| Maybe 10 years ago I would have been impressed with any candidate with a masters from a legit CS department. However, in the last 5 years I've worked with numerous engineers with masters from both "prestigious" universities and also the typical "cash-cow" degrees that are so common today. One of my previous devs had a masters from a "public-ivy" in computer science, and he honestly was not qualified for anything more than basic CRUD "enterprise". Hate to say it, but he was obviously pushed through the system due to his race and the need for these schools to fill diversity quotas. Also, I knew a public school middle school teacher - she was bright but had no formal math or engineering or CS education beyond basic algebra with her teaching degree, no programming experience, etc. But she had been able to obtain a masters in CS from a top 10 program via some "Masters in CS for Public School Teachers" program. I also took a few masters courses from this university, and they were extremely difficult, even for me who has a lot of experience and a solid CS bachelors. For example, some of the qualifying courses included programming MIPS in assembly language, binary numbering systems, algorithms with assumed knowledge of Big O, data structures, dynamic programming, etc. There is no way anyone without both a good undergrad CS degree and some dev experience could legitimately pass these courses, especially when the program was meant to be done by professionals who were already experienced developers at night / weekends - so I assume she was pushed through with a "wink wink" from the administration. Finally, the hordes of foreign students getting degrees from cash-cow programs in order to remain in the US or obtain OPT visas ensure that nobody respects a Masters in CS anymore. Now that most of these are online, they're even less legit as you know these programs are plagued with cheating, fraud, etc. |
> ...hordes of foreign students getting degrees from cash-cow programs in order to remain in the US...
Not saying that somewhere in there, a legitimate argument about the reduction in overall quality of candidates doesn't exist, but it does smell a bit of having a strong bias against minorities and foreigners. There is such a thing as confirmation bias, where a person interprets a situation through a negative ideology about others not of their ethnic group and where they are in a position to execute an agenda based on those beliefs.