What do you think about Open Source Society University? OSSU is path to a free self-taught education. I wanted to know what people think about it. Do people take it serious? Do people see it equivalent to a bachelor in computer science?
My current situation is as follows;
I graduated from a vocational high school. I learned everything on my own. I want to study computer science and work abroad. If I want to go to a university in my country, I will have to learn very unnecessary things to prepare for the university exam. At the same time, the quality of education of universities in my country (Turkey) is very low and I do not think that they won't get serious in the world. On the other hand, I want to study a serious computer science. It is a difficult option to study abroad because I am 31 years old, study abroad is expensive and I have to work at the same time.
Top comments (4)
I think it's a great addition to a more classical education.
I meet some people who take it very seriously and follow each course to earn each certificate and it can be very valuable but it still misses the most interesting parts of a University:
Mentorship: having experts in their field as a teacher can be awesome if you're interested in their subjects. You can ask for more, ask for information about their current work in computer science research, ask for advice about your career, etc...
Internship: this is the entry level of any software developer, an internship that became a true job or just opens the door to another enterprise that interest you. Convincing a hiring manager without a classic diploma is still hard in 2018.
Friendship: the most important thing to me, I have met a lot of developers that become good friends and those people work in a different field, in a different kind of company, in different places. Each beer-time with us is a good way to learn new things and discover new opportunities.
So, IMHO, the Open Source Society University curriculum is really great if:
you want more resources in parallel with your current education (Bachelor, Master, HND, whatever).
you didn't give a sh*t about diploma or jobs, the field interest you and you want to learn.
you already have your diploma, you're in your first years of work (Junior status) and you want to do some continuous learning or some refresh. (This is my case).
I graduated from a vocational high school. I learned everything on my own. I want to study computer science and work abroad. If I want to go to a university in my country, I will have to learn very unnecessary things to prepare for the university exam. At the same time, the quality of education of universities in my country (Turkey) is very low and I do not think that they won't get serious in the world. On the other hand, I want to study a serious computer science. It is a difficult option to study abroad because I am 31 years old, study abroad is expensive and I have to work at the same time. If we take all this into account, OSSU seems to be the best option for me.
Thank you for your reply.
I tried to take up OSSU 2 years ago to complement as I started my CS degree (my university, to put it nicely, is not a good one 🤷). It's a really well rounded curriculum, but it's a huge time investment for a student like me. But for practicality, a traditional CS degree is still probably better for the diploma alone.
With that said, CS50 is still the best course that I took in my life!
I think this is the future of education. I live inthe United States and I am still finishing up school and to be honest most of what I have learned up to this point in higher education has been pretty menial in terms of actually learning anything...
Pointless prerequisites and other electives that have nothing to do with what I majored in or is even remotely related.
Most of what I have. Learned that actually helped me in practice has been from sitting down and trying things for my self.
All of my code knowledge has been from just building things on my own.
That's how things used to be you would try something and experiment till you found a solution and kept working from there.