<p>Could your D finish her college degree through night school?</p>
<p>Could she transfer to another college that offers a night school
program to finish her degree?</p>
<p>I work with a guy (3 yrs college, no degree) now stuck in his job, can’t leave and knows it. Whatever he is told to do (fix printers, help desk) he does it. Now too late, too old and limited experience to change jobs. No mobility.</p>
<p>As you know, things happen, job layoffs, departments and companies merge and close. Without a degree, you might be the low person in the work group - first to be let go.</p>
<p>During the early part of your career (20’s) your degree helps you advance, mobility. This is the prime time to move about.</p>
<p>Find a way, night classes?, and work towards finishing the degree.</p>
<p>It can be hard finishing anywhere else when you have already done 3 years. Some schools allow transfer (including low residency and continuing ed programs) up to 78 credits, but 90 credits is usually too many.</p>
<p>While she should probably finish her degree, she may be able to get away with it in the CS field. Companies like Google and Microsoft are notable for hiring people without undergraduate degrees. In fact, at Microsoft, after successfully completing an internship, people are often encouraged not to go back to school and keep working. I suppose Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard contributes somewhat to this culture. However, for the most part, people here are right. Not everyone has the recruiting budget that Microsoft, Google, or facebook has, and most companies will filter out a resume without an undergraduate degree unless the company that she’s working for is super reputable (e.g. one of the above companies).</p>
<p>@ppham27: so assume that one of the internships was with one of those very reputable companies and they offer her permanent employment. What would that mean to her 5 years down the road? Would her next employer see 5 years with Reputable Company and overlook the fact that she never got her BS degree, or would the resume screening throw her out in spite of the 5 years with Reputable Company? And what if during those 5 years she took on-line courses and got her degree from no-name university? Would that help?</p>
Most likely she would be screened out. And then in 20 years, she would remove her first job with Reputable from her resume due to space considerations and nobody would even know anything except that she had no degree.
Yes - she’d be perfectly fine. (Unless it’s a for-profit college - I don’t know anything about them except that some people get all up-in-arms about them. There are threads here if you want to research them.)</p>
<p>I regularly hire computer scientists. Yes, a degree matters. A lot. It might not matter today, since she is employed, but it will limit her upward mobility, and restrict her ability to find a new job in the future. </p>
<p>My advice to a student in this situation would be to continue working, but begin immediately to finish the degree part-time, either at the original school, or at a different school. I say to begin immediately, because it may take several years to finish, and there is typically a limit of how long the already earned credits will still apply to a degree. </p>
<p>Is she working in the same city as her college? If in the same city, she should try to attend the original college part-time. If in a different city, she should find a local university where most of her credits will transfer, and which offers a lot of night courses.</p>
<p>In CS, the particular university where the degree is from matters less than having a degree at all and having good skills. So even if the local university is a big step down in prestige from her original university, I would still advise finishing the degree, as long as the local university is accredited.</p>
<p>CS is one of those fields where those without degrees but with substantial self-education can do well in, or where someone with an incomplete formal education that happens to include the more key courses can do well in. (Indeed, while all fields depend on some amount of continuing self-education, CS may depend on it more than many others, due to the relatively fast pace of change in the field.)</p>
<p>However, as others have noted, those without degrees are much more likely to be overlooked in initial screening of job applicants, or otherwise overlooked in future career advancement.</p>
<p>How many more courses would she need to complete to complete the degree? Also, what policy does the university have with respect to how long she can stay out before returning to finish?</p>
<p>@sacchi: She is not working in the same city as the one in which her college is located.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: She needs 29 credits to graduate. The college says if she doesn’t want to come back this fall, she can have another year of leave. Actually they told me that one guy came back after 15 years to finish. Hopefully that is not where we are headed! At least she would have to pay her own tuition then!</p>
<p>If the university is generous about readmission, then she could consider going back to finish the degree when things at the current job go bad, especially if the industry is in a downturn at the time. I.e. if the current job is good, wait until she would otherwise be looking for a new job and then go back to school then, finish her degree, and return to the job market without the disadvantage of not having a degree.</p>
<p>The downside of waiting too long would be:</p>
<p>a. She may forget some of the previously learned material that may be important for later courses, but is not used in her current job (if it were, it would reinforce the knowledge of it).</p>
<p>b. The curriculum may be restructured, or the courses’ content changed, which may cause her to need more courses than anticipated.</p>
<p>c. Costs are likely to be higher (university costs tend to rise faster than general inflation), though if she is diligent about saving money while working, it may help.</p>
<p>CS Parents: I’m back for more advice. D seems willing to go back to school to finish her degree, but not at her former college. I would like to make constructive suggestions of where she might apply as a transfer student. She wants to be in the SF Bay area. She has a 3.0 average from her first 3 years of college from a school with a significant grade deflation.<br>
I’m focused on public colleges because when I look at private colleges, they seem to want the student to be in residence for 2 years, and she would like to finish in one year, since she has already completed 3. Berkeley appears to allow students to transfer in with 3 years of credit in the engineering school, which is where the computer science major is, but I wonder if Berkeley is a nonstarter with a 3.0 GPA?<br>
What other options come to mind? I know next to nothing about the California state system. Thank you in advance.
OP</p>
<p>I think you are right about looking at large state schools. Even without knowing the details of requirements, I doubt that Berkeley will be an option.
I would try looking into UIUC (if she wants a well-known CS department), Wisconsin, Colorado? Look into your state school as well, or whichever state she’d like to live in.</p>
<p>She should look at UCSB – the College of Creative Studies. While it’s not in the SF area, it’s a reasonable distance (and there is train service to the Bay area). Have a friend whose S is there and is absolutely thriving. I’ll email you.</p>
<p>The California publics in the area include:</p>
<p>University of California, Berkeley*
San Jose State University*
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Davis
California State University, East Bay (Hayward)
(Note: San Francisco State University does not have a computer science major.)</p>
<ul>
<li>Has more than one major that covers computer science. Berkeley computer science can be done either as an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major in the College of Engineering, or as a Computer Science major in the College of Letters and Science. San Jose State University has both a Computer Science major and a Software Engineering major, as well as a hardware-focused Computer Engineering major.</li>
</ul>
<p>While they are transfer-friendly, they favor students from community colleges and mainly take transfers at the junior level (as opposed to senior level). Senior level transfers may be problematic due to differences in the computer science curriculum and sometimes the need to complete additional breadth or general education requirements within the space of one year.</p>
<p>What you and she want to do is to check the web sites of each school for the degree requirements (both major and breadth or general education) and see how much she would need to complete to graduate after transferring. Also see if each school and its computer science department are willing to take senior level transfers.</p>
<p>Academically, it may be easiest to complete the degree at her original school when she decides to do so.</p>
<p>Transferring in for one last year is tough, and as you already know, most schools do not allow it. The fastest and easiest way to finish is for the student to go back to the original school.</p>
<p>Second the recommendation to look very carefully at the actual list of courses she’d need. Even if they take her for one year, make sure she can complete the remaining courses in that year. (Not only the number of courses, but when they are offered – fall/spring or only alternate years.)</p>
<p>Can she talk to an advisor at her current school about doing something creative with her credits to graduate from there? For example, maybe she could count her work experience for part of her credit, or take some of the courses via distance or online?</p>
<p>Before you discount transferring to top schools, you said she spent her first three years at a top school. If this school is known to Berkeley et al as having lower grades than most schools, maybe they could overlook the GPA, or at least consider the source.</p>
<p>Although I agree with Seattle_Mom - it would be awfully nice if she could somehow make the original school work.</p>