You read the title, you’re probably thinking “that sounds like it’ll be a crappy idea” or “that sounds exactly like what I want!” For the first person, I hope to convince you that a computer science degree need not take 4 years nor be expensive. For the second, I hope to give you a roadmap to earn an accredited CS degree. But, before I start I want to preface this by saying that I am not advocating you go out to a degree mill and just buy a Diploma from a fake school, I’ll only be talking about legal, accredited, and reputable ways to get your degree in under 2 years, even less. I also know that it’s possible, because I essentially did it last year. So, without further ado, here’s how to get a bachelors degree in computer science fast and cheaply.

Step 1. Choose the Right School

This first step will depend on a few things, mainly how much you like the model of education the school uses, how much many credits you can transfer, and if you want more or less free electives. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of schools I recommend, and yes they’re all Online

Western Governors University

This is the school I ended up going to. I absolutely love their model for education and they are the only online school to have ABET accreditation for their BSCS degree on top of Institutional Accreditation from the NWCCU. They also have a BSSWE that’s prety good if you want to take a more hands on approach and wish to specialize in software engineering from the beginning.

WGU will run you about ~$4700 per six month term and terms start the first of every month. They use a subscription-based competency-based model of education, which means you pay for the term, not per class and you can take as many classes as you can pass each term. Competency-based means that you essentially test out of classes by passing one big final exam or doing a few projects, write a few papers and getting a good grade. At WGU, to pass a class you simply need to show competency by either passing a test with a score of 80% or higher or complete a project and have an evaluator sign off on it. This model lets you move as fast or as slow as you wish, provided you complete at least 12 CUs per term when. I was able to finish 61 CUs or 19 courses in 4 months because I was able to apply what I already knew to pass and concentrate on what I didn’t know, like discrete mathematics.

Pros:

Cheap
ABET accreditation
Fast
Competency-based
Well known for around tech circles
Very transfer friendly
Instructors are knowledgeable and experts in their field, usually with doctorates
You get assigned a professional mentor throughout your degree

Cons:

There are no lectures, it’s all self-paced modules with live cohorts from instructors occasionally
Does not accept international students
No free electives, it’s all structured so there’s no place to put any extra credits you might’ve taken in other schools

Southern New Hampshire University

The so-called Walmart of higher education, because they have almost every degree, but hey they’re cheap and they’re accredited. I like SNHU because of these reasons:

Lots of specializations for their BSCS, including:
- Data Analysis
- Information Security
- Project Management for STEM
- Software Engineering
Very transfer friendly, accepting ACE, CLEP and other alternative credits for up to 90 credits of a 120 credit degree, letting you finish in less than 18 months potentially and only costing you $9,900.
Short 8 week terms means you can move pretty quickly
Accepting of international students

What I don’t like:

They made certain courses less hackable recently.
You pay per-credit not per-term like at WGU so you can’t save more by taking more classes per term.

Overall, though. It’s a great school and it’s a good option if you want to get into one of their specializations and you can’t find it anywhere else or you can’t get into WGU.

Thomas Edison State University

This is a very little known state school from New Jersey. They’re one of the few public schools on this list as they are part of the New Jersey university system. I really like this school because they are designed explicitly for adult learners, they’re cheap, accredited, non-profit, and their degrees are very flexible.

They have a Bachelors of Arts in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems that are very hackable and transfer friendly with a lot of free electives letting you choose what you want to study. They’re very close in cost to WGU costing around $4400 per term, but they’re not competency-based. The great thing tho, is that you can still test out of a lot of classes.

Colorado State University Global

I like this school mostly because a friend of mine completed their BSCS there, but wanted to go to WGU and couldn’t becaus they were an international student. It’s relatively cheap, costing $9,000 and with more savings if your transfer up to 90 credits. They’re run by Colorado State University and art a public university, fully accredited just like CSU.

Honorable Mention

Liberty University

Though Liberty does not offer their computer science degree proper online, they do offer a very close Computational Mathematics (B.S) with a concentration in Computer Science online. They’re very cheap, at $390 per credit, with the option to transfer in up to 75% of the degree, leaving you with only $11,700 left to pay and you can finish in under 2 years.

Step 2. Transfer in Alternative Credits

Now that you’ve chosen an accredited school that’s transfer friendly and online, you’ll want to transfer in as many credits as possible to finish even sooner and save even more money. My first recommendation is to lookup the school’s transfer policy, either on their website or the website of the alternative credit site, and see how many alternative credits you can transfer from places like CLEP, Study.com, Sophia.org, and StraighterLine.

CLEP

CLEP or the College-Level Examination Program is a program designed by the College Board to evaluate students and recommend them for college credit should they pass the tests over a certain level. Depending on the score you get in certain exams you can get anywhere from 3, 6, even 9 credits! (depending on the school). CLEP is also in-expensive, coming at $95 per test, which is way cheaper than paying for college courses. In some cases, you can get CLEP for free depending on your high school or if you use Modern States

They have tests ranging from American Government to Calculus, so these tests will mostly cover any general education or elective credits you might need to pass.

Checkout which schools accept CLEP here.

Sophia.org

This is one of my favorites, as it’s one of the subscription based options that is really easy to pass quickly. I did 18 Sophia.org credits in 3 months at a leisurely pace. They have courses that cover more than just general education, but also some required courses for many schools, including Intro to Java Programming, Intro to Python Programming, Intro to Relational Databases, Intro to Networking, etc. They also have one of the easiest Calculus courses online as it’s open book exams. It’s just $99 a month or $299 or $599 for 4 and 12 months respectively and you’re paying per subscription not per course.

Checkout their transfer partners here

Study.com

Study.com is probably the biggest and oldest of the online ACE credit websites. They have courses that cover nearly everything, letting you earn basically most of your degree here for a low flat rate. It costs around $199 per month and you get 2 free proctored exams per month, additional exams are $70 and you can take up to 5 exams per month, for a theoretical cost of $210 per month if you move at an accelerated pace. They have courses ranging from Calculus to Computer Architecture. Check out which schools they transfer to here.

Recommendations

Take Calculus at Sophia.org, it’s by far the easiest and it’s accepted at every school listed here. Use CLEP for things you already know and test out of quickly. Sophia.org is great for getting courses out quickly, so take as many of those which will transfer as possible and do the rest at Study.com.

Make sure to view your schools transfer policy for each program. Here’s the ones for WGU for example:

Step 3. Get a transfer evaluation and enroll

After you’ve taken all the courses you needed or wanted to at sites like Sophia or Study.com it’s time to finally apply and get a transfer evaluation from your target school and finally enroll. With WGU you can apply and get a transfer evaluation while you get your alternative credits. But whatever you do, make sure you have ALL your alternative credits transferred in and evaluated BEFORE you enroll. In most cases you cannot transfer in more credits once you enrolled.

If you did everything right, you should be sitting pretty and have only 50 to 25 per-cent of your degree left and you can finish in about a year. If you’re like me, you finish in 4 months

Step 4. Graduate

That’s it, if you did everything right, all you have to do is finish!

Conclusion

Hopefully after reading this, you can see how you can finish an accredited computer science degree in 6 months to 2 years for less than $15k! If you take my route you can finish in under a year and for less than $5k. So go get it! The quicker you can finish a CS degree the quicker you can get into the industry and start making money or go into a masters program. I went this route and now I’m a graduate student at Georgia Tech.. Good luck to you and go get that education! がんばってください！

How to Get a Computer Science Degree Fast and Cheaply