Microsoft Announces Professional Degree Program

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On Wednesday at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced the Microsoft Professional Degree (MPD) program, the first program of its kind to offer employer-endorsed, university-caliber curriculum for professionals at any stage of their career. MPD is a Microsoft-led initiative that provides professionals with real-world knowledge and hands-on experience to grow their skills in critical fields. The initial MPD offering is in data science, with all courseware available on edX.org, the nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard University and MIT.

A significant skills gap exists in the data science field. In response to this growing need, Microsoft designed its pilot curriculum to deliver the critical skills and experiences that are required for success in the data science field. Since May 2016, over 200 pioneering partner and 650 Microsoft employees have been participating in a closed preview to evaluate and validate this new data science curriculum.
 
Only fr MS to write it all off 3 months before or after you finish.
 
So this is where you go to study all that scummy telemetry data Microsoft harvests off users?
 
Actually, I think this would prove much more useful to a professional than a college degree.
 
You know what, at first I was thinking that's stupid and useless, but there could be some merit to this. If I were to look at an exchange server, or SQL server, or any of the bigger MS platforms the same way I do a large phone system or boiler system then this sort of thing makes sense. Mitel and Avaya have huge programs that cost thousands to take part in just to be trained in how to configure and manage their systems, when you are done you have a certification which certainly helps in getting you employed as you are a trained professional to work on those systems. Who here has their Redhat certifications or their Cisco certifications, VMWare has a certificate program as well and those are all just to be trained on single platforms. With the huge product lineup MS offers I can easily see it taking years to get certified in IIS, SQL, AD, Server, Dektop, .... take your pick. So why not offer a standardised platform partnered with schools or even in their own? Is having more people trained in how to properly fix MS systems really bad for anybody?
 
Audit for free, for the certs you need to pay. It's based on edX.

Looks decent, but I'd compare it to guided certification. MCITP, but more expensive and guided lessons.
 
Lakados said:
You know what, at first I was thinking that's stupid and useless, but there could be some merit to this. If I were to look at an exchange server, or SQL server, or any of the bigger MS platforms the same way I do a large phone system or boiler system then this sort of thing makes sense. Mitel and Avaya have huge programs that cost thousands to take part in just to be trained in how to configure and manage their systems, when you are done you have a certification which certainly helps in getting you employed as you are a trained professional to work on those systems. Who here has their Redhat certifications or their Cisco certifications, VMWare has a certificate program as well and those are all just to be trained on single platforms. With the huge product lineup MS offers I can easily see it taking years to get certified in IIS, SQL, AD, Server, Dektop, .... take your pick. So why not offer a standardised platform partnered with schools or even in their own? Is having more people trained in how to properly fix MS systems really bad for anybody?
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And how many borderline worthless certs are there out there already? And TBH "properly fix(ing) MS systems"...well it starts with knowing what error codes mean. And Microsoft for decades has done a fantastic job of obfuscating and not documenting what their error codes mean. Google any BSOD stop code, or Windows Error Code (say Windows Update errors) and you're not going to end up reading or learning about it from any document made by Microsoft.

Which is really hilarious when you consider something like say Arch or Gentoo Linux...which has arguably the comprehensive and up-to-date support technical literature in an easily browsed Wiki you'll find anywhere on anything. You have a problem on Arch or Gentoo, and you can learn all there is to know about how and why more than likely.
 
If more companies did this, all of the H1-B people woukd use it so they have an actual "degree" instead if the fake degree they claimed to have had before they came to America.
 
Ocellaris said:
If more companies did this, all of the H1-B people woukd use it so they have an actual "degree" instead if the fake degree they claimed to have had before they came to America.
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That may be half the reason for it H1-B's are getting harder to come by especially in the tech fields, a lot of tech companies complain that they just can't get the talent locally this could be an effort to create it.
 
Remember the days when a microsoft cert used to mean something...
 
Skripka said:
And how many borderline worthless certs are there out there already? And TBH "properly fix(ing) MS systems"...well it starts with knowing what error codes mean. And Microsoft for decades has done a fantastic job of obfuscating and not documenting what their error codes mean. Google any BSOD stop code, or Windows Error Code (say Windows Update errors) and you're not going to end up reading or learning about it from any document made by Microsoft.

Which is really hilarious when you consider something like say Arch or Gentoo Linux...which has arguably the comprehensive and up-to-date support technical literature in an easily browsed Wiki you'll find anywhere on anything. You have a problem on Arch or Gentoo, and you can learn all there is to know about how and why more than likely.
Click to expand...

While I can partially agree with the error code thing that only applies in a very small occurrence of issues, take for example my most recent Exchange IIS issue, for some reason the Exchange admin account no longer has access to small portions of older accounts through the Exchange Console in exchange 2013 CU5. It shows itself when you try to add an alias to one of those older accounts, the window fails to load and gives a generic time out message. The logs don't show any errors taking place at all, so there is no error code just something that doesn't work. Now I could add them manually through Exchanges Powershell but that is a pain in the ass so where does the error lie, in IIS or Exchange it turns out it was in both, it took months to track down the issues which all started with a single corrupted entry in Exchange that spilled over to IIS which corrupted more entries in Exchange.

Long story short I would have loved having access to any sort of tech who was competent in either IIS or Exchange on hand to bounce things off. The fix for the problem wasn't actually identified from any errors in either IIS or Exchange directly but in Sharepoint that was using the same part in IIS as Exchange and it logged the issue. Which lead us down the whole shit lined rabbit hole.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
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Which is completely false. But nice and cynical and oft repeated.

People who are great at what they do are often good at tutoring or teaching coworkers or subordinates. People who cannot teach/tutor others are "that" guy at the office everyone hates.
 
Skripka said:
Which is completely false. But nice and cynical and oft repeated.

People who are great at what they do are often good at tutoring or teaching coworkers or subordinates. People who cannot teach/tutor others are "that" guy at the office everyone hates.
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Oh no, god forbid anyone call Microsoft incompetent. Can corporations get offended?
 
I can see it now. Microsoft Degrees, McDonalds degrees, TacoBell PHDs

What we really need is a homelessness degree program.
 
I was thinking this thread was going to be about being able to get an Associates/Bachlors degree in Microsoft Office...
 
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