Ask HN: Affordable, online university for getting a degree to quit programming?
I'm a 32 years old self-taught programmer who has a strong resume and impressing experience, found jobs all over the world until today easily. But; I don't enjoy building software anymore. I do it just for bringing home money, I got one kid to take care of.
I enjoy reading books and learning a lot, so wouldn't mind working hard to start something new from scratch.
Getting a degree in Business is an option in my mind. I wonder if that would be a multiplier on top of my programming experience. I'm open for suggestions for studying something else, would be open to hear some ideas.
I found out that Arizona State University has a remote program, but it costs about 30k. I can't afford that. It's way above my budget.
Do you know any universities that has an affordable bachelors degree program ?
I live in Europe but it can be everywhere in the world. It'd be great if it's in US, so I can also improve my English along the way :)
70 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadThe only one I can think of is an entrepreneurial business degree and then you starting your own software business.
1. Where do you currently live?
2. What country/countries do you have citizenship for?
3. Do you have the equivalent of (what we would call in the US/Canada) a high school diploma?
4. Do you have any sort of degree or academic certificate already? If so, in what?
5. What is your interest in business specifically? Are you interested in startups, or getting into management at a large corporation?
I'm interested in business because I want to build my own business with all the learnings from the study, and can also fallback to a management in corp. if things don't work out.
German universities offer Batchelors and Masters programs almost for free - literally just a few hundred Euros per semester.
The language barrier obviously might be an issue. I know it's certainly possible (common, even) to take Masters programs offered completely in English, so I would assume English language Batchelors programs are also available, though might be harder to find.
I strongly recommend to study at a "presence" university, not remote. It is way easier to keep on the ball and to talk with peers.
> Universities in the United States should watch out. It won’t be long before Americans realize that top European schools offer a fast-growing number of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, taught entirely in English, for a fraction of the price of many American schools, even if you add on overseas airfare. (In 2009, there were about 55 English B.A.’s offered in Continental Europe; by 2017, there were 2,900.) - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/opinion/sunday/europeans-...
https://www.studyportals.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EAIE...
Look into aircraft mechanics, tons of jobs needed for power company's ranging from engineering to to service technicians. Even in the right markets plumbing and electrical engineers making a killing.
https://www.wgu.edu/
It is surprisingly affordable, and you can get as much out of it as effort you put in. It is also a fully-accredited institution.
find what you’d like to do, and start doing it. someone somewhere is going to let you in as an apprentice or intern or similar. connections really help here — friends or folks from activities you do — but imho you just need to get started. anything will do, it’s just the first step on the road. so don’t be picky.
ok even if you disagree with that, no a fresh business degree is not a multiplier for CS experience.
If you're targeting a specific employer known to have that policy, then yeah, you're SOL, but there's huge demand for smart, capable people out there. I know a lot of guys who got spurned during an interview process when someone found out they didn't have a degree, and they wear that as a chip on their shoulder, using it to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars along with 2+ years of evenings on night school, when they could just say "Well, bummer, guess it's not going to work out" and move on.
For some people getting a degree is the right choice and opens the right doors. Just make sure that you're one of those people before a few frustrating experiences are allowed to dictate the next 5 years of your life.
Do you know good programmers in your country, know how to run sprints and could lead a team that people can outsource to? Take a couple free MOOCs on the managerial side software development.
Since you already know how to build things, you're already well-positioned for this. All you need to know now is to learn how to sell. Good luck!
Second, there are many possible career paths which are adjacent to programming, and which would use your technical skills, but not as part of your day-to-day. This could be project management, product management, technical writing, or even engineering people management. As before, if you have an idea of a specific function in your organization that you would find interesting, and which would make use of your talents as a programmer, then this may be an easier route than starting from scratch.
When it comes to any of these functions, my advice would be to: (1) Find small ways to demonstrate your interest in aptitude for those skills. For example, work with your product manager to write a product brief ("Hey, can I take a crack at it and ask for your feedback? I'd love to learn how to do this kind of thing.") And, (2) if you are able, express to your current manager that you'd be interested in learning additional skills and possibly making a - deliberate, smooth - career transition.
If you pursue a degree - be it in business, or any other field - realize that you would likely be competing for jobs with others who have 10 years of experience in the field, rather than new college hires. This is not an impossible thing! But this does require a strong narrative, and your ability to articulate why you made a career change and what specifically you can offer based on your previous work experience in the unrelated field.
My overall point would be to really take some time to sketch out what you would want to do (in the affirmative), why it is interesting to you, and how specifically (not in a hand-wavy sense, but "here is a specific task that I could do more effectively and here is why") your current skills would have a multiplier effect on your new path.
Best of luck to you!
Based on my experience, that is unlikely to work. If you are not in an entry-level job, then your employer/supervisor, if reasonably intelligent and competent, will recognize that you're far more valuable doing what you've always done. So they may be nice to you, but they will resist. It's the flip side of the Peter Principle.
I think it's a better approach to get an entry-level job in the field/organization you want to transition to and then expand your job with the stuff you want to be doing.
The only cases where I think it would usually be a problem are if your end goal is not with the company, or if the end result is seen as a going down the ladder (example: QA personnel moving into development is a positive move, but developers becoming a tester is often seen as a negative move)
Yes, quite another. Not recommended. (Source: I'm a jazz musician.) The musician part is wonderful, the make a living part, not so much. Jazz musicians mostly teach to make a living. Well, there are much worse ways to make a living than teaching people what you know about.
Do you want to leave programming and would not consider anything technical and related? E.g. Cyber security, applied mathematics, etc?
I transitioned into working in a field that still leverages my technical skills, but in a different way -- I conduct technical interviews. It's been a really healthy change for me in a number of ways -- in addition to getting some face-to-face communication with real human beings & improving my interviewing/interpersonal skills, it's also given me the chance to work remotely and pursue the other things that interest me. And I've found it to be a huge relief to have a job that is separate from the stress of maintaining a codebase or crafting software all day which I found to be pretty draining.
The company I work for in this space pays well ($100 USD per 90-minute interview). If this is the kind of thing you (or anyone else reading this) might be interested in, send me an email and I would be happy to talk further about it! My email address is in my profile.
Edit $1500 a week, not 1350.
The type of interviewing I'm involved in is mostly first-round technical screens -- the standard interview format is about 10-15 minutes discussing the candidate's prior work and the remainder of the time on a live coding exercise.
It's a lot of fun -- I always enjoyed solving & working on "interview-style" problems more than the actual enterprise software projects I'd build at work. So it's definitely been a game-changer to discover this field.
technical recruiter, project manager, and jobs selling or teaching technology
Finding people in these fields who actually understand the technology they're dealing with is pretty rare and usually very appreciated by the people you wind up working with, so you'd have a big advantage.
But I guess the interviewers get a lot of freedom and maybe get it's gets easier the more you do it.
And yes -- a big part of the appeal is definitely the flexibility in terms of hours & location. It's been such an improvement to my quality of life to find a fully remote job.
https://cvc.edu/
ASSIST helps you figure out what classes transfer within the California system.
https://assist.org/
It's possible to test out of some classes. CLEP is not the only means to do so, but is on the big names in this space.
https://clep.collegeboard.org/exams
One big thing to consider, which I wish I had known before college:
It’s best to go get some relevant work experience before you undertake a degree program. This is true for several reasons:
1. You find out if you even want this particular kind of job, and assuming you do, you should have a better idea what sort of specialization / direction you are interested in.
2. You need to learn what to learn before you’re in school. Industry people can give you good insight into what coursework and topics are more valuable and what is not worth your time. They can also help point you to the best learning opportunities / schools.
In my own academic experience, I did alright, but I found that when I finally emerged into the workforce many of my ideas about what I needed to know were false, and that I had missed out on material that would have really benefitted me.
In most fields the academics are barely or not at all connected to the industry, so they often can’t help you with the “vocational” aspect of your education very much.
> it costs about 30k. I can't afford that
It sounds like income and savings are your limiting factors. A few years back I was in similar position, except I was trying to get into software.
Some lessons I learned:
- getting a degree in business didn't really prepare me for anything targeted enough that it opened any real job opportunities for me
- a big reason I went into software is because I liked coding on the side, there was evidence I could get a job as a self taught developer, demand for seemingly capable devs was high, and starting pay was pretty good
- finding opportunities that paid enough for me to consider, and where I could make it through the interview process, was extremely difficult, and honestly pretty disheartening
- it took me two years of full time studying to get my first coding gig, a 1 year contract, and I had to be willing to move 4000km at my own expense to get it
What I encourage you to do is some research on careers that pay well enough starting out that you can make a switch AND you can teach yourself. If you really want to go back to school, I highly encourage you to pick program/degree that prepares you for something that is predictably needed: accounting, welding, paralegal, something like that. And when you graduate, be prepared to take a shit job that no one else wants to get the experience you need, as you may not have any better options.
Also, remember that getting out of software means your skills start to rot, which means if you decide to go back to coding, plan on that being harder than you expect it to be.
https://www.onlineu.org/most-affordable-colleges
Make sure the college is regionally accredited and non-profit. Good luck!
On the other hand, I have heard from other people that accounting classes are super valuable.
People that go to US non-Ivy League non-Stanford MBA’s have a very different opinion. I’m glad they’ve found/rationalized utility in their choice but as someone that has once hit a glass ceiling, I’ll pass and bet on winners.
Micro and Macroeconomics were fascinating to me. They might be useful to someone but I don't run a business so I can't comment on that.
Accounting was pretty rigorous and I could easily see that being useful, if nothing else just for the ability to gain insight into the process and an appreciation for how complex it is.
Every other class about things like communication, leadership, managing people, and project management just seemed like common sense.
I went to an online school so I missed out on the networking. I could easily see that being the most valuable part or potentially the only useful part of a business degree. If I were OP I'd read a couple books instead.