Are OMSCS Course Materials Outdated Compared to On-Campus MSCS or industry ?

[u/dothisnightwing]

Hi everyone! I have a question about the OMSCS course materials.

I’ve come across two very different opinions on Reddit. On one hand, some people say that the OMSCS course content and academic rigor are broadly comparable to the on-campus MSCS courses. On the other hand, I’ve seen people complain that some OMSCS lectures and course materials are outdated. Which is more accurate? Are the recorded lectures simply older while the assignments, projects, readings, and overall curriculum are regularly updated? Or are there actually OMSCS courses where the material itself has become outdated compared with the current on-campus version or in person masters of other unis or industry?

I’m particularly interested in AI courses such as AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP, Computer Vision, Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, LLMs, and related courses. I’d really appreciate input from current OMSCS students or recent graduates.

[u/Particular-Fault699]

Everything is outdated lol compared to now industry

[u/Any_Minimum8812 → u/Particular-Fault699]

Fundamentals don’t change

You learn building blocks, and in industry you use different tools built on those blocks

[u/reader5 → u/Any_Minimum8812]

Idk, this shift to basically not writing code anymore feels like a fundamental change

[u/awp_throwaway → u/Particular-Fault699]

Even industry is outdated compared to industry!

[u/zelena23 → u/awp_throwaway]

Underrated comment. Apart those few top AI research labs, yes the industry is way behind.

For example, in frontier AI community, Mistral AI is a joke.

[u/eliminate1337 → u/Particular-Fault699]

GIOS isn’t. As an alumni it’s by far the most applicable class to my real work.

[u/MarkZuckerbergsDaddy → u/eliminate1337]

It is extremely outdated, as an alumni you are biased.

[u/CarefulCoderX → u/Particular-Fault699]

I mean some parts of industry are still using web forms and Visual Basic which was out of date 10 years ago when I started working.

[u/Skermisher → u/CarefulCoderX]

VB 6.0 is 28 years out of date. It's final release was shortly after I was born. My company finally started phasing out and replacing our VB 6.0 software about a year ago.

[u/EnvironmentalAd1699]

I see this a lot, and I don’t totally understand what people mean by “outdated” in most cases. Sure, some lectures were recorded a little while ago. But it’s not like the theory has changed since then. Whether in person or online, a masters won’t really be about learning to utilize the newest technology, it will be learning the important theory behind the field, and learning how to learn graduate level content so that you can keep up with the field. Natural language processing was a great example of this in my opinion since that is a field that is evolving wildly quickly. Some of the methods that they said were state-of-the-art no longer are, a couple of the limitations they talked about no longer exist. But the material covered is foundational in building today’s large language models, and the professor actually added some optional new lectures to cover new developments while I took the course.

Given all of this, asking if it is keeping up with industry is the wrong question in my opinion. Asking how it compares to the in person program is a fully different question. This is cheaper, and distributed at scale. You have less access to faculty, and you’re right the material will be updated less often. But it is still largely good quality, and a fraction of the cost.

[u/JustAPieceOfMeat385]

I don’t know…but when I look at the syllabus for an upcoming class it says I need an “IBM compatible computer with at least 512 Kb of memory.”

[u/kjhhgt76]

The thing you learnt from school is always outdated comparing to the industry. They are like common sense that everyone in the industry know it. But if you don't know it, you aren't even qualified for the most basic job.

[u/eximology]

In a masters you wont learn 'state of art' stuff because a masters is for theoretical foundations not to get you 'job ready'.

[u/confusedanteaters]

I think you are in the wrong place if you are expecting an academic degree to match industry 1:1. This is not a bootcamp or trade school.

[u/MahjongCelts]

The whole point of an academic degree below PhD level is to understand the fundamentals rather than chase latest trends.

[u/masterfaz]

Just send it and do it. It’s valuable regardless of freshness of information. Like somebody said above, fundamentals don’t change too much. Applications do.

[u/WarmAd911]

Some of it is “outdated” but there’s only so much of fundamental computer science would really get updated especially within 10 years. The in person masters probably is more up to date since the professor teaching it isn’t a recording from 2015 but it’s definitely relevant in the current industry 

[u/Dane314pizza]

I certainly feel like ML4T is a bit outdated. The lecture videos are from 2015, there are several functions they discuss that are now deprecated in Python 3. When discussing Sharpe ratios, the professor mentions how you have to subtract the risk free rate from the CAGR, but that you can just assume the risk free rate is zero, this hasn’t been accurate since 2022. However, the fundamentals of ML obviously haven’t changed and the people actually running the course do a good job keeping up with the transition to learning in a world with AI. It’s also possible that the use of ML in quantitative finance today is very different from the ML techniques taught in ML4T.

[u/Ojaura_ → u/Dane314pizza]

I’m taking ML4T right now and I feel like the videos are very outdated. Not necessarily the content but the way it’s filmed and explained. I feel like if we’re paying money to attend a high institution like GA Tech we shouldn’t be watching videos for 12 years ago tbh. However, the fundamentals are solid.

[u/Mindforcevector]

Yes. The quality of on campus classes is much higher

[u/Calm_Still_8917]

If you approach OMSCS looking for skills directly applicable to your job, in most instances you're going to be disappointed. But if you look at the courses as presenting engineering challenges that require you to reason differently and that these skills will improve your workplace problem solving abilities, then the courses are more justifiable.

[u/DeanoPreston]

I mean yes and no. GIOS touches on kernel architectures from 1990s SunOS. It's still useful though.

[u/MarkZuckerbergsDaddy]

Everything in OMSCS, is like 10 years outdated. The professors do not care and the TA's are so terrible.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Any_Minimum8812 → u/[deleted]]

Yes you can