I've been looking into the IT Masters program with Charles Sturt University, and am wondering how U.S. companies will look at an Austrailian degree.
Why an IT Masters? I think they'll think of it like any other DL degree. However, if you have an IT undergrad degree why would you want to do a masters? In my opinion, it doesn't add anything to you if you have experience and /or an undergrad in IT. But that is only my opinion so disregard it at your leisure....
Not a problem. As long as you take similar pay to what the foreign people are getting it won't be an issue at all. Half my team have degrees from places in India and China that no one has ever heard much less pronounce. Some were hired in and others are contracted resources. If you know your stuff then it won't make much difference where you took your education. If you chose Sturt you would not have many issues. Why Sturt for a MS in IT over an American school? Is it that much lower in cost for a Master's?
I am planning on doing an MBA, but saw some posts on Charles Sturt and how I already have half of the program completed because they accept certain MCSE exams. I could complete the remaining six classes, and hopefully transfer 4 of them in for the MBA. I don't know that any would transfer, but those were my initial thoughts.
Re: Re: Charles Sturt University About $16,000(US) for the 12-course program. But here's the kicker: Exactly half the courses (6 of them) are equivalent to manufacturer certification exams. So, for example, you could go get your MCSE for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks for study materials to several thousand dollars for formal training from one of the big corporate providers, and as long as you're careful to make sure that six of the MCSE exams you choose that make-up your MCSE map precisely to the six courses in the Sturt program, you can transfer into said program credit for half its work (at a fraction of the cost) on account of the MCSE. That leaves only six more courses at Sturt's regular price of around $8,000(US). So you could get a masters in IT from Sturt for $8K plus whatever it cost you to get your MCSE. The trick is to go get your MCSE first, making absolutely certain that six of the exams you choose for said MCSE map precisely to the six MCSE-equivalent courses in whichever flavor of Sturt masters in IT you decide you want. Then go enroll in the Sturt program and ask that your appropriate MCSE exams (which map to the Sturt courses) are accepted as transfer credit. In other words, with an MCSE that happens to be made-up of just the right exams, a person can enter Sturt's program already halfway finished. It's a relatively new program that Microsoft and Sturt worked out; and it seems to be going well. Read about it by clicking here.
The same way they'd look at a US masters degree. Sturt is accredited (or whatever is Australia's equivalent of "accredited") through the Australian government and is, therefore, looked-upon by the US Department of Education as approximately the same as regionally accredited. But if a holder of a Sturt degree doesn't want to rely on that and just hope it's true, then s/he should spend a few hundred bucks to get the degree evaluated by one of the credential evaluators that most regionally accredited universities and government use. That would be either AACRAO or any NACES member agency (preferably both). It's a one-time expense that will effectively declare a foreign credential equivalent to a US regionally-accredited credential to the satisfaction of pretty much everyone. And even if you popped for both the AACRAO and a NACES member agency evaluation, you'd still be spending less than (or certainly not alot more than) $1,000. So important is it that you should just budget an extra grand for evaluations into the cost of your foreign degree... ...or so it is my advice.
I am looking at this as well, though I would be passing in the MCSD.Net as my cert for the Masters of System Development. As for why get a grad degree in the area you have undergrad: community colleges require a masters degree to teach full time with tenure. In my state, they want you to have a masters in the field you would be teaching.
Agreed. Knowing it would also be half of a Master of Management degree, I halfway considered expending the effort to upgrade my MCSE on NT 4.0 to Windows 2003. But the truth is that I'm not that interested in system adminsitration anymore, and am interested in educational technology instead, so I decided against it. If I were still in IT, though, I probably would have done it. -=Steve=-
