Hi everyone I have been considering going to American Sentinel Uni. for a BS computer science degree. Currently I have no experience in programming.  I work close to 60 hours a work so I have no time to go to a local college, but I really want to learn how to program. My question is after I get this degree from this school will I have problems getting a decent job in the computer science career field. Also if this isnt a good move to make, I would like to be pointed in the right direction.

If you don't have time to go to college in a classroom, you may not have time to do it online either.  With online learning you save time by not having to drive anywhere and find parking, and you may have flexibility in when you do your studying, but you still need to have quite a bit of time in your week if you're going to succeed, especially in a challenging subject like programming.

I'm not trying to be a downer, just suggesting you think about it.

-=Steve=- 

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

I agree with Steve - if you can't carve out time for a traditional program, you won't find it for an online program ... but perhaps you just mean you don't have time to deal with a commute.

I just want to add another thought. I graduated with my computer science degree ... by the skin of my teeth ... and I am happily employed today, at a successful dotcom (we survived the bubble!). I started out as the webmaster, but have since transitioned into a different role, which still draws up on tech abilities, but doesn't rely solely on them. Now, that being said my classmates, who were very strong, extremely talented programmers (and helped me get through my classes) were all snapped up quickly by top pharmaceutical, banking, and technology companies within 6 months of graduation and got awesome starting bonuses.

Keep in mind we all had the same degree from the same school, but it was pretty clear our actual abilities were different. I believe that your ability to land a job in the "computer science" field (not sure what you mean by that, by the way) is going to be based upon your specific skill set. If you can program, that's a hot commodity and so long as you can show an employer you can program (here, we usually ask for a sample of your code, plus we can tell just by talking to you), I don't think you'll have any problems.

I also think that the school from which you graduate matters less in the IT world than other industries -- meaning that an online degree or a "for-profit" school won't be automatically be considered a strike against you.

BTW, check out this profile of Britton who got his BS in Computer Science from American Sentinel: http://www.elearners.com/guide-to-online-education/online-computer-science-degree-britton.asp 

Unfortunately, programming is not something I generally recommend - unless you still under 16 or so and already doing impressive things without any formal training or schooling   Most of the commerical apps are chock full of bloated code and security vulnerability, and with the proprietary model, the budding sociopaths around the world know more about what's in there than users, admins, or programmers!  Worse, with globalization, many of these plush jobs are highly susceptible to off-shoring.

If you really want to learn programming, all is not lost - although the bulk of the textbooks, lessons, and course will still be 'stuck on stupid' with Mircosoft, the 21st century really belongs to those who can grasp and capitalize on the revolutionary paradigm shifts Heidi and Alvin Toffler talk about in their latest book.  Think Linux, GPL, and Free and Open Source Software!

Sidebar: I recommend Knoppix or Ubuntu (new version just today, in fact) because you can take them for a test drive without mucking up your current harddrive.  (And any Microsoft user is intimately familiar with how frail and fragile Windows installs are.)  Download the ISO image, burn it to CD, and reboot.  This creates a virtual disk in RAM - it's significantly slower than installing to HD because the apps have to swap out from the CD as they are called, but both do a very good job auto-detecting and configuring your hardware and ADSL connection.  The only caveat is that the ISO run around 700 MB so don't try this with a 56K dial-up connection unless you can let it run overnight  

Thanks.

Hi Nomanland,

Wow that's a lot of  working hours, so an online degree would definitely make sense in your situation.

Checking out their online computer science program, it seems that is accredited and I have heard that their degrees are pretty well regarded in the industry. I suggest going on forums and trying to find out how alumni fared in the CS industry. 

Good luck to you.

I took several CS classes online. It's a very difficult program to take online. I don't think it was just me either. I noticed other people in my online class just barely made the deadline. I spent WAY more time in my CS classes than my business classes (including the quant classes!). If you decide to take CS online, be prepared to spend A LOT of time. You will spend many late nights trying to iron out your programs. The hard part is you're not in a comp lab with other CS students that can help you. I tried to take the required math courses for CS online. I was lost, I don't think second year calculus and discrete mathematics is very easy to learn online. I had to drop the online math courses and take it in the classroom.

 I am sorry if I sounded like a downer but be prepared to devote some serious time to your studies.

jaydog1212:

I took several CS classes online. It's a very difficult program to take online. I don't think it was just me either. I noticed other people in my online class just barely made the deadline.

I think you're right.  Most online courses are asynchronous, where you learn on your own time, rather than synchronous, where you're in a virtual classroom at the same time with your fellow students and your instructor.  I've found that some subjects are easier to learn asynchronously than others, and that things like math, computer science, and accounting are the harder ones.

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

Of course it also depends on your aptitude and talents.  Some people are great at math and can simply read a book and understand everything. Others may have more qualitative skills where the math whiz may struggle so it depends.  That being said I agree, getting a serious degree online takes serious work.  I put in a ton of hours working on my MBA and it was the mathematics that were killing me.  It was very tough.

I'm looking for an online BSCS program also, but American Sentinel isn't on my list because it isn't regionally accredited.  This may or may not be a problem for a potential employer.  It's definitely a problem if you want to transfer credits to a regionally accredited college.  Personally, I wouldn't invest that kind of money and time and not get a regionally accredited degree. There are a lot of people who disagree with me on this point, and I'm sure that many of their grads have landed good jobs.

Their core curriculum does cover several of the topics that I think should be in a good CS program, such as Discrete Math and Theory of Computation.  It also includes a couple that I think are taking up valuable space there, such as Introduction to Microsoft Access... this is the first time that I've seen this course in a core CS curriculum, and I've looked at a lot of them.  They have several good CS electives.

The math requirement is weak, and there are no advanced math courses available as electives.  They don't have any physics courses, and there are no advanced biology or chemistry courses.

In short, it doesn't look awful, but I think you could do better.  Check out Florida State, the University of Illinois at Springfield, and Regis University.  These are all regionally accredited, and offer CS curriculums that, on balance, appear to be at least as good as American Sentinel's, along with significantly stronger math and science offerings.

 

 

 

I agree with MartyS regarding regional accreditation. I wouldn't waste my time/money with anything that is not RA. As I was applying for jobs I noticed that some of them explicitly said that the degree had to be RA. The math crap (errrrr.....stuff) is actually useful (especially the discrete math).

Also check out Troy's Applied CS degree:

 http://www.troy.edu/ecampus/programs/bscs.pdf

jaydog1212:

As I was applying for jobs I noticed that some of them explicitly said that the degree had to be RA.

Come on, how many, out of how many jobs for which you considered applying?  And sorry to be blunt, but link to them or I won't believe it.  Most employers don't know there even is a difference, much less have such a strong opinion about it.  The only exception is within higher education itself for faculty members.

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress

I have seen RA come up exactly 3 times in jobs I was looking at.  One was a government contractor, one was a police agency and one was a licensing agency.  I haven't seen it so much in the private sector...

http://tinyurl.com/m2b263

It came up about 1/4 of the time. Yes, some of the jobs were in the education sector. I was a transfer credit evaluator at a university for awhile. The job posting on their website made NO mention of the regional accreditation requirement. But when they contacted me via e-mail after I sent my resume they offered an expanded job description and under the requirements section it did use the words "regional accreditation".

When I worked at a semiconductor company, the job posting on their website made no mention of RA. After I was hired, the internal postings did mention that the degrees had to be RA. Also the company wouldn't pay for college classes unless they were RA.

Why? Who knows?

Things even become more interesting when you consider "specialized accreditation". I ran across a few jobs that wanted ABET.

I was a transfer credit evaluator too, for Southeastern University in Washington, D.C.  When I got there the policy was that we only accepted RA transfer credit, but I was able to persuade the dean to change it so that either RA or NA credit would be considered for transfer.

As for jobs, you say you saw an explicit requirement for regional accreditation a quarter of the time.  So as a sort of quick action research project, I searched Monster.com for the term "regionally accredited" and got 92 hits, almost all of which are in higher education, but a few of which were at hospitals.  I then searched for all jobs.  I can't get a total (all it will say is that there are "5000+"), but it will confirm that there are 2829 jobs specifically in Education.  That suggests that maybe 3% of jobs in Education require RA, and less than one percent of jobs overall do.

-=Steve=-

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B.S., Info Sys, Charter Oak State College
M.A., Educational Tech Leadership, George Washington University
Doctor of Health Education, A.T. Still University, in progress