Abstract:

For more than 10 years the University of Applied Sciences in Trier, Germany, offered a distance learning program in computer science leading to a diploma degree. This program was a continuing education program, i.e. all students are required to have some professional experience before they start to study. The program was made for career changers who already had a first degree in a discipline different from computer science. In 2007 we opened the program also for people without a first academic degree. Since then it was possible for people with a professional background in computer science to enroll into our distance learning program after having passed an aptitude test. In 2009 we switched from diploma to master, and we kept the possibility to enroll into the program without a first academic degree. This means that it is now possible to get a master's degree without having a bachelor's degree.
This possibility does not exist all over Germany. Germany is divided into 16 Federal Länder (similar to states, provinces or cantons in other countries). Because education is a matter of the Länder, there are different rules in different Länder. At present there are about 5 Federal Länder who allow enrollments in master programs without having a bachelor's degree. Our Land, Rhineland-Palatinate, is one of them. It should be emphasized that this rule holds only for master programs that belong to the continuing education sector; it does not hold for regular consecutive master programs.
This talk presents our distance education learning program in computer science and discusses our experiences with the different kinds of master students, those who have a first academic degree, and those who do not. Are there any significant differences with respect to their performances? In order to answer this question we evaluated the marks of all exams within the last 4 years. We found no significant differences. There is a slight tendency that those students without a first academic degree perform even better.
In our talk we speculate about reasons for the observed facts. Among others we believe that many of the students without a bachelor's degree are extremely motivated. This holds especially for those who were already enrolled in a program in their previous lives and failed. They consider this failure as a defect in their curricula vitae and urge to cure this. We conclude that the possibility of getting a master's degree without a bachelor's degree in the continuing education sector is reasonable and worthwhile.
We are interested whether there are similar possibilities and experiences in other countries and hope for interesting discussions during the conference.