Computer Science Conversion courses

[spadewarrior]

Has anyone done one of these?

I'm planning on taking one. It's a one year (or two year part time) course that converts your degree to computer science.

People I know have said good things about this particular one. I was wondering what other people thought of them.

[tinny]

1 year sounds a bit short. What degree do you have already?

If you are coming from a Maths background then I could understand it only being 1 year.

[spadewarrior]

I have a degree in Politics and Philosophy.

[pmasiar]

Sounds like a scam. What online university is it? Is it certified anywhere?

Of course you will get the 'degree', but you cannot possibly get the knowledge, unless you were serious hacker before, or you are extremely smart and dedicated.

There are plenty of smart people doing programming without a degree in CompSci - programming is mostly about thinking. But you need to be very sharp thinker to soak all knowledge in a year.

IMHO better than useless degree from non-affiliated online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill, you could try recognized online courses, like O'Reilly certifications. You can work on your own pace, and if you are smart and dedicated, you can get certified in a year - and certification is issued by University in Urbana-Champlain, not diploma mill.

See http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/

[mike_g]

I'd like to shift to CS. I did my first 2yr degree in e-commerece; was a load of bs that was, lol. CS seems to be maths heavy tho, so I might go for software engineering for my 3rd year if I ever get around to it. I never bothered with school as a kid, so kind of missed out the maths stuff. If you're good at programming and maths CS should be no problem tho. Good luck with it ;)

[tinny]

In New Zealand (NZ) if you have a science or engineering degree you can do a 2 year postgraduate diploma in Computer Science to "convert" you over to Computer Science.

Basically you do the last 2 years and miss the first fundamentals year (E.g. Statistics, Calculus etc..).

In NZ computer science is 3 years, software engineering is 4 years. I did software engineering and to be honest I still don't really know what the difference is (in the "real world"). in software engineering you still do all the mathematically orientated algorithm type papers plus a few more SDLC type papers.

[slavik]

in my college, 1 year of comp sci doesn't even include data structures (let alone analysis of algorithms). these 2 topics, I consider to be the bare minimum that you have to understand to consider yourself a computer scientist.

[spadewarrior]

Sounds like a scam. What online university is it? Is it certified anywhere?

Of course you will get the 'degree', but you cannot possibly get the knowledge, unless you were serious hacker before, or you are extremely smart and dedicated.

There are plenty of smart people doing programming without a degree in CompSci - programming is mostly about thinking. But you need to be very sharp thinker to soak all knowledge in a year.

IMHO better than useless degree from non-affiliated online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill, you could try recognized online courses, like O'Reilly certifications. You can work on your own pace, and if you are smart and dedicated, you can get certified in a year - and certification is issued by University in Urbana-Champlain, not diploma mill.

See http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/

It's definitely not a scam! It's Bristol University, England. This is the course:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduate/2008/prog_details/ENGF/248

I'm probably going to do it over 2 years.

[Zugzwang]

That course seems to be reasonable and I'm sure the quality of teaching is OK. There's only the problem that according to the curriculum, it won't teach you computer science (no algorithmics, automata theory, complexity theory, maths, etc.) and also some technical CS stuff is omitted (Operating systems, basics of electronics, etc.). Instead, you get knowledge like for example in "project specification & design". So for becoming a programmer/maybe IT consultant/whatever it might be quite good.

EDIT: Stating the RAE score for a course that doesn't seem to benefit from research activities looks a little bit weird.

[hod139]

This is a "taught" postgraduate degree program. It is not converting your undergraduate degree from one discipline to another. It is granting a new degree, a MSc (Master's of science). This is not an MSci degree, however. See wikipedia for more information about the MSc degree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Science).

[themusicwave]

I'd like to shift to CS. I did my first 2yr degree in e-commerece; was a load of bs that was, lol. CS seems to be maths heavy tho, so I might go for software engineering for my 3rd year if I ever get around to it. I never bothered with school as a kid, so kind of missed out the maths stuff. If you're good at programming and maths CS should be no problem tho. Good luck with it ;)

As someone who got his B.S. in Software Engineering last year I can tell you it too is Math heavy. I would say the major difference at our school was that SE was more application more actually building programs and doing projects. CS was more theory.

However, I still had to take Calc 1, Cal 2, Differential Equations, Matrices, Statistics, Pyhics(kinematics), Physics 2(Electricity and Magnetism), Chemistry, Discrete mathematics(proofs,logic and such) and algorithms.

I also took a ton of CS classes with some hardware and electrical engineering mixed in.

So depending on the school, don't kid yourself about SE no having math. All programming has math. As does all engineering.

Not to say you can't do it, but just don't trick yourself into thinking you can get a degree in SE without math. It was a bit less math the CS, but not too much.