Schools offering Merit Scholarships with decent Computer Science Programs?

That doesn’t hold water either - if you’re comparing degrees that aren’t even the same title, all of which have different ABET accreditation, it’s easy to imagine scenarios either way. You could compare two CS degrees with ABET or a CS and a CE both with ABET, or a CSE with ABET and a CS without. If that CS without is UC Berkeley L&S, any assumptions based on ABET would be terribly mistaken. If you are trying to compare degrees over different subjects, reading more carefully and specifying what you want is the solution, not making misplaced assumptions about the meaning of accreditation. I don’t think this mistake is common either.

By the above definition, there are also schools which fall into multiple tiers, depending on subarea.

Also, regarding ABET accreditation, those with ABET accreditation will typically be in categories 1 through 3, while those without may be in categories 1 through 4. It generally is not strictly necessary for employment or graduate study in CS, except in special situations (e.g. the patent exam). Note that ABET accreditation does require that 1/4 of the curriculum be in math and non-CS science, which is the reason that many good CS majors do not have it (usually due to not requiring any non-CS science for the major).

Frankly, there are many schools which provide an excellent CS degree and much of the value is in what the student puts into it. In any case, any of the [url="<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org"]AITU[/url] schools (many of which have been mentioned in this thread) have very good CS programs.

Let me define ‘terrible’ from a very personal and biased opinion:

An unaccredited for profit institution that bamboozled a first generation college student and his mother into overwhelming debt by promising that lucrative opportunities would be had by studying computer science with them.

Knowing others that had ‘made it’ through studying what he thought was a similar program at the state flagship, they were more than happy to sign up for tens of thousands of debt which he thought he could quickly repay once the six figure salary was landed.

Anybody can create a “University” anybody can offer a “computer science” program. I do think because there are high salaries with this particular degree from reputable institutions who educate their students, unscrupulous people are able to take advantage of people who think they are getting the same.

I’m not bright enough to evaluate the syllabi from the 2,000+ institutions of higher learning in this country to determine which is best or even good enough. I admittedly fall into the CC camp of wanting marketable skills for my student upon graduation. I defer to the opinions of accrediting bodies like abet because my student wants to study a technical field so I use their search tools to help me sift through the programs and institutions to identify programs of interest by state, make comparisons and as a tool for finding programs from schools I may never had heard of but offer the same program. Others may have inside tracks, know professors, etc. good for you. I’m just trying not to get bamboozled.

@PengsPhils how do you make the assessments for categories 1-4? Are there quantifiable criteria?

@deborahb

There is much valid debate about categories 1-3, but to make some generalizations:

Category 1 is usually established prestige, mostly about research strength. Some argue that they are not actually any better at teaching. What can be agreed is that for research and reputation effects, they are the top. These are MIT, CMU, UC Berkeley, UIUC, Stanford, etc.

Category 2 is usually some sort of regional strength, teaching strength, national strength, etc. Basically, something to distinguish the school versus any CS program, but not so much that it will turn heads in the CS world like category 1. The rest of the sufficient curriculums fall into category 3.

Category 1-3 versus 4 does have much more a quantifiable criteria, which is in the number of requirements for the major - a sufficient CS curriculum should have certain courses in CS - algorithms, systems, networks, software development, databases, theory, etc. If a curriculum lacks many of those, it is in category 4. What ABET does guarantee is that a school is not in category 4. The number of upper division electives also help clarify if the program is sufficient.

Of course, this is all arbitrary groupings and it is a spectrum. Teaching strength is incredibly hard to quantify as well. I think the categories do act as a good guide though - and shows that in the end, most ordered rankings don’t mean much for CS (as for most majors). There’s a top prestige tier, a known tier, a sufficient tier, and an insufficient. I think this grouping could also apply to other fields like engineering too.