MY TESU Plan BSBA-CIS to BA CS/MATH

[dcan]

(Apologies for the length, but I think I have a bit of insight into this decision for you...)

For what its worth, I actually completed all of the requirements for both the BSBA CIS and BA CS degrees, but I will only officially be awarded the BA CS. This is because I completed all the requirements for the CIS first and then switched majors because I was unsatisfied. I am quite grumpy that I put in all that work and cannot graduate with both degrees, but that was my decision and at least the coursework will be on my transcript.

In the end I am far more satisfied with the CS than I was with the CIS, and I believe it will take me much farther than the CIS degree would. The CIS degree teaches business fundamentals and what amounts to a few computer and programming concepts. The CS degree requires more math but it is absolutely worth it in my opinion because it changes how you look at everything.

Others are correct, the CIS will be much easier and much less demanding overall than the CS degree, and CIS is much more flexible in terms of sources of credit than the CS degree. This is largely because many of the courses are generic business courses that have many options. If I were making your decision I would consider the CS first, because not only is it more expensive and more restrictive in terms of coursework but also once it is complete the CIS courses will be almost simplistic in comparison.

For example, I took the CIS database class at TESU and it was horribly easy in comparison to the CS coursework. The end project simply had students create a couple of tables in Access and populate them with maybe five rows, then write a couple of SELECT queries. The course is geared towards business students since it is a CIS course. The textbook covered much more than the projects tested, but the book is written to give a business management understanding of databases, not a deep technical understanding.

The level of forum discussion was also dramatically different between the business and CS courses. There were overachievers and coasters in both, but generally speaking there was a much higher percentage of generic copy/paste BS posts in the business courses than the CS ones. The senior-level business courses were packed with fluff comments that served no purpose other than to check the box of minimum number of comments per week. The CS courses generally had a higher signal-to-noise ratio. (Exploiting this difference can be strategically useful, since it can be easier for you to "coast" through the business/CIS courses especially since the material is easier after learning the CS stuff.)

Also keep in mind the issue of capstones. The capstones in the two programs are very different. In the CIS program the capstone is a strategic management course that is effectively an advanced marketing and organizational leadership course. You will read a textbook and analyze many case studies and write papers answering questions about each. We were told to act as if we were writing reports to the CEO of a company. The "reports" require you to analyze accounting sheets, conduct your own open-source market analysis, etc. and synthesize the information. The final report is a 10 page single-spaced report on a major topic. Our topic was whether Google should remain in the Chinese mobile market or withdraw, and if it remained what strategies it should pursue.

For comparison, the CS capstone is really the Liberal Arts capstone which is completely open-ended. You pick the topic and research questions you want to answer and then conduct guided research of journal articles etc. on your own. The mentor guides you in following the predefined five-chapter format. The paper is 25 pages minimum (double spaced). Most students were running at or just over double that length. Mine was 72 pages. The advantage of the LA capstone is you can pick any topic you want, it doesn't have to be CS related, and in fact your mentor will probably have a PhD in English or similar. My opinion is that this is a chance to conduct your own guided study semester into topics not covered elsewhere. You can see the free e-book they created for the course in the LA capstone syllabus, it shows how the thesis (that's what it basically is) must be constructed. There is no deviation allowed from this format, which is good and bad.

(Remember if you pursue both degrees you will have to complete both capstones!)

Finally I should note that I'm in a different position than many, with my college 100% paid for (one bachelor degree) and quite a few credits transferred in from an AAS. So that made it much less expensive to fiddle with my degree since I really only had to pay for books. I should also note I spent a lot of time studying the texts deeply -- the business texts can be very skimmable, not so much the CS and even some CIS texts, the information density is far higher -- as well as studying ancillary materials like long-form lectures on Youtube (ProfLeonard for calculus is amazing, and some of the MIT OCW for CS likewise) and other books. Also one particular reason I am so satisfied is that I went transient to another online school (UMUC) for three courses not offered at TESU. If you pursue the CS degree and are interested and have the opportunity to go transient for outside UL coursework like that I highly recommend doing so. (e.g. normal CS curriculums require algorithm analysis which TESU doesn't have) 

All in all I'm glad that I completed the business coursework because I had always wanted to learn that material -- I learned quite a bit from it (including the fact that accounting sucks) and it changed the way I view management and organizations. That perspective can pay off if you are pursuing things like a CISSP cert or a more management-oriented grad school. But I am far more satisfied that I switched to the BA CS. It will hold more weight and was a much more fulfilling challenge personally. In hindsight if I were to do both though it would have been easier to do CS first, then coast through CIS.

Hope that helps and good luck with your choices!