Ask HN: Open Courses vs. Master degrees value in the IT market

Is it possible to get recognition of prior learning or something similar? If so, you can do the free courses, and then go to the uni and say "I already know that, and that, and that", etc. Then you don't pay for those courses. I don't know if you can opt-out of the entire course structure like that, but it might be worth looking into.

Generally speaking, at least in the USA, having an agree from a relatively well regarded school counts for a lot more than listing some Coursera certifications on your resume. This is especially true earlier in your career when education is a bigger factor than experience.

Part of the reason for this is while you say they are 'exactly the same' I think there is a lot of skepticism that this is true. With the university system, most of us got our degrees and have a better sense of what that degree means. If it is from a school of a certain caliber, we know the minimum statement that makes. For Coursera, that's just not as clear unless you've gone to the trouble of doing both. I believe a Coursera educated person can (and perhaps maybe often even is due to self selection, who knows) be more knowledgeable than a person educated more traditionally. I'd still see hiring a Coursera person as a bigger risk because it is less of a known factor.

As an aside, in the US system those sound more like Master's courses than undergraduate courses. This is part of the confusion on what Coursera should count as. No one wants to look into the curriculum themselves, see how exams were proctored, projects administered, etc. That's what accreditation bodies and institutional reputation are for. Coursera hasn't replaced that (yet).

Have you come across Scott Young's feat? http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/

I believe in the real world, you are best represented by a body of work and/or the ability to demonstrate that you are capable of tackling the problems associated with the job in which you are considering.

The world of information technologies is vast. There are computer scientists, software engineers, data scientists, test engineers, and many more.

It'd be best if you could narrow down what it is that you're interested in working on. I think a degree in computer science gives you a phenomenal foundation for any of the above, but it doesn't make you immediately in demand, particularly if you're missing a body of work.

I am a software engineer without a CS degree, but I've studied algorithms, some design patterns, and some math relevant to my areas of expertise.

That's my two cents, but I'm sure other people have some useful ideas as well. :)

  import random
  lst = [1,2,3,4,5]

  class newlist:
      def __init__(self, lst):
          self.lst = lst # assuming lst has a prime length.
          self.y = 0
          while self.y % len(lst) == 0:
              self.y = random.randint(1, 999999)

      def __getitem__(self, index):
          nidx = (index * self.y) % len(lst)
          return self.lst[nidx]
      
  # Start shuffling
  nl = newlist(lst)
  # End shuffling ... algorithm done.

  for i in range(len(lst)):
          print i, nl[i]

Not exactly 100% relevant but I'll take work experience over a degree all day.

If you do go down this route, make sure you produce a portfolio of completed work. So you'd have a program or three that you've written for each course (or similar) that demonstrates your knowledge and is on github and indexed and explained well [1], and a big file folder you can take to interviews and say "I know it's not a degree course, but it's the same content and here is all the work I did to make sure I actually understood the material" (rather than just watching the lectures and barely passing/cheating in the online exams.)

[1] Github links on resumes: it doesn't have to be perfect, but not much time is spent reviewing resumes, so make sure your best projects are easy to identify and explore.

Greetings. I was exactly at the same position two years ago but decided to get my license and work as a pharmacist instead.

I am not sure how invested you are against working as a pharmacist, but I would humbly suggest that you at least do that for a while (perhaps 1 to 2 years). Being both an experienced healthcare professional and hacker/developer enables very wide career opportunities. You will be the most tech-savvy pharmacist in the department/company. You will be the most efficient in any kind of data analysis (because your peers are having trouble learning to use Excel Pivot Table while you are writing scripts that take the files as input and perform 1000 Pivot Tables in a second). You will be tasked to be the go-to person for anything remotely related to the million-dollar enterprise software the pharmacy uses. You will get to be involved in the most technologically advanced project the pharmacy is having (think automation, robots, electronic medical records).

In the startup world, the professional status gives you instant, significant positive reputation gap as compared to your usual competent-developer-without-domain-knowledge kind. Not to mention the advantage of having extensive domain knowledge should you manage to find an idea that somehow involves pharmacy.

After that, you can slowly think to get your CS degree (as I am thinking of getting in the near future), or just do the Coursera courses along the way. As you would have some experience working as a pharmacist already, this credential (plus all the experience being involved in pharmacy IT projects) would stay even after you get the CS credentials.

[PS: I'm in Singapore working in a public hospital here.]

What about the edX X-Series[1] certificate for computer science? is it worth something? I know it's not entirely free, but it's quite cheap compared to anything else, and has a clearly defined structure, any thoughts?

[1] https://www.edx.org/xseries

In my experience from several global companies over 15 years, you will be accepted in IT if you have a Master's degree in another field, as long as you have the real life skills. A Master's in Pharmacy should be enough. However, don't confuse Coursera with real skills in IT. Reality is very different from any university education. You need experience before you can tackle hard problems. Make sure your first job is at a place with skilled senior colleagues and you will soon realize that this this is the start of your real education. Good luck in your career!

The Master degree at TEI of Crete is 3 semesters * 600 euro = 1800 euro in total

http://www.epp.teicrete.gr/msc/

I'm a hiring manager: get the real degree, because the computers you will interact with professionally will understand it.

The Immigration Control's computers will understand it, and you'll get extra points for an advanced degree. Megacorp's HR systems will understand it, and you'll get a different salary banding. When you decide to do an MBA, the Admissions Department's computers will understand it, and rank you accordingly.

As an aside, I carry a fair amount of personal bias after getting a CV from a lady who claimed in the headline she'd studied at Harvard, MIT, and some other big name I don't remember. When you dug in to it a little deeper, she had watched a few iTunes U videos from each. Yeuch.

I don't know much about the situation in Europe, but between Oct-Dec'13, I informally surveyed ~30 Silicon Valley tech employers (recruiters and hiring managers) and asked them exactly this question ("Will you hire someone who doesn't have a CS degree but has taken the equivalent MOOCs?"). The research was for my startup, which is in the space.

Here's a rough summary of the findings:

-- Overall, in spite of there being a shortage of developers, there's a general reluctance to hire people without a CS degree.

-- In general, hiring managers were more open than HR / recruiters to the idea of "self-taught" candidates.

-- Startups much more open to hiring entry level folks without a CS degree than large companies who generally have more choice (and bureaucracy).

-- Among those who were open to hiring self-taught candidates, 100% said they would like to see a strong portfolio of projects that the candidate has built.

-- Greater willingness to hire for non software developer roles. e.g. I heard multiple stories of people without CS degrees getting a foot in the door as QA / testers, and then rising through the ranks into engineering (e.g. at Zynga).

I believe the GaTech-Udacity degree costs ~$7k, BTW.

I would never ever hire some one based on what school/program someone went to. As long as the grades are ok don't really care about that either.

There are two distinctly different paths you can take. You can either maximize your credentials or you can maximize your skills. In some cases both paths would lead you to grad school, albeit putting different levels of effort into your school work. In other cases, the skills maximizing path won't lead you through the traditional schooling process. This is especially true in the arts, writing, sales, and certain types of engineering.

Taking the credentials path is safer at least up through age 40 or so. You're less likely to end up struggling to get a good job, and you'll likely end up with an above average salary.

Taking the skills path is very difficult at the beginning and you can expect to be paid less than more credentialed peers earn for the same work. You'll have a harder time getting your foot in the door. You'll have to have stronger skills. The flip side is that your skills will be stronger in the long run. If you can build a substantial body of work and get "so good they ignore you", then you'll have or even create opportunities that are closed off to even the candidates with the prettiest resumes.

What's your risk tolerance and how confident are you in your abilities?

"If I ever wanted to apply for a job in IT, do you think that a series of “Coursera” courses would be an acceptable skill-set?"

No, never, a course is not a skill set in IT.

Also, it seems to me you are Greek, I lived some time in Thessalonica, US, and other places, I was born in Spain. Those places(Greece, Italy, Spain, even Germany) have title-itis, but is different in other places in the world. In the US they don't care what is your title if you can do something, most of IT is in the US.

BUT, you can start a real project, using the "Coursera" courses to COMPLETE it. Then you could basically work whenever you want in IT, given that you have a real proof that you could use the knowledge.

Active learning is very different form passive learning. In the Universities where I studied they forced you to do active learning via practices and so on.

I'm doing the Georgia Tech MSCS and can vouch for its rigor and quality. The cost is indeed about $7000 [0]. It is much cheaper than the on campus version, however the degree is exactly the same (no indication it is online). Their graduate program in CS is ranked #9 in the US by US News and World Report [1]

You need an undergraduate degree with GPA 3.0 or above to get "conditionally" accepted, no need of GRE or GMAT. to "really" get accepted you need to get B or above in your first 2 core courses. (not impossible, but requires work)

They are very serious about this program and put a lot of effort (both GT and Udacity) to make it happen, I really hope they succeed.

Bottom line, I personally think this is the most cost effective CS graduate degree in the universe at the moment.

[0] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2013/05/15/georgia-tec...

[1] - http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

Hey there! I actually work at Udacity and can (or will find the person that can) answer any questions you may have. You specifically mentioned our MS Computer Science program with Georgia Tech (https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech), also the FAQ (https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq). The price sits right around $6,600 I believe and the admissions process is entirely handled by Georgia Tech. I don't believe you would meet their prerequisites for students (must have a BS in Computer Science or a BS in Science), but I very well may be wrong (I'm not on the GT team). I do know, unfortunately, that regardless it would be awhile before you could start. We just started our summer session a week or two ago.

The good news is - you're free to take any of the other courses we have available (seriously it's all still free and I believe we're still planning to get our Georgia Tech courses out there publicly as well)! If you're interested in having the assistance of a coach/mentor while completing a course, along with a validated certification and graded course project assignment (good for the portfolio!) we also offer our Premium experience at the flat rate of $150/mo.

Ok - done with the Udacity pitch; now my personal comments. I never finished my degree and I've been a developer for over 16 years. Don't let some piece of paper stop you or make you doubt yourself. In this industry, at least as a developer, projects, projects, projects, projects - that's what really counts.

Before I joined Udacity I worked for Gov Contracting firms, I've with the NSA, DIA, VA and the Air Force. Projects, projects, projects - that's how I was offered those positions (and how the recruiters found me).

I say take a couple of online courses to gain the knowledge/skillset you think you require, then come up with a fun project, something that excites you, and build it!