Can a bootcamp or online course replace a computer science degree?

I recently had the pleasure of accepting an invitation from the team at Paysa to join a panel of leading experts in the field of online education. In addition to myself, the panel included the following:

1. Prasid Pathak — Head of Marketing at Code Academy

2. Poornima Vijayashanker — Founder of Femgineer

3. Adda Birnir — CEO of Skillcrush

4. David Yang — Co-Founder of Fullstack Academy

5. Austen Allred — CEO of Lambda School

6. Kent Dodds — Speaker, Trainer, and Javascript Engineer

We were gathered to address a pressing issue for modern learners interested in tech careers: Can a bootcamp or online course replace a computer science degree?

Specifically, we were each asked to respond to two questions. My answers are below:

With the prevalence of coding bootcamps and online classes, it is easier than ever to learn coding and other technical skills. Does pursuing this path in lieu of a Computer Science degree benefit the future tech employee?

There is no one right answer here, and that’s both the opportunity and challenge of today’s hiring landscape. It puts the onus on the job-seeker to deepen their research on a role-by-role and field-by-field basis, and success means staying abreast of hiring trends, monitoring demand for different skills, and tracking which learning institutions and platforms are offering valuable and relevant training. All of this can be a challenge, whether you’re a new job-seeker, a mid-career professional, or someone closing in on a traditional hiring age.

But, there is great opportunity here as well; the freedom to craft an individual career path that is expressly targeted to a specific role or profession, and that is optimized to highlight one’s particular suite of strengths, skills, and experience, makes for an ideal chance to present a richer expression of competitive differentiation.

So, whether you go with a “traditional” degree program, an online credential program, or pursue a “stackable skills” approach that layers in-demand specializations on top of a brick-and-mortar foundation, the real key is to tailor your suite of achievements to the demands and requirements of the well-researched role you’re pursuing. Given the pace of technological change we’re seeing these days, online providers are uniquely equipped to ensure up-to-the-minute relevance for what’s being taught, and that’s very important to consider for anyone pursuing “new collar” jobs, or who is interested in the career opportunities presented by emerging and transformational technologies.

Two final factors to note here are cost and flexibility. The best online learning providers are able to offer world-class curriculum at fractions of the cost of brick-and-mortar institutions, and they’re able to do so in ways that allow for much greater degrees of schedule flexibility for students. For many aspiring learners, these factors are the difference between being able to pursue new learning opportunities or not.

And how should the tech employee think about utilizing online bootcamps and courses to advance their career? Can the employer help?

This is an arena where curriculum and hiring partnerships between companies and learning providers can really make all the difference. In a perfectly symbiotic ecosystem, employers can partner with learning providers to develop curriculum that ensures students are learning the skills they want to see in their job candidates. In this way, the employer sits at both the beginning and at the conclusion of the learning journey — they’re there at the front, helping to identify key skills and develop core curriculum, and they’re there at the back, as hiring partners, getting first look at candidates that have acquired exactly the right skills. In this model, every stakeholder benefits — employers connect to an optimized talent stream, and job-seekers optimize their chances of getting hired.

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You can read all the panel responses here, and I encourage you to do so, as there is a great deal of insight on offer. Thank you to Paysa for assembling this panel, and for inviting me to join such illustrious company!

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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer and Chief Words Officer, Udacity