Degrees for the self-taught?

January 13, 2006 10:17 AM

Just how possible/feasible is it for a self-educated person to get, say, a computer science degree without actually attending classes or paying full price for tuition?
posted by squidlarkin to education (12 comments total)

If you live in New York state, you can attend Empire State College. It's all independent study and you can tailor a program to your needs. I realize it's full price tuition, but it's part of SUNY and not as expensive as a private school.

Disclaimer: my wife was employed there in the 1990's and I did some freelance evaluations myself.
posted by tommasz at 10:24 AM on January 13, 2006

The price of a degree is tuition, not learing or work.

If you want to learn it by yourself, all you really need is a computer, access to a technical library, and a lot of time and motivation. You won't get a degree though.
posted by driveler at 10:25 AM on January 13, 2006

Honestly, if it's feasible/possible at all, I'd be pretty pissed off, since I had to earn mine by going to classes and paying for them. Granted, the name of the university I went to being on my resume is probably well worth the price, but still...

As far as not attending classes, a lot of universities offer distance learning courses now, where you basically do the classes online. However, tuition is tuition, and you've gotta pay your dues like everyone else. There may be cheaper tuition at some places, but you're not going to get a "discount" without a scholarship, and if you get a scholarship, you'll be attending classes.
posted by twiggy at 10:27 AM on January 13, 2006

You're not going to get a degree if you're not paying (or learning I guess), so I'm going to answer a slightly different question: "how possible/feasible is it for a self-educated person to get, say, a computer science degree without actually attending classes and paying as little as possible for 'tuition'?".

The University of London (as in England) has a number of distance learning degrees, including a BSc in Computing and Information Systems. Note that there's also a diploma listed there, but you must attend one of their approved education places to get it, unlike the full degree (no, it doesn't make much sense to me either).

As for the cost of their courses, they claim:

the total cost of fees paid to the University by an External student for a University of London degree is likely to be between £2,000 (sterling) [$3,500] and £3,000 [$5,300] for paper-based degrees and £7,500 [$13,250] for online degrees.

So yes, you can get a degree if you're self taught, and you'll probably save quite a bit of money doing it too, certainly compared to the price of an American university education.

Keep in mind that the costs charged are generally administrative as well as paying them to mark your work.
posted by lowlife at 11:09 AM on January 13, 2006

MIT OpenCourseWare provides all MIT course materials free of charge on the internet, including their computer science program. Here you go. If you manage to learn all that, you'll have arguably the best computer science education it is possible to get.
posted by evariste at 11:20 AM on January 13, 2006

No degree, of course.
posted by evariste at 11:21 AM on January 13, 2006

The best way may be to find a school that offers the ability to audit courses and still receive credit. There will likely be a minimum number of credits that you have to take at that institution in order to graduate so you'll end up taking some classes but the load would be reduced.

However, test-outs can be tricky and geared to information from that specific course. Some CS curriculum is pretty standard -- I can't imagine the discrete math and algorithms course varying that much, since nearly every school uses the Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest book on algorithms. Other courses may vary.
posted by mikeh at 11:26 AM on January 13, 2006

Is it possible? I'm sure there's an "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Accredited!" diploma mill somewhere that will accomodate your wishes.

Is it feasible? Not really, no. A good computer science degree is math intensive (being a branch of mathematics itself), and would require a superior intellect to learn a dozen math courses from books alone. Chances are, if you were capable of doing it on your own, you'd already know it.

This is without mentioning the more abstract side of computer science upon which your degree would focus. (Algorithm development, analysis, and complexity, compiler theory, and such.) Programming is only a small part of a computer science degree, or to quote another, "Programming is to computer science what plumbing is to hydrodynamics."

If you are a master programmer, though, the computer science department would let you test out of a swath of classes. There's no escaping the arts and humanities and other prerequisites for graduation, though, so you will still be spending an awful lot of time at school.

In summation, to get a degree, you're going to have to attend an awful lot of classes.

As for the financial cost of a degree, the FAFSA might help.

If you're already a professional looking to advance your career, I'd recommend garnering lots of certifications. (And there is a certification for everything.) They really do mean something, can be acquired through reasonable independent study, and are cost effective. A great many sample exams can be found here.
posted by rentalkarma at 11:45 AM on January 13, 2006

Depending on your needs, you might look into DeVry University. They have online classes, they're fully accredited, but they're oriented towards practice rather than theory - they require as few liberal arts classes as they can possibly require while still maintaining their accreditation. And the entire degree can be obtained through online work.

The University of Phoenix is often mentioned in the same breath as DeVry, because they offer online courses that are geared towards working professionals.
posted by gd779 at 12:01 PM on January 13, 2006

There is a very active group of people talking about distance learning programs offered by both accredited and non-accredited institutions at degreeinfo.com .

I've been reading the site for a while now, haven't pursued any degrees discussed there, but the forums are full of folks that are motivated by non traditional learning, and willing to share information.

Hope this helps!
posted by Mutant at 12:22 PM on January 13, 2006

I did this.

I attended Excelsior College (at the time, it was called Regents College,) part of the State University of New York.

This was back in 1990, so their rules may have changed. I was awarded 30 credit for taking the GRE in computer science with a sufficiently high score. For English and social science electives, I took CLEP exams in American Lit, English Lit, Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. To complete my degree requirements, I completed course work from SUNY/Albany, New York Institute of Technology and UCLA/Berkeley. Over 80 percent of my coursework consisted of independent study.



I ended up getting my Bachelor's in about a year and a half, start to finish, by combining the test scores, a bunch of courses and 14 credits of life experience (this was awarded by Empire STate College but I think Excelsior has life experience evaluation as well.)



I wouldn't recommend learning stuff this way, but if you want the piece of paper to validate what you already know, it's a pretty easy and inexpensive route.


Good luck!
posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup at 12:50 PM on January 13, 2006

I have a computer science degree from Georgetown. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and personally I could never learn computer science on my own. Programming, however, can be learned independently. I know lots of self taught programmers.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:44 PM on January 13, 2006