The problem I've seen with "I don't need a degree!" people is gaping holes in their self-taught education, missing things that every degreed person learns.

Yes, I'd trust an OMS from Georgia Tech over "I read some books and here's a good portfolio of personal projects". I'd be seriously concerned that the latter missed stuff any MS in the subject should know.

I know people with degrees who have gaping holes in their knowledge.

Remember the old adage "C's get degrees"? You only need to understand 50% of the material (C- grade point average in my country) to get your degree. That's not to mention people cheating or bullshitting their way though their degree. I knew plenty of people at university who were lacking basic skills, but managed to get pulled through by group assignments.

A degree certifies that you've been taught a body of knowledge, not that you've learned a body of knowledge.

Asking self-taught people questions from one domain is exactly the way you won‘t find out if they have skills missing that are necessary.

GT's collective response was always that that wasn't their job. They expected you to pick up {new-js-library} while you were studying.

Their job was to "train you for the last job you'll ever have."

And there's a certain wisdom to that. I can learn a new library -- I'd be unlikely to learn the full networking stack, RDBS internals, the history of hardware / software development, or OS & processor memory handling.

I understand that you are saying any accreditation is better than none. I am just playing devil's advocate with an accreditation alternative to formal education.

Here are the 3 possible curricula for the GT program:

Core: Introduction to Information Security (CS 6035) Information Security Policies and Strategies (PUBP 6725)

Info Security Track: Applied Cryptography (CS 6260) Secure Computer Systems (CS 6238) Network Security (CS 6262) Information Security Lab (CS 6265)

Energy Systems Track: Smart Grids (ECE 8803) Introduction to Cyber-Physical Electric Energy Systems (ECE 8803) Introduction to Cyber-Physical Systems Security (ECE 8803) Computational Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems (ECE 8803)

Policy Track: Introduction to Information Security (CS 6035) Information Security Policies and Strategies (PUBP 6725) Information and Communications Policy (PUBP 6502) Privacy, Technology, Policy and Law (CS/MGT 6726) Internet and Public Policy (PUBP 6111) Scenario and Path Gaming (INTA 6014) Data Analytics and Security (INTA 8803) Information Policy and Management (PUBP 6501) Challenge of Terrorism in Democratic Societies (INTA 8803 G)

Maybe some people can go really deep into topics when learning by themselves, for me the fact that i need to pass an exam and want a good grade helps a lot to go the extra mile on some of the harder stuff.

So when someone says an Online degree equals "I read some books and here's a good portfolio of personal projects" i honestly get mildly offended.

I speak okayish german. Can definitely understand and work with it, but I think that writing a essay in German for me might be too much. So I've been delaying my MsC until I learn better German, but this will take forever.

Otherwise you'd need to try something like Internationale Medieninformatik at TU Berlin which is in english, but not remote unfortunately. Otherwise maybe the Open University Masters is something for you, or of course the GTech MSc which is quite a bit more expensive though.

https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/mi/studium/msc_informatik/ (German only)

Around 1000€ for the Computer Science Master.

How will this degree appear on my diploma and/or transcript? The name "Online Master of Science" is an informal designation to help both Georgia Tech and prospective students distinguish the delivery method of the OMS program from our on-campus degree. The degree name in both cases is Master of Science in Computer Science.

The point stands that it would be relatively easy to know which version someone completed (you worked in New York but got a masters at Georgia Tech?). I personally believe the value to be roughly equal to a "real" degree.

Compared to the average cost for an online degree from a decent university, I can see a lot of people compromising over only 10K - even if some parts of the program aren't perfect.

Part of the price is GT's credibility. Someone not familiar with security may not be impressed with a portfolio of personal projects.

It’s also a place where marginal people can burrow in or even thrive - either doing policy work (in the form of monk-like transcription of NIST documents), being a gatekeeper for exceptions and reviews, or doing threat intelligence. Figuring out how to measure and hire people is hard, and banks and Federal contracts need to fill thousands of chairs.

The racket of expensive certifications was restricting the talent pool, so these cyber security programs are sort of like a substitution for that. This isn’t going to ever produce real technical leadership — the smart people are ultimately engineers who do interesting security things. IMO it’s a waste of potential — smart kids are bypassing Computer Science or Engineering for a much less rigorous education.

There are some opposing forces at play that students and new grads may not quite understand: Computer Science and Software Engineering (boot camps by extension) are basically branching paths to the same entry entry level job, but where you go beyond that can have a stark difference.

I always ask our interns a few questions about their education when they start. One of the chief complaints for CS students is that they don't learn enough practical knowledge to enter the work force. They talk about people who went to a boot camp or were self-taught, and they always express that those people are much more prepared for a given position. Thus we have students who are looking for SWE courses but are taking a CS curriculum. In my experience, no one bothers to make the distinction until it's too late.

True story that drives this home: Our client hired an intern who didn't think a CS degree was practical. He clearly had gaps in his skill set, but I chalked it up to him being a college junior. He was given a small task to parse some text, and I suggested regular expressions (the programming construct) - something he said he had experience with. He came back to me a hour or so later utterly confused on how people could catch all of the edge cases and branching paths that a small regex can generate. Turns out he hadn't taken formal languages yet. I sat him down to build a DFA and talk regular expressions (the formal language concept) with JFLAP[0], and it blew his mind. That conversation changed his entire outlook on CS degrees.

[0]: http://jflap.org

I took a master's course in cryptography at a university as part of a job perk. The IRL aspect was lectures and office hours sometimes. The professor did not have a great grasp of the English language so I had to work with other students and do extensive internet research to understand things.

I also did one of Udacity's FEND program. It had a Slack channel and pretty cool feedback mechanisms for homework and tests. If the grad school class had that I think I would have enjoyed it more and had greater mastery of the subject.

I think it's past time for us to consider OMS legit instead of automatically second-guessing them.

The FAQ on EdX says the certificate is identical to the on-campus one, it doesn’t mention “online”.

In the UK we have had “distance learning” for a long time (Open University) and there is no stigma attached, OU is probably actually more prestigious than most ex-polys.