Friday, June 7, 2013

How much experience does a Computer Science Degree provide?

Many companies employment requirements include a computer science degree or "Equivalent Experience".  In reality, the "Equivalent Experience" of a college computer science degree is much lower than employers believe.

Most times companies quantify equivalent experience as an amount of time, which is 4 years.  Just because school normally lasts for 4 years, does that mean an individual gains 4 years worth of computer experience from a computer science degree.

  A core component of the US bachelor degree is a humanities education.  This comes in the form of required courses in art, english, history, philosophy, mathematics, social studies and often contain a physical education aspect.  The vast majority of 4 year programs require courses from the above disciplines, in hopes of creating "well rounded" students.  These courses are required even in technical programs.  

I looked at the requirements for a computer science degree at UMBC (major requirements).  70 computer science and math credits are required for a degree.  In my browsings, I have seen anywhere between 70-90 credits required in the field.  For calculation purposes I will assume 80 credits required.

80 credits total / 15 credits per semester (average) = 5.3 semesters of school 

A semester is roughly 3.5 months of school.

5 semester * 3.5 months per semester = 17.5 months 

Um. This is 1.5 years of 15 / per week instruction?

84 weeks (1.5 years) * 15 hours of instruction per week = 1260 hours of instruction

1260 hours is 31.5 40 hour weeks, significantly less than 1 full year.