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I'm a full time employee (20 years), adjunct instructor (10 years), and student (off and on, currently on and about done with a 4-year degree) all at the same institution.

I've been programming for 25+ years, and have had an AS (Assoc. of Science) degree in "Systems analysis and programming" for 18 (2-year degree, fewer general education courses than an AA, focused on technical work - nursing, respirator therapy, xray or nuclear med tech, nursing RN, etc.).

Unfortunately, for me to move up or to change jobs I need a bachelors or a masters. So I got a "general sciences" AA degree (to finish off gen eds) and am almost done with a BAS (B. of applied science - LOTS of in-depth technical work).

I also happen to teach at the same college I work full time (support online learning). The courses I'm allowed to teach due to my lack of a masters are limited to classes that ONLY apply to an AS degree - 2 linux admin courses, a intro to SQL course, a intro to Java course.

And while I am 4 classes away from having my BAS, I think the degree isn't set up properly and I've not formally learned any of the things I'd hope to learn. Got plenty of programming - but none of the other skills that go with it. No unit testing, use of version control systems, no working with other peoples code (except for minimal reviewing of others code - no actual passing of code back and forth to work on it), minimal exposure to development methods like Agile, Scrum, etc.

So... do I just shut up and deal with it, and try to find a masters program that will give me what I want (had enough programming, thinking of IT Project Management related things)?

I've considered writing a letter to the lead instructors, department adviser, department chair, the various VPs over technical ed at our institution, and the provost (who all know me, like me, and appreciate the things I've done for them over the past 20 years), but I'm not sure if making them aware of my disappointment will do anything about fixing the program for future graduates, or if it will just be me whining....

Not exactly sure what tags to use, so I hope I got 'em right - give me a comment if they should change, or feel free to edit.

Edit for the comment about content -

The degree I'm finishing the programming core gave me a 3rd semester of Java (JavaFX and Tomcat web apps), Android development, Angular/NodeJS development, and MongoDB. This is on top of what my AS had me do - 2 terms of Java, C, C++, Access & SQL, HTML/CSS/Javascript, and PHP.

The common overall program core stuff (that the networking track students also do), has had a few business courses (intro to management, principles of e-commerce, security policy), covered some planning - a UML/diagramming class (only exposure to dev methods, and that was just a list of comparisons of waterfall vs up vs agile) and a business dept. based project management class - we got to plan building a bird house :(. Technology wise the common area also includes operating systems and security models, ip networking and routing, and a bits-and-bobs hardware class.

So, plenty of technology and language-specific skill set stuff. But none of those things I'd expected to cover (unit testing, version control, working with a true team, etc) that aren't language-specific but ARE critical job skills.

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    Could you list the things included in the BAS program? From what you were missing, I would not expect this to be covered in depth in a CS BAS (at least not in our University), but we would add various conecptes which lie underneath or behind such things. Of youres, our students can work with verson control, they are doing team work, they learn scrum etc., but it's just a smaller part of the overall idea. What you are describing sounds more like an advanced programming course. Which theoretical and techincal concepts are tought? – OBu May 9 '18 at 13:52
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    @OBu - info added. Definately NOT a "comp sci" course - unlike the university down the road where the CompSci BS degree gets you ONE semester of programming (Java) which they figure is enough for you to demonstrate algorithms, etc. Remember this is a BAS - Batch. of APPLIED Science. The big metric is "how many graduates have jobs in the field and how well are they paid". – ivanivan May 9 '18 at 14:21
  • norvig.com/21-days.html is food for thought – Basile Starynkevitch May 9 '18 at 15:27
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    @BasileStarynkevitch - thanks. Those methods are how I ended up working on getting a piece of paper. My concern is that "are we teaching the right stuff or enough of the right stuff and do the people in charge know it"? Having seen what my fellow students that have fairly high GPAs aren't capable of doing, I'm not sure I'd hire one of 'em based on the degree track, etc. There are a few I would - whether they had the paper or not. – ivanivan May 9 '18 at 17:21
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    I got my degree in computer science. That's a very broad field, and to a very great extent I got to choose which parts of it I studied. There may have been courses that mentioned things like test-driven development, Agile methodologies, etc. but they were almost certainly electives and I didn't take them. As far as the core classes go, there are just too many other, more fundamental topics to cover in them: algorithms, data structures, language theory, and just plain programming practice. You don't get good at programming per se by messing around with a Kanban board or whatever. – user1172763 Sep 14 '18 at 20:01

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