OMSCS Open Courseware

I really can't imagine that these online degrees have any real value in the modern world of LLM-assited coding - there's no way anyone looking at a resume would think such institutional online degrees still have any value. Perhaps there is some educational value for the student, but even there the only real value is the organizational structure - you might as well form an online study group on discord for free, and get the same learning benefit, just have an LLM write up the syllabus for a course based on a good textbook, no instructor overhead needed.

The OMSCS degree you get is equivalent to the in person one, so there is no way to make the distinction in an interview. I actually don’t see how people see that an experience like this brings no value, given the rigor of the assignments. One certainly would come out with a better knowledge of how things work, develop a better work ethic, and hopefully make some network connections on the way…

The whole point is, if an LLM can easily complete rigoruous assignments and all the student has to do is add a little bit of personalization to the output, then has that student really learned anything? Can they evem come up with a plan to do such tasks without the LLM, even if it takes a lot longer without it?

Educational certifications in the era of LLMs are going to be increasingly meaningless without proof-of-work, and that's going to mean in-class work without access to computational aids, if you really want to evaluate a person's skill level. This of course is the coding interview rationalization - CS students have been gaming auto-graded courses created by CS professors for some decades, and now that's easier than ever.