I'm contemplating an online MS in OR from Georgia Tech. I'm curious if anyone has experience with GT specifically, especially in a technical major.
The program advertises 18-20 hours/week for 6 credit hours/semester, but I don't think I ever spent that much time per credit in undergrad (or my NPS MS).
It seems like a great program, but I'm always worried about lecturer quality and academic rigor with online courses.
Data Analytics, Data Science, Business Intelligence Hiring Manager Here
While I don't have experience with the Georgia Tech MS in OR, I have experience 1)with advanced degrees (possess an MBA) and Online Technical Degrees/Certificates (took and possess a Data Science Certification) and 2) possess the private sector technical hiring manager perspective when evaluating candidates with either degree or lacktherof
My on-campus MBA experience was great b/c 1) 75% of my tuition was paid by the university due to a high GMAT + Graduate Assistantship, so my ROI was spectacular, 2) I learn better in a classroom, 3) The academic "rigor" felt more intense since I was surrounded my classmates that could challenge me in person during the experience 4) I was given access to the alumni network.
My online technical degree/certificate was similar to my on-campus MBA experience with a few exceptions: 1) The academic rigor was the same, if not more difficult, b/c essentially I was learning how to program in python, ML, etc. (all technical things that were glazed over in my MBA stats/economics classes), 2) I had to get used to being "self-directed" in my studies (carving out time at night/weekends) in between working full time and personal life, 3) Do all communications via video conference (which is pretty normal in today's pandemic environment), 4) Not be given a true "alumni network" in the traditional sense.
Having done both and serving as a hiring manager for technical/data/engineering roles, I surprisingly glaze over degrees in the resume and go straight to someone's github, Tableau Profile or website to review personal projects where they used technical methods (research, engineering, machine learning, data visualization). Some of the most talented people that I hired didn't possess all of the fancy "named" technical degrees from traditional universities, rather they took online MOOC classes (for the low-low price of a couple hundred or thousand dollars) and applied that knowledge to a technical portfolio that I could evaluate. For example, one software engineering candidate hoping to transition to Data Science with just an undergraduate degree + a MOOC certificate added not only a link to a Kaggle.com data competition that he won, but also gave me the code in a Jupyter notebook file for me to review. I definitely moved this candidate to the next round!
From a hiring manager's perspective, it doesn't matter where or how you get the degree. What matters to me is a candidate demonstrating his/her research, engineering, machine learning, data visualization, etc. skills in an online portfolio for the entire world to see. So, depending on what you want to do with that degree, the degree won't matter to a technical/engineering/data science hiring manager like me unless I see the portfolio.