I recently visited the Kalamazoo Valley Community College and decided to enroll in the school’s two-year transfer program which is designed for those seeking a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree from Western Michigan University. As long as my grades are kept up, which I have no doubt in my abilities, my new course work at KVCC will transfer directly to WMU once completed. The time it takes to complete this part of the degree will depend on how many credits transfer from Baker College and the other schools I have attended.

The only drawback now will be the lack of time to attend classes in a full time role since I will now have to attend a true classroom unless some of the required courses are offered as web-based courses which means the degree could take a bit longer than expected to complete. However the advantages outweigh this drawback. Some of the advantages are the credit hour cost is a bit over half the amount of Baker College, the degree is fully accredited and will be recognized if I want to advance my academic studies past the Bachelor level, and finally……

No more draconian participation policies which in the past could drop my grade by up to two grades if the facilitator (the teachers/profs. really are not there to teach) did not feel the participatory posts I wrote on the Blackboard system were quality material even if I aced all homework, projects, quizzes and tests within the course! Besides the Blackboard system (do not get me started on this system and its company’s Google Search Results, Blackboard patent lawsuits), the participation policies are the policies I disliked the most since points were assigned for participation based on the facilitator’s opinion.

During Fall Semester I took and successfully passed Objected Oriented Programming w/C++, Organizational Psychology, and Philosophy of Ethics. Once the Winter Semester arrives, I will be taking JAVA Programming, and Discrete Mathematics during the first half while finishing up the second half of the semester with Advanced JAVA Programming.

I kind of get why there are not very many four-year engineering degrees online yet, and even then, technology in simulation software is catching up and allowing almost anything done in labs for four-year engineering degrees to be done via a workstation now. With that argument out of the way, it seems to come down to investing the time and money into setting up the online degree for such a small return as mentioned in the April, 2003 Prism article “Can Distance Education be Unlocked”. So why is there such a lack of online Computer Science degrees?

I would much rather attend a school which has a standard degree recognizable by any accredited institution. It appears my search will continue in seeking true, online Bachelor of Science degrees in either Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or Computer Science. So far the only other school I have found offering this has been University of North Dakota and unfortunately their lack of communication turned me off of them the first time I was accepted and planned to attend. However, if they are still the only ones out there, I may have to re-apply. One would think in this day and age, more schools would be offering accredited engineering and science degrees online.

Fall semester, which starts in one week, has me taking three courses. They are Object Oriented C++ Programming, Organizational Psychology, and Ethics. Pretty intense load if I do say so myself and this semester will determine if I can continue to take a full class load and work a 40+ hour work week which includes traveling. I am confident I can do it and look forward to the challenge. I also look forward to the inevitable arguments which will arise in the Ethics class since my views tend to be different from most people’s views.