Thoughts on school - advice?
2009-04-28 05:55 -
I’m trying to figure out what will work best for my future career growth and professional development with regard to education and would appreciate any thoughts that people have to share.
Background:
- I finished about 2.5 years worth of school at Caltech. This includes a year and a half worth of biology, and a year or so of computer science. When I left, I was officially a CS major, but getting a dual degree wasn’t out of the question if I had stayed.
- I took a year sabbatical to work in January 2008, and never returned from the sabbatical.
- I’m very happy at Google overall; I’ve been with Google for 15 months now, and am slowly creeping up on the 24-month mark at which I might be eligible to apply for company assistance with the cost of further education.
- Relations with my parents continue to be strained (but cordial), so obtaining financial aid other than loans and assistance from Google will likely be very difficult, at least until I turn 24 or get married (in a way that the US government recognizes, which would mean a sham marriage unless DOMA gets overturned).
- For various reasons including the economic climate, I’m very reluctant to give up my job; if I were to move, I’d need to jump through a whole bunch of extra hoops to make sure that I keep my job as well. I’m also reluctant to uproot myself since Nora’s going to be living with me soon and I need to think about both of our plans. Misty also factors into this, as taking classes in person after work will be tenuous if I can’t find someone to watch her.
- I want to make sure that if I return to school, I get some meaningful learning done instead of having a professor try to teach things that I already have down pat from my industry experience (who wants to have a snarky smart-alecky student in his/her class?). Useful, nifty project work is probably the biggest win for me. This might mean studying more applied CS (e.g. game design) rather than CS itself (but that might result in Google not helping cover the cost). I will refuse to do anything that involves windows-only stuff, and will grudgingly put up with a mac requirement if I absolutely have to (I just bought my personal thinkpad a few months ago, and I’m a diehard Linux user…).
- It seems like almost all distance learning is for masters’ programs and very few high-end institutions (with the exception of RIT) offer part-time distance learning for undergraduate work.
- I’ve got a 10 year clock ticking on expiration of my Caltech credit.
Options:
1. Do nothing at this time, don’t bother trying to finish the degree in the immediate future.
2. Return to Caltech and find a way of making part time school work with commuting to Santa Monica (assuming I can transfer to Santa Monica).
3. Transfer to something like Colorado Technical University/DeVry/University of Phoenix/Full Sail and finish via part-time distance education.
4. Better yet, I might be able to talk RIT into letting me do their part-time online applied arts and sciences degree with an engineering focus.
5. Transfer to SJ State and finish via attending classes part-time.
6. Transfer to a local top-tier school (Stanford or UCB) and endeavor to do my degree part-time if they’ll permit me (Stanford looks like a no, UCB looks like it should be possible). Still painful, Berkeley is faaaar (but on the plus side, I’d be an in-state student for tuition…).
7. Transfer to MIT or CMU (since there are Google offices literally right off campus) and study part-time; maybe Digipen and Kirkland? Again, conditional on geographic transfer.
8. Take part-time courses for credit at Stanford or UCB and beg/wheedle Caltech option chairs to accept them and let me finish up my remaining 1.5 years worth of classes solely with transferred credit.
9. Lastly, the option of unpaid leave, take loans up the wazoo, no ironclad guarantee of my job existing when I’m done does exist. This makes a lot more things possible but ruins my financial solvency.
Am I more marketable overall as someone who chose to leave Caltech to unschool myself in the real world, or is a degree regardless of source actually going to make a major impact on my ability to be promoted/recruited? How much is a degree actually worth to me in terms of future earnings/employability given my industry background ? At Caltech/MIT/Stanford, it would cost me upwards of $70,000 to finish 2 more years. Berkeley or SJ State would be downright cheap; I could probably afford that out of pocket amortized over the next 2-3 years. I have no idea how much online part-time degree programs cost for 2 years (I’m guessing about $25-$30,000 based on back of envelope calculations), but I’m concerned about poor teaching/curriculum quality and decreased ROI due to lack of prestige. I only get one shot at this decision, attending more than two colleges could appear to reflect poorly on my ability to commit and finish things I’ve started.
I’m thinking that sitting tight for the next two years + change until I turn 24 is almost certainly the best solution if finishing at private school is in the cards.
Does anyone have advice/stories/experience with any of these potential paths?
That’s a tough choice, Liz.
“I want to make sure that if I return to school, I get some meaningful learning done instead of having a professor try to teach things that I already have down pat from my industry experience.”
This is basically what I’ve been wrestling with for the last two years. I don’t really feel like I’m learning much at all here: I find the CS curriculum either useless or unchallenging. I’ve been on various committees this year trying to fix things, but not enough is being done: when I complain classes are too easy, lots of people are saying the sets are way too hard as is.
Basically, there’s too much weaksauce in the CS department (both students and faculty), and I think you’d probably end up thinking so too.
I almost left Caltech, but I ended up deciding to stay—not for the education, but for the personal growth that comes with college.
I guess the question is: why do you want the degree? If it’s to get a better job, I’m not sure that it’d help now that you already have experience. If it’s to learn more, I’m not sure you would much—at least not at Caltech. If it’s to finish doing the college thing, though, that might be a reason. Just maybe not for $70k.
— Andy Matuschak Apr 28, 12:36 PM #