I know that the University of Illinois provides degree programs online through coursera which are treated the same as non-online in that the diploma is the same, you can join the alumni association etc. I happen to know this somewhat randomly (from a coursera employee who worked on it) so I am sure there are others; I don't know if you can tell this by visiting Coursera or if the university does it and doesn't mention their platform provider.
As others have remarked in practice the education isn't the same, but in some cases I could imagine it could be better (depending on the student, quality of instructor, etc). For me the "cultural" aspects are quite important (discussions, people you meet, etc) but that may not be true for everyone.
Also if you are perfectly capable but feel you need to alter your "credibility brand" the actual quality of the education may not matter. I have a friend who enrolled in grad school entirely to meet people, ended dropping out part way through to start a company, and did fine. So there are many paths to "success".
I’d love to learn more about what you’re trying to get out of a masters and whether you could get the same thing by working professionally for 2 years.
- The program is suppose to be the same as on-campus, so the degree is the same (MS).
- It's dirt cheap as far as master's degrees go. My employer is paying 2/3, so that sweetens the deal even more.
- Since it's online and inexpensive, the program is growing a lot. I think in a few years it would be safe to assume that if someone has an MSCS from GT that it was obtained online.
- I've learned a lot of things that I wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to.
- The workload hasn't been bad, but it definitely can be if you're not somewhat familiar with C, C++, and Python since most of the classes are project based. The workload exceptions have been ML and RL which are pretty time consuming. For context, I work full-time and have two toddlers.
- I honestly don't think the online program is the same as on-campus. Maybe the topics are the same, but I very rarely had to study anything outside of the lecture videos, which are almost always very high-level, and the classes have been much less rigorous than my undergraduate classes (from a different university). Additionally, the online demographic is substantially different than on-campus (I imagine anyway). I think this translates to less stimulating discussion and larger grade curves.
- Expanding on the previous thought, the program has definitely been a "what you put in is what you get out" type of thing. You can coast and still get decent grades, so getting the most out of the program requires some discipline to study stuff that isn't required to get the A.
- There is almost no interaction with the professors, but there is an instructor and TAs for each class who may or may not be helpful in answering your questions.
I'm glad I did the OMSCS program overall. I wish that I had the opportunity to get a master's in-person at a top school, but I don't want to quit my job, move, or pay out the nose, so I'll take what I can get. I don't think that the degree will result in higher compensation, but I've thought about maybe one day teaching at a community college or something like that and I figured I'd get the credential just in case.
I honestly don't think very many, if any, employers will care about the ranking of the school you got a course-based master's degree from. I think it matters more if you're doing a thesis based master's and want to do research.