Towards the end of undergrad, I believe most of us have had the thought, should I pursue graduate school? This week I revisited this thought as I ended my meeting with my senior manager who informed me that I’ll have a full-time job offer lined up after my internship. The question then loomed: Do I enjoy learning CS enough to suspend a stable engineering job and prolong financial precarity?

Overly dramatic moments aside, the financial penalty that one could take from attending graduate school is a real one. Are there other forms of graduate education that differs from the traditional route? Usually, graduate students use the degree as a pathway into becoming an academic or, at least, gaining a very deep understanding of a field. A doctorate degree is considered a marker that the student can conduct independent inquiry within his or her academic field. However, in 2022, there are programs that allow students to approach the field with a different intent.

One way that graduate degrees are used are to enter the field of computer science instead of building on top of it. A good example is UW Bothell’s graduate certificate program which has non-CS majors take undergraduate CS classes for graduate credit. These programs are often used by students who want to break into the software development industry. Other programs that are like this is Penn’s MCIT program and UChicago’s professional MSCS.

Options also exist for students who want to build on top of their knowledge to gain a better understanding of computer science while working. A prime example is UW’s professional MSCS offered under UW’s professional master’s program. Students take night courses locally in-person on a part-time basis. The program explicitly targets software engineers who are already in the industry. More full-time options are Ga Tech’s OMSCS and UT Austin’s online master’s in CS program which are offered via online platforms.

Let us note that even if the program is asynchronous in nature like the current program, the program demands a certain level of bandwidth that takes focus away from one’s life. This can inevitably translate into lack of career progression as a software engineer, a negative impact to one’s non-work hobbies or degradation of one’s ability to provide for family obligations.

With all things considered, it is good to know that there are many more options than before in the CD graduate education space. Indeed, a good portion of us in the post-baccalaureate program would not be able to study CS if it was not for the flexible asynchronous nature of this program.