[tedmiston]

It definitely is interesting. I did most of a Master's in CS at a state school ~2013 that offered both thesis and non-thesis options. The non-thesis was newer and more popular for part-time.

Another thing one professor explained to me is that the standards for a Master's thesis are actively changing. You can either do a glorified undergrad senior project (but with you doing all of the work that a small team might do in undergrad) or intense publication-worthy research. The latter was mostly people going forward with a PhD to follow. I definitely went in to the degree with the impression that all Master's students were doing a thesis in the second category, but I think this is a case of the times are changing.