Aspen University: online Doctorate in Computer Science

[freeloader]

I think the issue with OP’s initial post is that it seems built upon a flawed assumption that the option is this one NA school or a couple of $60,000+ RA programs. There are lots of other Computer Engineering/ECE/CS PhD programs available online that are both better respected than the NA school and less expensive than the RA schools cited. Mississippi State University, for instance, offers PhDs in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computational Engineering. I grant you, those are not CS, but tuition is ~$500/credit for degree programs that are ~70 credits, e.g., ~$35,000, assuming no scholarship, assistantship, research placement, veterans benefits, or employer’s tuition reimbursement. University of South Carolina offers a CS program that is in the same price range.

Now, I am a business/accounting person, so I am not claiming to be an expert in CS and the hiring practices of universities and big companies looking for computer people. That said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a computer scientist) to figure out that, all other things being equal, a PhD from a flagship state university with a huge alumni base and real, academic research (like Miss State or South Carolina) is going to get you much farther in life than a degree from an online school that nobody has ever heard of and is NA.