Is it worth studying CS courses alone after I graduated?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello,

I am done with my studies and I received my degree in Information Management and Systems as an undergraduate student. I wanted to study CS but I was afraid of doing that because CS courses at my university were so badly managed that I’d have to most probably retake them. For example, undergraduates were the ones who gave points for the homeworks because there were not enough master and PhD students. I am not sure how big of a deal this is but this is only one example. One of the teacher’s assistants said I do not know this subject very well and he was supposed to prepare us for the exams. So, in the end, I had to retake that particular course. Also, if I retook many courses, I would have to extend my studies and this would mean so much money as a burden for me and my parents.

Now, I feel very incompetent and incomplete because I did not take all the CS courses. The courses that I am missing: Machine Learning, Computability and Complexity, Formal Languages and Logic, Operating Systems, Computer Networks, Information Theory, Numerical Analysis, Stochastic Processes.

Do you think it’s worth investing time to do the all coursework for these subjects? I thought that I could buy the books and do the exercises at the ends of the chapters, try the homeworks from my university and take online courses regarding subjects. It is not that I know nothing about these courses. I went through the books assigned for some of these courses but I never did the coursework. I don’t know what I am missing some thing really big. The most importantly, I got fired from my job and I feel like things could have been different if I studied CS. Also, some interviewers asked me why I did not study CS. I honestly told them the reasons that I wrote up in this thread.

The courses I took from CS: Software Engineering, C, C++, Python, General Information Systems, Statistics with R, Algorithms and Data Structures, Databases and Web Applications.

2

In the degree program I went through, you’ve met all the prerequisites to take all you want given what you’ve done so far. So don’t worry about a huge knowledge gap, assuming you generally feel confident in the knowledge you have thus far.

So, taking this into account:

… it probably couldn’t hurt, if you find a good program your credits transfer to and can afford it and so on.

In my knowledgeable opinion, as someone who has a CS degree, you should have a good chance at getting a CS degree in a short amount of time.

3

What kind of jobs are you interested in? Operating systems and networking are useful for just about everything. I only took Numerical Analysis in grad schools since it was on our quals - I don’t think I’ve used it again in a 40 year career. Machine learning is a very hot topic, and so is probably worth taking.

There are lots of free online courses out there. If you have the time, that might be better than just reading a book, since the material will be explained better. I’ve never taken one, so this is hearsay.

You have a reasonable degree, so I’m not sure getting another one will help all that much, but finishing an on-line class or two on top of that would be more impressive on a resume than just saying you read a book and did the problems.