You mentioned on your blog that you tested out of your bachelor's degree. So what's your experience getting your degree from a non-traditional university? You seem somewhat of an autodidact, so did you find that the coursework was an acceptable study plan, or did you end up supplementing the coursework to learn the material?
The school you mentioned seems to be credible, it even has a couple engineering technology programs accredited by TAC of ABET. But I haven't had great experiences with getting college credit through standardized tests. I took several CLEP tests before entering college. And while it was definitely worth it to get rid of some general ed requirements, the tests were extremely easy. All I ended up doing was reading the study books once or twice before the tests. I don't think I learned a significant from preparing for those tests.
Illusion of transparency = zap! The text as written is ambiguous: I haven't yet tested out of a bachelor's degree, but expect that I could do so easily enough if required to earn a PhD - the bachelor's itself just isn't worth the time to me, even to test out of.
If anyone out there happens to be a professor of analytical philosophy or decision theory who's willing to let me come in and just do my PhD thesis on an elegant general solution to Newcomblike problems, give me a ring (see http://yudkowsky.net/ for contact info). But if I also have to show up for classes I can't test out of, just to prove that I was there - then I'm sorry, but I can't.
Would you mind giving me a clue on what your decision theory is about? Newcomblike problems don't seem very interesting to me--if you anticipate such a problem, you could do things that make it appear as though you don't understand causality, and if you are participating in multiple consecutive rounds, you could one-box on all but the last one.
I Clepped basically an entire year of university. Higher education serves two purposes: Learning, and credentialing. And there's certainly faster ways to learn - so that leaves you with the credential. The cheaper and faster you can get it if you want that one, the faster you can get out into the world and do cool things.
At a good institution, you'll learn considerably more than you get examined on. The fact that you learned enough on your own to pass exams doesn't mean that you learned as much as a normal student.
The school you mentioned seems to be credible, it even has a couple engineering technology programs accredited by TAC of ABET. But I haven't had great experiences with getting college credit through standardized tests. I took several CLEP tests before entering college. And while it was definitely worth it to get rid of some general ed requirements, the tests were extremely easy. All I ended up doing was reading the study books once or twice before the tests. I don't think I learned a significant from preparing for those tests.