2 years isn't enough time to learn how to program. Then again, I'm not really sure you can reliably make programmers with a substantial degree of success. In my undergrad CS program, we had 300 freshman at the start, and I graduated with 29 others at the end. For people with a CS undergrad, an MS program is quite good. They shore up on depth and theory that they didn't get while working on their programming chops in undergrad.
Sadly, if you can't already program, you can get a master's in CS (because it's focused on depth and theory instead of programming), it's just completely useless. I have no idea what one can do with a MS-CS, if they can't program. It's honestly a little heartbreaking for me, that people to spend 2 years of their lives wasting it on that.
With all that said, I haven't found any degree (at least from any school I've interviewed applicants for) to be a reliable signal for programming. Even if they went to a really good school, there's a good chance that they spent all their time learning network protocols and low-level mechanisms, and will happily write up a sliding-window implementation for me, but will stare at me blankly when I ask for a simple recursive algorithm. It's just tough to find people that spent time studying and practicing general-purpose computer science.
A terminal masters degree by itself is a signal for the ability to write a pair of $20K checks. The requirements for a masters are far less rigorous than the requirements for a bachelors at the same institution.
Sadly, if you can't already program, you can get a master's in CS (because it's focused on depth and theory instead of programming), it's just completely useless. I have no idea what one can do with a MS-CS, if they can't program. It's honestly a little heartbreaking for me, that people to spend 2 years of their lives wasting it on that.
With all that said, I haven't found any degree (at least from any school I've interviewed applicants for) to be a reliable signal for programming. Even if they went to a really good school, there's a good chance that they spent all their time learning network protocols and low-level mechanisms, and will happily write up a sliding-window implementation for me, but will stare at me blankly when I ask for a simple recursive algorithm. It's just tough to find people that spent time studying and practicing general-purpose computer science.