The moment I started reading the first paragraph the thought in my head went like, "he is pointing to Online Masters By Georgia Tech..it's definitely OMSCS he is now ranting about". Voila. He was indeed. I have a rigorous bachelor's degree in CS. Thee are many many topics which were never covered in that Undergrad course which are done in the Masters. Yeah it's maybe not useful if you are making a quickfire app for the play store but there are tons of work and research areas and jobs around for which you need the aademic rigor of having studied an MS atleast. Can we have this debate to rest? You are doing well with a BS, good for you! Education is expensive in the US? Dont do it!
Now OMSCS is riling up a few heads here and there which it will. At 7000 USD its a fantastic way for a working professional like me to advance my knowledge. You think these kind of MS courses devalue the degree? These courses are not THAT easy to do and this is 2018, there are fresh disruptive ideas in very field , why not Graduate school ? Hey with enough of these courses you will not need the evil H1B sith lords eating up the jobs here right? Its a Win Win. The market will then decide whos the more worthy MS student they wish to hire.
When you talk to OMSCS students and they tell you that they implemented their own Augmented Reality system from the scratch, used Deep Learning in classifying diseases in X-ray images of chest, programmed a Lunar Lander automated solution using Deep Reinforcement Learning, reconstructed 3D models from a series of photos in a weekend, I would say they are working on way more interesting things than most people get a chance to work on during their whole career. It seems more like you risk by not taking it, even if it is not really research based, though some people told me they have selective research courses as well, working e.g. with inventor of Google Glass etc.
Now OMSCS is riling up a few heads here and there which it will. At 7000 USD its a fantastic way for a working professional like me to advance my knowledge. You think these kind of MS courses devalue the degree? These courses are not THAT easy to do and this is 2018, there are fresh disruptive ideas in very field , why not Graduate school ? Hey with enough of these courses you will not need the evil H1B sith lords eating up the jobs here right? Its a Win Win. The market will then decide whos the more worthy MS student they wish to hire.