<p>I stumbled across this thread while looking for a similar program for a friend on the East Coast, and thought I’d share some actual experience from the OSU program (recent graduate). </p>
<p>This program certainly has its pros/cons and they’re definitely learning as they go, but I suspect the reason they don’t worry too much about the math is because most of their students already have it.</p>
<p>-The program tends to attract a very specific subset of students - people who want a very strong / rigorous CS degree, but didn’t get one the first time around, and need the online option for logistics reasons and the post-bacc option for financial ones (the program is pricey, but still cheaper than getting a second bachelor’s in a strong brick-and-mortar program - a lot of which aren’t that interested in second-timers). There’s huge variety, but you generally see 4 categories of students: </p>
<p>a) people with math and engineering degrees who’ve decided that CS is really what they want to do or who want to work in embedded systems / hardware-software interface, and need this type of program as a stepping stone for grad school or industry jobs that pretty much require a computer science degree.
b) people who had a previous strong interest in math or computer science, but got sidetracked by life (e.g. people who had to drop out of CS programs for financial or medical reasons, etc.)
c) people currently working in the industry who want / need a degree to move up or into another area
d) people with other degrees who have become interested in CS and want to switch careers or couldn’t get a job in their previous one</p>
<p>-There are some students whose first degree is in English or something else that didn’t require calculus, but they are the minority; many of them took math courses before starting the program to get up to speed. Most of the courses are virtually identical to the on-campus ones, which do have calculus as a requirement and the expectation is that you’ll learn math outside of class, if you need to. </p>
<p>-To keep the program rigorous and condense it into one-year, they’ve cut out a lot of the ‘warm-up’ material and classes and expect students to study these things outside of class. That includes math, web-development / front-end, linux / command line, and lots of languages. They start each course with a new language, and after the first quarter, the expectation is that you’ll get up to speed on your own over each break.</p>
<p>-Like the on-campus program, this one tends to lean a bit more towards hardware-software interface than you might see at other schools (Intel is the mega employer here), so lots of C, C++, Assembly, OS, data structure, algorithms, etc, and the best classes are in those areas. Also lots of open source connections. Rumor is that they’re going to start a second program from another campus that would focus more on web and mobile development, but I don’t know the details at all.</p>
<p>-No electives - everybody does the same program. It’s a great foundation and the ‘hard-core’ / back-end approach seems to valuable even for those looking to go into other areas, but it’s also frustrating for those with specific interests in other areas. From an employment perspective though, it’s very valuable / impressive.</p>
<p>-The program wasn’t originally intended for feeding students to grad school and is missing a few of the upper division courses that you’d need to go to a really top-notch grad school (i.e. MIT or something). They’re revisiting that now, as so many people have been interested and some have already gone on to grad school. </p>
<p>-Primary focus is on producing skilled graduates for Oregon, and the west coast generally. It’s extremely well regarded here with employers. Career fairs usually have more employers than students and the post-bacc students seem to be highly competitive with the on-campus graduates, probably even more sought after actually. Can’t speak to how it is viewed beyond the West Coast though. I got several extremely good job offers (the kind you can’t get very easily without a good CS degree), so the investment was well worth it.</p>
<p>-The students are pretty serious and hard-core - most see this as their second / last chance to get the degree / career they should have done the first time. They bring some life experience and that do-or-die mentality to studying, but there are a lot of non-traditional students and the environment is also extremely supportive and encouraging. Not near to 50%, but more women than on-campus.</p>