[lordCarbonFiber]

I think you're looking at it in both a false comparison (opportunity costs for online are very different than your on campus experience; not to mention the explicit costs) and backwards (as to who is looking to get this degree).

The margins on adding a MS CS (or analytics) is less for a CS grad, but at 10k a degree and the flexibility of taking online they are huge for non-CS majors looking to pivot. 10k to bump your salary up 20k (while working and getting experience + raises) plus the knowledge add pays for itself.

Im biased on account of being in the program (supplementing my Electrical Engineering degree due to a change in career and life paths), and I know a lot more about graph theory, formal algorithms, and high efficiency computing than I did a year ago. These are things that help improve both your portfolio of rigorous projects (Im currently working to port over all of my high performance computing assignments to Rust) and assortment of tools for the ever annoying CS interview.