It might have to do with the title. "I got a Computer Science degree in 3 months" makes it sound like it isn't serious. As you note, reading the article shows that the author worked hard, learned the material, already had an associates degree in the field, already did a semester in CS at a major university, and took 4 study.com CS/IT courses and 3 Sophia Learning CS/IT.

So the headline makes it sound like "look, here's an easy way to get a piece of paper that says you have a CS degree" when the reality is that they'd already done a lot of the work before enrolling and as AviationAtom notes, WGU works off demonstrating that you have the knowledge.

This isn't "go from zero to CS degree in 3 months". This is "if you already know a lot of your CS stuff, you can work really hard filling in the remaining gaps and showing that you know what you're doing and get a degree in 3 months." Between the associate's degree, a semester at Concordia, and the pre-WGU online courses, they'd probably spent 2-3 years learning.

I think the issue is that the title makes it seem like it's easy. It probably isn't the hardest program, but a decent amount of the author's ease comes from the fact that they had already filled most of the requirements - and just needed to demonstrate their competency. Which seems like it's part of the point according to AviationAtom.

Random data point - my first thought reading the title was "what sort of scam is this?"

That's exactly the sort of reaction folks at WGU would want to avoid. I'm sure.

More pointing to the clickbait title they chose. It implies that WGU is a cakewalk, that can be breezed through. Very few people complete their degree there in a very small timeframe. It takes great dedication to complete it rapidly.

That said, those that have ample available time, and are driven, can benefit greatly from the flexibility of the model. You only pay for the amount of credits you enrolled in for the semester, but when you complete those classes you can accelerate your other classes, without paying extra. It must be done with care though, as you could find yourself with all the classes you were versed in already knocked out for the next semester, and only tougher classes left over. I found that out the hard way.

A headline stating that a 4-year degree can be earned in 3-months? That alone is a huge red flag suggesting a degree mill. Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2. I don't mean to say that this is a degree mill, but the nature of the article does raise reasonable suspicions. Alumni are rightly critical of such articles that make their school sound like something it probably is not.

The speed at which you can get a degree can look like a red flag, but you are mistaken about the accreditation. Regional accreditation is actually what you want, not national. Most universities you think of are regionally accredited, whereas the for-profit ones that you can't transfer credit from are nationally accredited. Ie, Stanford = regionally accredited, DeVry = nationally acccredited.

WGU is accredited by NWCCU, which is the same as the University of Utah, University of Washington, etc.. See: https://nwccu.org/member-institutions/directory/

Thanks. My knowledge of accreditation is mostly from law schools, for which national v. regional is a huge deal.

How about the gold standard for engineering and computer science(s), a program accredited by ABET?

Is WGU?

It is not, but I didn't think ABET accreditation was a big thing for CS and was more common in engineering? CMU and Stanford, for example, do not have ABET-accredited CS programs, although MIT does.

A lot of CS programs are ABET accredited.

CMU and Stanford don't need anyone or any organization to tell the world they do a good job educating CS students. Not so clear if the CS dept is at the Small Town Liberal Arts College and Seminary.

But the other 4,999 schools CS programs, like the one being discussed at WGU, the source of the accreditation is a valuable signal.

At the bottom, the article says they are not ABET accredited.

Read about national accreditation elsewhere in the comments. It is not what you think. Regional accreditation is more desirable.

Only in the USA. The word "University" means absolutely nothing there.

Yes, well the school in question is in the USA, so the specifics of USA's accreditation system are clearly what's relevant...

> Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2.

No, having national accreditation would be a red flag.

Regional is the gold standard. (Yes, the names make it sound backwards; it is what it is.)

These types of article that show how shallow the education at WGU is.

It is a degree mill.

The difficulty and material of the courses does not in any way compare to what you would get at a real university.

Haha, a real university? Unless you mean a handful like MIT and Stanford, most no name colleges are not going to be any better.

Some perspectives still hold that degrees are critical, but unless it's from less than a handful of the top programs in a field, the degree is barely worth the paper it's printed on. Degrees are useful to get into corporate work, but having industry experience, a competent body of work, recognition from your peers, and a demonstrated work ethic can get you into almost any type of job at a competitive rate of pay.

In some cases, degrees can be harmful by elevating incompetent, ignorant, entitled graduates to positions they shouldn't have, particularly in middle management. Getting a degree is not paying your dues or putting in time toward something useful. It can be, but it depends on the individual, so degrees fail as a shibboleth for utility.

Always construction workers feel smarter than architects and civil engineers. Nurses feel smarter than doctors. YouTube watchers feel smarter than PhDs in physics.

And it's possible to acquire the equivalent of a PhD through the vast wealth of information and literal college courses online. Degrees don't mean what they used to.

The dilution of quality caused by profit based perverse incentives, the cultural issues grounded in grievance studies, and the enormous wealth of high quality material and alternatives to formal education have radically changed what academia means to society going forward.

Gatekeeping for profit and not discriminating between the value of a degree in mathematics and a degree in underwater basket weaving, eliminating political, ideological, and epistemic diversity have resulted in a world where degrees increasingly mean you simply paid money to exist in the presence of other folks with paper over a sufficient length of time that all parties involved felt satisfied with the kabuki show.

Accreditation through a legitimate culture of intellectual peers in which institutional academia has earned the respect and dedication of its members approaches the ideal case. Few, if any, American institutions pass muster. They're not without value, and some departments are world class, but they exist in relation to near total institutional failure, and they are infecting the rest of the world.

Academic journals, outdated pedagogy, DIE gatekeeping, woke babysitting and infantilized students are just the most obvious rot.

American academia has a lot of soul searching and hard work to do, or it's going to be displaced by something better that serves the need for legitimate accreditation in society. I personally don't want that to be private corporations, and I'm rooting for the professors and alumni who want to preserve the integrity of their institutions.

If you're referring to Dunning-Kruger, it doesn't work like that. Go read the paper. More educated people feel they know more than less educated people, they just underestimate the degree.