> 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.

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.

Is it fair to say that self-taught people are more likely to have holes vs university-educated?

I'd trust an actual bachelors or masters degree over "self taught" too yes, but as someone else in this thread also pointed out this "online masters degree" looks like it only really covers 100 level bachelors content and not much else.

If it’s like the OMSCS they cover lots of topics that are covered in anundergrad but the marking scheme is that an undergrad A guarantees you’ll pass and if you want an actual A on the course you’ll have to work harder. Any OMSCS grads feel like (dis)confirming?

Currently in OMSCS, after very recently taking some bachelor's level courses. The OMSCS classes are significantly tougher, go far deeper into the material, require more research and involve less hand-holding than the bachelor's level classes.

I interacted a bit with OMS CS students that were taking Udacity courses (there is some link between Udacity personnel/classes and OMS CS), and they all reported being flooded with difficult homeworks/projects, often racing against the clock to submit things before deadline. Some classes even take >40h/week according to them. It doesn't seem to be anything trivial as you'd have implied; more like a proper MS from a Top-10 school. Imagine you need to get a lunar lander module landing on the moon in OpenAI gym via Deep Reinforcement Learning, write your own real-time Augmented Reality system as your final project in Computer Vision, beat real-world radiologists using the very latest Deep Learning research from Stanford as a final project in health informatics, write your own Swift-like compiler etc. Does that seem trivial? If anything, it's awesome people can learn those things online with the proper academic rigor and without dumbed-down curriculum.

I believe it's not really hard to check one's competency level in STEM fields. Suppose you're interviewing those with bachelor's degree in math. Intro to Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis are two of the core requirements for those in undergrad math. Admit all those with papers automatically. Place a super high bar of responsibility and expectations on the so called "self-taught" ones. For example, accept only those who can solve every single problem in Hatcher's Algebraic Topology cold. I doubt even 10% (numbers out of my ass) of the undergrads in the US are capable of this feat. Anyone who taught themselves this shit (gaping holes or not) can kick some serious ass. Sounds fair to me.

It‘s usually not about finding the correct solution to a specific problem, but rather the approach one chooses to solve a specific problem.

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.

The idea is that any one who masters some obscenely difficult area can easily be taught anything they are missing. Hell, you can tell them to pick up whatever you need them to know on the weekends. The book and the subject matter I suggested so happen to be brutally difficult. Anything they have to learn at your org will likely be trivial by comparison. Any one who learned this book on their own can easily walk in and out of any math PhD program (let alone other subjects).

As someone who did a bachelor's at GT, students constantly complained that none of the classes prepared you for Day 1 of a job.

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.

How would you trust it compared to 5+ years experience with CISSP and possibly one of the more advanced ISC2 certifications or any of the SANS GSEC certs?

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.

The two curricula are incomparable. A CT MS is academic; the courses are formal college courses, independent of a sponsoring corporation and its commercial S/W products. The role it prepares you for is IT management. Certificate programs prep you for staff level work, as an implementer.

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)

I think it's a valid question since the CISSP seems more geared to managers, not "staff-level work." The most common advice I've seen about answering questions for the CISSP exam is "think like a CEO."

You would trust the OMS to do what exactly? Opine on computer science theory? Perhaps. Do solid work for you? That's a much closer call, in my opinion.

s/things every degreed person learns/things every degreed person is supposed to have learned/g