 'lending' reputation to its graduates. The
reason this is necessary is because nobody's got the time to verify whether
every person knows Computer Science - we're better off just knowing that
people from University of X know CS if UoX says so. Even if you're going to
personally interview every candidate for a job opening, still relying on
degrees helps you filter candidates.

The thing is our interactions are recorded to the level that we can now reason
about individuals in a way that was not possible before. Why do I need to
trust UoX if I can _mine your entire internet presence_ with reasonably
comparable effort?

I thought from the title that, since CS is the field that is making this shift
possible, we'd be the first one to suffer this influence.

~~~
paublyrne
I don't think your premise is right. University degrees are not only for
certification and reputation. Your specific example of medical practitioners
alone goes against it. There is no other practical way for people to learn to
practice medicine than in university. You can't really pick it up on your own
in your spare time, unlike CS.

As well as being an opportunity for someone to have time and freedom to study
for a period of years university also provides a safe world to learn other
soft skills and grow as a person. It's not prerequiste to develop those, of
course, but it really helps.

------
vinay427
Can we get this tagged with a year (2013)? It's especially relevant because
the article links to a previous HN discussion about the article.

~~~
stevenwoo
The topmost comment about getting a MS to qualify to get a job at IBM - that
seems unintentionally funny after the discussion about IBM yesterday, but
maybe new MS's are still cheaper than grey haired folks.

------
ronnier
I would only get a masters while working (that’s what I did). I wouldn’t forgo
money and experience to get a masters and I wouldn’t go in debt to do it
either.

~~~
akurilin
The CMU part-time remote MS in Software Engineering was great, definitely
extra worth it if you have your company pay for it. Not sure if they still
offer it, they might have shut down the Moffett Field version of the program.

~~~
capitalsigma
What kind of emphasis does the program have, as an MS in software engineering
vs CS?

~~~
akurilin
I believe there were two tracks: 1. real world senior software engineering
skills (architecture etc) 2. development manager skills (using principles from
various agile schools of thought to build a process that is custom to your
team's strengths and needs)

The first year is identical for both, the second year is the specialization in
one of the tracks. Everything's very project driven, you work remotely with
other folks on almost everything you do IIRC.

Even the application to the program is somewhat similar to applying to a
company: take home project, in person interview etc.

------
bootsz
> Wilfra mentions “disdain for people who don’t have a BS CS who want to get
> an MS CS.” It was certainly not my intent to express disdain for people who
> follow this path! Many people pull it off admirably. However, it is a
> difficult path to follow because it skips all of the introductory
> programming classes

As someone who went this path, I'm troubled by the amount of assumptions and
generalization being made here.

To my knowledge any legitimate MS program will require that you have completed
an appropriate amount of foundational CS courses before starting the program.
I obtained an MSCS after getting a bachelor's in a different field, and I had
to take 6 CS classes to satisfy the prerequisites. Including the MS the total
amount of coursework I completed was slightly greater than the requirements of
the university's Bachelor's degree, plus some graduate-level research.

Granted, this is not as much coursework as someone who obtained _both_ a BS
and and MS, but from my understanding if you're not planning to pursue a PhD
(or need it for immigration purposes) getting both is usually not a good use
of time anyway.

It seems he is trying to specifically criticize programs that fall far short
of what I went through, which seems valid. But it would be nice to make that
distinction instead of writing us all off as inferior.

~~~
commandlinefan
> require that you have completed an appropriate amount of foundational CS
> courses

In fact, I went back for an MSCS degree ten years after finishing a BSCS, and
even then I was required to take a couple of foundational undergraduate
courses before they let me start my graduate coursework, since there had been
enough advances in CS theory since I graduated a decade ago that they felt
(correctly) that I needed to catch up.

------
vikascoder
The moment I started reading the first paragraph the thought in my head went
like, "he is pointing to Online Masters By Georgia Tech..it's definitely OMSCS
he is now ranting about". Voila. He was indeed. I have a rigorous bachelor's
degree in CS. Thee are many many topics which were never covered in that
Undergrad course which are done in the Masters. Yeah it's maybe not useful if
you are making a quickfire app for the play store but there are tons of work
and research areas and jobs around for which you need the aademic rigor of
having studied an MS atleast. Can we have this debate to rest? You are doing
well with a BS, good for you! Education is expensive in the US? Dont do it!

Now OMSCS is riling up a few heads here and there which it will. At 7000 USD
its a fantastic way for a working professional like me to advance my
knowledge. You think these kind of MS courses devalue the degree? These
courses are not THAT easy to do and this is 2018, there are fresh disruptive
ideas in very field , why not Graduate school ? Hey with enough of these
courses you will not need the evil H1B sith lords eating up the jobs here
right? Its a Win Win. The market will then decide whos the more worthy MS
student they wish to hire.

~~~
bitL
When you talk to OMSCS students and they tell you that they implemented their
own Augmented Reality system from the scratch, used Deep Learning in
classifying diseases in X-ray images of chest, programmed a Lunar Lander
automated solution using Deep Reinforcement Learning, reconstructed 3D models
from a series of photos in a weekend, I would say they are working on way more
interesting things than most people get a chance to work on during their whole
career. It seems more like you risk by not taking it, even if it is not really
research based, though some people told me they have selective research
courses as well, working e.g. with inventor of Google Glass etc.

------
asdlfklei
Stuff like this has me scratching my head.

Here's my situation:

I have a PhD, but in a different, non-CS field.

Due to my research and experience, I have a ton of stats and programming
experience across a range of languages, from lisp to C++ to javascript to
python, to name just a few. I have published stats papers for example.

However, I kinda find when I'm looking at jobs, there's a heavy focus on CS
grads, or people with finance-type degrees, or engineering degrees, or some
combination. And to be honest, there are certain things out of a BS in CS that
I probably am not that familiar with, especially low-level hardware type
stuff, and network stuff.

So, I look at what's out there, and getting a BS in CS seems a little odd, for
various reasons, in part because I feel like there's a lot of redundancy with
what I have from my career and education already.

A MS in CS, on the other hand, is kinda not so strange to me. I might have to
take a couple of preparatory courses, like in OSs, but doesn't seem too
grueling to me.

So I read a thing like this, and it comes across as similar to the sort of
gatekeeping that I bump into, like if you have a PhD in another field and then
get an MS in CS, you aren't a "real" CS grad or something. I've supervised
honors CS undergrads, and believe me, I feel pretty confident that my skillset
is beyond many of theirs, at least in certain areas. At some point it just
seems absurd to me.

I share some of the implicit concerns about cash cow MSs, that seem to be part
of the current employment climate, not unique to CS, but a symptom of problems
with hiring practices and also contributing to it. But it also seems misguided
to me to start arguing that someone who completes a MS in CS isn't as skilled
as someone with a BS.

There's just so much gatekeeping and pissing contest stuff that goes on in
STEM, and it drives me crazy sometimes. It is maybe possible that that english
grad actually understands programming, math, and algorithms at a pretty high
level (I'm not an english grad, just making a hypothetical argument).

~~~
bitL
They are likely intimidated by you; imagine they see skills in your CV than
make them feel inferior and likely worried you might either take their job or
get promoted higher faster. People are that selfish. Just remove your other
field qualifications from your CV, start a "consulting company" in Delaware
for 500 bucks for a year, list it as your employer, and you'll be hired.

~~~
commandlinefan
I like that interpretation, but I don't think that's why people like him are
passed over; you're attributing far too much self awareness to the hiring
manager types. My own observation is that, among people who can't program,
programming is viewed as sort of a semi-skilled bricklayer type task and a CS
degree is an expensive vocational training program that covers when to use
different sorts of bricks and what color bricks go best with what other color
bricks. What they're looking for is not educational experience or ability to
grow, but a demonstrated willingness to lay lots of bricks down, really fast.

------
inieves
I think your coursework-only MS needs to be further broken down into those
programs that require a BS in CS and those that don’t. There are at least 3
types of MS in that sense. Without this distinction, your article is short-
sighted, not realizing that there are actually many rigorous academic MS
programs in CS that would not be doable by someone lacking deep knowledge
already.

Erosion of the value of the MS is not isolated to CS.

Forget some universities eroding the MS, entire countries are eroding it. If
im not mistaken, Italy is a massive supplier of MS degrees.

~~~
bootsz
I agree, there is definitely a broad spectrum in terms of what amount of
background a student needs to be able to complete a given MS program.

But I'm not entirely convinced that it's appropriate to argue that the only
"true" MSCS is one that requires a full bachelor's in that subject as
prerequisite. That seems... overly restrictive.

What if you got a bachelor's in math or engineering and want to further
specialize in CS? Should your only option be to complete another bachelors
degree? What if you did a minor in CS? There's lots of people in these
categories that can and do get an MSCS, even from very reputable programs.

Obviously coming from a related field will prepare you better than say a
liberal arts degree, but where do you draw the line?

In my experience most MS programs have a certain set of prerequisites that
generally equate to a minor in CS.

------
booleandilemma
The problem with getting a masters in CS is that people just don’t care.

I’ve had too many technical interviews where the hiring manager will ask me
questions about his favorite ORM or dependency injection framework and turn me
down if I never used them before.

If I would have known that people in this field are so quick to disregard
credentials and previous work experience I would have chosen a different
technical subject to major in.

------
vsd13
While I do get the sentiment, I'm not sure what's the recommendation. I do
think there's more to it than gatekeeping, but what does someone who's REALLY
interested in the topic and wants to change fields do? Get a second BS? I'm
not familiar enough with education, but I'm under the impression that (at
least within STEM -> STEM) it doesn't seem popular.

~~~
bootsz
I imagine that's probably what the author would argue, but I'm not convinced
that should be the only option. You can get a masters in a lot of different
fields without needing a bachelors in the same subject. The question is
whether CS should be an exception or not. He seems to value the MS more as a
research-track degree and not as a professional degree. I'd argue the
opposite: If you're research-track you really don't need to be getting an MS,
just go straight to the PhD. That's how most top programs operate anyways.

------
cantankerous
If you're going to put the time into a research MS degree, you shouldn't be
paying for it. Period.

------
siberianbear
I hired software engineers at a big company in Silicon Valley for many years.
I interviewed thousands at university career fairs. I hired dozens of summer
interns and full-time people.

My take on a master's degree is that I treat it like a year or two of
experience: experience that the poor fool didn't get paid for. Of course, a
person with an MS is going to be a stronger candidate than one with just a BS,
since they've had more experience. But I can take the engineer with the BS and
give him the year of experience myself.

Perhaps it's different in Europe: they seem to value high education
credentials more. I didn't care about the status of an MS and neither did most
of my colleagues.

I think the only reason to do an MS in the USA is if you're a foreigner trying
to get residency through an H1B visa. There's a separate quota category for
people with an MS degree earned in the USA.

------
nikanj
It seems like we've grown to dislike any and all indicators of maturity in a
developer. Young people are smarter, plus easier to exploit too. And you don't
have to pay them as much, as they don't have advanced degrees.

------
digorithm
As a soon-to-graduate Masters CS student in a top research university, I'd
like to share, for what it seems, a different opinion and experience about
this matter.

I came here from a 3rd world country that lacks a good education; Most of my
CS experience and knowledge, at that time, came from the Internet, books, and
personal projects. After working hard, I was accepted to this university as an
MSc student.

I have never learned this amount of quality content as I've been learning in
these past 2 years in this MSc program. Deep topics and subjects like
programming language theory, low-level knowledge in distributed systems and
machine learning, all this being taught by excellent researchers in their
respective fields.

This was the first year, the course requirements part of the MSc program. Now
I'm halfway through my research, and again, I've been learning tons. I've been
writing _very_ interesting code, building amazing things, writing papers, and
working on my own ideas. I've never been this close to amazing scientists and
engineers. This is priceless, in my opinion.

I've worked in the industry (before the MSc. program), it was super great. But
I can confidently say that the MSc. program has made me a better engineer and
taught me how to do proper research. I'm sure this may vary from university to
university, department to department, and most importantly, from advisor to
advisor. But that has been my experience!

------
laichzeit0
I wonder what he would have to say for my example:

I did a 4 year BS CS degree and graduated in 2005. I did calculus, linear
algebra, real analysis, mathematical statistics, etc. until 3rd year and then
the typical CS curriculum of compilers, distributed systems, programming
languages, artificial intelligence, etc.

I've been working in industry for 12 years doing typical systems/software
development, but got involved in more "Data Sciency" things in the last 2
years. I liked it so much that I decided I want to change career directions
and move away from just "building software" to more "building software that
runs on data as the fuel", like machine learning/deep learning/NLP related
problems.

So okay, I have no real problem with doing anything that involves manipulating
the data, building pipelines, or implementing things in Tensorflow or Gensim,
etc it's just programming. Easy, peasy. I also understand most of the
mathematics, and what I forgot was not too hard to "re-learn" very quickly.

The problem is it is difficult to apply for jobs as a Data Scientist when you
only have a BS CS, even with real world experience. I'm not "formally
qualified" as a Data Scientist.

So I enrolled for a 2 year course-based MS (1 year course work, 1 year
dissertation). Basically it allows me to slap on my resume that (a) I have
done university accredited courses in mathematical optimization, machine and
statistical learning, deep learning, ethics, big data, etc. and I suppose the
dissertation says that I can do more advanced work on data in an academically
rigorous fashion. So basically I'm using the MS to change career trajectories
10 years after doing a BS CS.

I suppose you could do the courses through MOOCs but I appreciate the
dissertation part as I am forced to read journal articles and learn how to do
things more "rigorously" than I would otherwise in a plain old MOOC.

Isn't this a viable option for pursuing an MS? I don't think it's necessary
directly after an undergraduate, but after a decade or so you might want to
"specialize" into something that didn't really exist when you did your
undergrad. BTW, I did this part time while working (you can kiss away your
weekends and evenings).

~~~
mr_overalls
Have you finished the MS yet, and has it improved your job prospects? Also,
I'm curious which program you've chosen. The GaTech OMSCS program has gotten a
lot of good reviews lately.

------
odammit
My masters was a waste of time and money - except that it’s been a job
requirement for multiple jobs.

None of which asked for proof.

I think my bachelors was too besides the social experience of college (I’m
from a small town).

Most of what I learned was already familiar to me from developing as a hobby
and I learned way more from studying stuff I was interested in than bubble-
sorting and SAP case studying my way into boredom for an extra year.

~~~
Myrmornis
You did a BS and a Masters and most of what you learned was familiar to you
from hobby programming? Maybe you should have taken harder classes.

~~~
odammit
Maybe I read algorithm books for fun and finished all of my college math by
9th grade. But thanks!

~~~
Smaug123
I would still consider it _very_ unusual for one to not learn much on a
masters' course. Admittedly my masters degree was in maths, not compsci.

Whether the degree was worth your time and money, and whether it was
interesting, is an entirely separate question, of course.

~~~
odammit
Sure. I’m saying _my_ degree was worthless.

You don’t need school if you don’t need a degree for your job.

Learning is my all time hands-down favorite hobby. If you put in the work you
can learn all the things you learn in a CS degree on your own and in a much
shorter time.

The problem is getting good text books since they’re expensive (when I was in
school you couldnt google everything).

I realized I could social engineer my way to free books by _appropriating_
college letterhead, pretending to be a professor, and writing to publishers
asking for evaluation copies of books I wanted to read.

------
amriksohata
UK based here, I have had a mix of friends that got a Bsc and a few that got
Masters. In terms of jobs and salary nearly all are on a equal footing. I
agree with the guy that said a Master's is more a route into research as few
employers specifically seek it or reward it and if they do it's a very small
number.

------
dimman
In my opinion the biggest issue in general is the distance between ”the
educational world and the professional world”. There’s so much more to being a
great engineer than knowing the ins and outs of x, y or z. In reality you have
to compromise, with everything, almost all the time. They don’t teach you that
at school, you learn that while working. People who just graduated (atleast
here in Sweden) think they are pro’s when graduating, only to realize they’re
real green’ies when they start working. If they don’t realize it right away,
they do realize it a couple of years in.

I’ve been working as an embedded software developer for 7+ years at different
#1 in their field companies without a degree. I’ve worked with a lot of newly
graduates and the above is my experience.

The best technical solution is not always the best solution.

------
samfisher83
Its very useful if you want to come into this country. If you are in India its
hard to get a job in America. If you come here for a master its much easier to
get a job here. The salary difference between there and here can be massive.

~~~
ng12
Yup. I went to a school with a pretty good CS program (not quite top N) and
our master's program was almost exclusively international students.

------
justin66
I was an exception to what regehr said in at least one regard: my public
speaking improved pretty dramatically while working toward a coursework-only
MS. I don't think it was anything more complicated than just needing to hit a
lifetime threshold of presenting in front of people some number of times.

The rest seems pretty valid, although at this stage, I doubt if there's any
well-founded way to determine whether a given degree will prove to be
worthwhile in a purely financial sense, if there ever was. With rising costs
it's probably just somewhat less likely...

------
time0ut
My MS program was very geared towards giving a foundation to pursue a PhD.
There were some aspects of it that were tangentially helpful in my career as a
software developer, but it definitely was not the focus. Thinking back I feel
like it was that way because that is what all of the professors knew. Few of
them had experience outside academia so it makes sense that the program would
reflect that. Maybe things were different at other institutions. This was also
more than a decade ago, so things could be different now in general.

------
rm_-rf_slash
I’m not sure where I fit into this equation. My employer is paying for me to
get a CS M.Eng in ML/AI on the side while I work. I’m learning way more than I
would have bothered - or had the hardware and guidance - to learn on my own,
like parallel processing, CAD, 3D printing, and eventually robotics.

I don’t have much interest in a CS MS. I don’t really see the point of it. If
my degree goes well and after a few more years in the field I decide I want to
specialize much further, I’ll just get a Ph.D.

My $.02

------
juliusmusseau
I always thought MS in USA was seen as failed PhD (e.g., did not make it past
proposal stage). So perhaps these coursework MS degrees are actually
increasing the value of the MS!

~~~
cpwright
Not at all. It's very common to get an M.S. in CS; which is mostly course work
to differentiate yourself from a B.S. holder, which because nearly everyone
has a degree has less value than in the past.

The reason many M.S.'s are failed Ph.D.s is that is easy to get funding for a
Ph.D., but not for an M.S.

------
sowhatquestion
I'm a (primarily backend/API) web developer, with 5 years of experience at
this point, and I've been planning to apply to Georgia Tech OMSCS in order to
branch out into different specializations like ML and data science. A better
foundation in algorithms etc. wouldn't hurt either--my bachelor's is not CS-
related.

This article gave me pause, since I've never heard much skepticism expressed
about a Comp Sci MS before. Is it really so overrated?

~~~
xapata
Too early to tell, but probably worth the time and effort.

------
mslate
Tsk tsk—not a single iota of quantitative analysis. How can we know that the
value of a CS degree is declining? By what measure of “value”?

This is pure “appeal to authority” as the author is a CS professor-—better to
discuss Aline Lerner’s research which he references

------
grzm
(2013)

Discussion at the time (over 100 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5786720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5786720)

------
electricslpnsld
At my alma mater the CS Masters program is a total cash cow for the
department. 23K a semester multiplied by a few hundred students and you're
talking a few million a semester.

------
Myrmornis
Please change the title to have the year in it. This is from 2013.

------
k__
Still have to write my master thesis.

But I have no hopes of instant value.

I guess it's good to have it when I'm older to get into a management position
or something

------
bootsz
The crux of the issue here seems to be that the author believes that a "true"
MSCS is one that can only be obtained by those who have first completed a
bachelor's degree in CS. We might want to consider whether that is a valid
definition or not.

This isn't really a brand-new thing either. One of my best instructors was a
seasoned industry vet (former senior architect at a major firm, member of W3C
and author of several of their proposals, etc.), and he had a bachelor's in
Physics followed by an MSCS... from Stanford. Are we to say that his masters
is not legitimate or that he is an inferior engineer because he technically
did not complete a bachelors in the subject first?

To me it seems to be a problem of defining in general what the purpose of a
masters degree should really be. In some fields it is used as an extension of
a bachelor's in the same field, while in others it is used to supplement
undergraduate education with skills in a different field, typically for the
purposes of better rounding out the student's knowledge in preparation for
pursuing certain career paths.

For instance, consider a professional degree like the MBA, where you can come
in having a bachelor's in literally any subject.

What the author is noticing is that universities are increasingly offering the
MSCS as something more like a professional degree instead of solely as an
academic-track stepping stone to the PhD. And clearly he does not like this.

This issue seems to highlight the dual-purpose nature of universities as
vehicles for training both practitioners as well as researchers. On the
practitioner side, I think there is immense value in being able to supplement
a bachelor's degree in one subject with a different set of skills obtained in
a second degree. E.g., many people take the track of getting a science or
engineering bachelors and then an MBA afterwards. The combination of those two
disciplines can provide a very powerful skill set.

What seems to be happening is that the increasingly tech-centric nature of our
economy is causing the skills offered by CS to start to make a lot of sense
for some people as a form of secondary training. Much like business,
technology intersects virtually every industry, and those who have training in
a specific subject domain _in addition to_ CS can be highly effective problem-
solvers, much more so than those trained in just one or the other.

Sure, perhaps we can argue about whether an "MSCS" is really the most
appropriate vehicle for such people. But being one of those people myself I
will say that my experience does not at all reflect what the author claims
(see my other comment re: coursework). The reality is that there are an
increasing number of people who want to supplement their undergraduate
training with CS, and this is a good thing. The author is correct in noting
the distinction between this demographic and those who are on a
research/academic track, but I'm just not convinced that we can definitively
say that an MSCS must always require a bachelors in CS.

------
Teeer
(2013)

