Credit for Industry Certs

[siersema]

Interesting, IS may be different, I do not know. I would expect the professors who teach IS to have a doctorate in math or CS. But who knows? It would be interesting to here what you experienced in your IS program.

IS, IT, CIS, and MIS are quite often in the business department of a college, while CS would usually be in a technology or engineering department. This would explain the lack of ABET IS programs for most schools (though many would have ACBSP for their CIS/MIS majors). The courses you saw in the Aspen program wouldn't be unusual for these types of programs. CIS/IS usually has a bit more programming, MIS a bit more business, and IT seems to be more the generalist degree (the MBA of Computing if you want to look at it that way, and looking at it that way would certainly fit your comments earlier of the Aspen courses looking more like undergraduate, you often see that type of comment with regards to an MBA program as well.. but I digress)

My experience wasn't that the instructors had doctorates in math or CS, but in other business or technology areas. The college I worked at is a 2 year college so many only had MS degrees. When I left the head of the CIS Faculty was pursuing a doctorate in technology from Capella, and the head of the CIS staff had an MBA, my boss (the head of our Workforce Certification department) also was an MBA holder. Honestly if the instructor liked Math enough to get a doctorate in it they'd be board out of their minds with IS/IT type courses. With the exception of perhaps one or two courses that hit on some math concepts in relation to programming these types of degrees don't generally have heavy math requirements. If your school has both a CS and IS/CIS degree take a look at the required math you'll probably see it's lower for IS.

My experiences were good, but they were good because I'm not looking for the type of job, or knowledge, where I learn to much programming, or where I learn down to the detail how my motherboard works. I like to learn about the technology that exists and how it fits into current business, the management of technology and technical people, and the concepts of utilizing technolgy in new ways for business or other reasons.

But CLEPS are different then online learning, as CLEPS are for students who already have a profound knowledge in a subject because of passed experiences. You obviously can't get a degree with just CLEPS, that would be ridiculous (why even have a degree for knowledge you already knew?).

.. This may come as a shock

This is less true than it once was perhaps, but you could actually do this (not just CLEP but CLEP, DANTES, ECE, and so on). Why would you want to do this? Well the same reasons you used CLEP to begin with, to prove you already had the knowledge (or could obtain it faster on your own through self-study than through a traditional course), and to have a degree for whatever reason you wanted one. To move on to a graduate degree, for a job, personal satisfaction, who knows. I prefer and am taking a mixed approach of traditional courses, online courses, and exams.

The best example of how to do this can be found here http://www.bain4weeks.com

Try not to let the domain throw you, it's more a guide to a concept than a guide to actually getting a degree in 4 weeks. If you can actually test out of 120 credits worth of exams in 4 weeks though, more power to you.