Questions about education

Question

I am unsure about the rules pertaining to questions related to education.

Initially I searched the site for questions related to MS and MSC degrees, and saw many questions from members seeking education advice. However, none of them dealt with the topic of school's ranking & being online programs; therefore, I posted my question:

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156895/online-msc-from-a-top-school-vs-in-person-from-unranked

It was closed within a few minutes as offtopic.

I am not quite sure why it was considered offtopic, and something like this isn't: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37482/having-msc-or-bsc-with-experience-whats-it-worth-in-industrial-environments

I also read the FAQ, which brought me here: Are Career Advice questions useful to anyone except the poster? That post states: A good way to test this is to ask the question, "Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?" The answer to that question is a yes, as my question specifically asks about the level of challenge in these programs & affects on the rest of the programming career. If I was to post the question in "The Workplace," I would not get field specific answers there.

What is the proper place to ask a question such as mine?

Answer 1

The first thing I noticed was that your questions about education are not unique to the software development profession.

The first involves the quality of education at a ranked university versus an unranked university - this is something that would apply equally to every academic program. I don't see a difference between asking about comparing the quality of education in a ranked/unranked computer science program than a business management program, an electrical engineering program, or a criminal justice program.

Your second question, again, can be equally applied to any degree program. It's only about getting your degree exclusively online versus in a classroom setting when considering the prestige of the university offering it. Again, I don't see how this would be different if you considered any academic program.

The only part of your question that mentions anything related to software development is the fact that you're employed as a software engineer and are working toward a graduate degree in computer science. Just because you are a software developer doesn't mean that other people can't answer your question. If you don't need to have the knowledge and experience unique to professional software developers, it's not appropriate for this site.

The below chart is in the FAQ, and I think it explains it pretty well. This question bleeds into the All Careers.

Answer 2

The Workplace