New here; intrigued, slightly confused and overwhelmed

[rachel83az]

If you want to work for an American company, having an American degree may work in your favor. Americans can be a bit strange about "foreign" degrees, even if the other country is Canada. So that's good!

Monetarily, $20k is more than sufficient for a TESU degree. If your programs are worth university credit, you're looking at (approximately) 4-6 months of Study.com ($235/mo.), 3-6 months of Sophia.org ($99/mo., $299 for 4 months, or $599 for a year), and maybe a couple of Coursera certificates (currently $299/year). Plus TESU tuition & fees of around $4k-5k, depending on your choices. (If your Canadian studies aren't worth university credits, there would be additional tuition of $1000-$2000, depending on additional college/university.) As a bonus, if you think you might ever want to move to management, it's possible to get a BS(BA) CIS degree at TESU at the same time as a TESU BACS and you'd only spend slightly more time/money on this when planned out carefully. It's like a BOGO deal for degrees!

$20k is also more than sufficient for about 2 years at WGU: https://www.wgu.edu/financial-aid-tuitio...grees.html Plus approximately 2 months of Sophia, maybe 6-8 months of Study.com, and maybe a Coursera certificate or two. Coursera certificate equivalencies can be found under "The American Dream Academy" on the WGU partnership page: https://partners.wgu.edu/home Without Sophia, SDC, and Coursera, WGU would almost certainly take significantly longer than 1-1.5 years. With them, it can take 6-12 months.

But I'm not 100% sure that you could complete a WGU degree. I'm not sure if they're open to people in Alberta. IIRC, you have to be within a certain distance of Toronto in order to be accepted. But maybe if you're located in a big city? Not sure. 

There is technically also a BSIT degree from PUG available: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/degree-prog...echnology/ But that's IT, not Computer Science. And there is a LOT of writing at PUG. Every single credit requires at least one paper or project at PUG. You can transfer in 75% of the required 180 credits, but that's still 45-50 papers that you'd have to write. Minimum. Some people have been able to complete it all in under a year, but it's still a lot of work.