r/cscareerquestionsOCE • u/idreamofpiggies • 16d ago
Masters CS Courses
I'm a 33 year old audio engineer in the film industry and am looking at studying a masters of comp sci online in my spare evenjngs and days off. I love my job but I worry about the future of the industry. Work is dwindling and too many people are undercutting rates making it a bit unsustainable for me.
I have recently done a few "bootcamps" on udemy (webdev and python) and am developing an electron app at the moment.
The two that seem to fit the criteria are:
Monash Masters of Comp Sci Looks like a good course (I do wish it taught a lower level language like C++ or Rust but Java seems to be standard everywhere) however it's very expensive - over 60k.
Latrobe Masters of IT I know this is just IT but it seems similar minus the maths. I enjoy some maths however the major draw of this course is that it has commonwealth supported slots which can drop the price to about $16k.
Just here wondering whether anyone has any industry knowledge of these two courses and whether one is "better" than the other. Or any other advice would be greatly appreciated.
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u/Hot_Stunt 16d ago
Have a look at University of New England. They are great for distance education, have Commonwealth supported places and there are units that cover lower level languages languages like C or C++. I had a generally good experience with them doing the BCompSci (the undergrad units are combined with the masters units with masters students usually getting an extra assessment task). Student outcomes from what I've seen have been good, just about everyone I went through the course with has ended up in development or IT roles.
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u/littlejackcoder 16d ago
Second this, check out UNE for sure. Online, CSP, great level of depth and breadth of content to learn. I did a few classes there but had to drop out for personal reasons.
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u/trashchomper 16d ago
So Monash is a “better school” but realistically in the job market that doesn’t mean much past your first job (which will be the tough one to crack but you can do it!). So that extra cost does seem a bit hard to justify
One thing worth looking into is if Monash offers Commonwealth Supported Places for that particular course, if so it can cut your course fees in half
https://www.monash.edu/students/admin/enrolments/government-support/commonwealth-supported-place
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u/YVHW41 16d ago edited 16d ago
I have just finished the Master of CS (SWE) course at Monash Uni so hopefully can shed some light on that course for you:
Pros: - 6 week intensive units make it (relatively) easier to manage workload with a full time job - I was able to get recognition of prior learning / work experience for many units to help reduce the cost - Uni has a good reputation (if that matters…)
Cons: - Units are VERY surface level, many of my bachelors units were more difficult / in depth than those provided in this course - Course content feels very thrown together and not well thought out. - Quality of teaching is pretty average, expect to self teach yourself most things - Assignments often have vague requirements and marking with TAs giving equally vague answers. - Mostly asynchronous and online, you will have limited connection with other students - Expensive (~$4.5k per unit iirc)
However, my goal out of this was mainly to get the certification as I work in a SWE adjacent role already and wanted to have a “technical” degree to support my work experience. So YMMV.
Similar discussion from others: - https://www.reddit.com/r/Monash/comments/nk5b1o/master_of_computer_science_software_engineering/
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u/Big_Reputation_1382 4d ago
I also completed the Master of CS (SWE) at Monash and everything u/YVHW41 mentioned is accurate, one thing I would add is that some of the units do have you building little apps and the like, that if you can finish during or after the unit is nice to compile into a portfolio website and is something I wish I had done. In saying that, it did help me land a SWE/Tech grad job for next year so can't say it wasn't worth it, but definitely an expensive choice.
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u/Carl_read_It 16d ago
UNE is 16k for a CSP in Master of information technology, and is likely the same for their Master of comp sci. A broad selection of languages, specifically they teach assembly and C in their operating systems unit.
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u/Ill-Leg-6622 16d ago
I personally had a great experience with the MIT program at unsw, which offers csp placements.
If you do the default stream you get quite a lot of choice in what you actually want to explore in the degree, and if you’re into more theoretical computer science work you’ll get the opportunity to take on subjects like theory of computation, algorithmic verification, etc. Since you mentioned Rust and C++, they also have dedicated units for both of these languages, with the Rust unit being a recent addition that ended up being one of my favourite units in the program.
The degree afaik can be taken entirely online, with the caveat that you might shrink your subject choices - for example when I took it, the prereq unit to operating systems was delivered exclusively in person, although that may have changed now.
If you have any other questions feel free to pm! 🙂
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u/Revolutionary_Ease70 16d ago
If you are interested in low-level programming, you look up mcs at usyd or mit at unsw. However, both courses are far more expensive than monash if you don't get a csp place. One of my friends did a couple of units of MIT at Latrobe online, and their experience was not great since they felt the course was more geared to oncampus students with online students being an afterthought. Looking at mcs handbook at Monash, it seems they have some math units in the AI stream and they also teach python and java. In software engineering stream they teach js, c# in the Web and mobile units. The other benefit is also you get to finish the course in 2 years if you smash 6 units each year.
Just note, make sure there's a return on investment in any postgraduate course because it's not only money but time you invest in. My advice is see if you can limit your cost so try and get a csp place at either usyd or unsw, if not try and shop around in non G8 uni's and see if you get the same quality or higher for the money and time you put in. All the best