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Not exactly…</p>
<p>Stanford for years has offered something called “Honors Coop” which is a part-time Masters program in Engineering offered by Stanford for students supported by local hi-tech firms. If your company offers this (and many in Silicon Valley do) you take 1 or 2 courses a quarter and all the units count towards your degree. While you have to qualify to pursue the actual MS degree, anyone who wants and is sponsored by their company can start take classes. These are the actual courses being taught to the full-time MS students, BTW, not a dumbed-down version taught by part-timers or whatever. You have the option of attending in-person or watching on a special closed-circuit TV setup.</p>
<p>What many people do is enroll in the program, get as many units as they can (there is a cap) while their employer is paying, then take off 6 months to finish the MS and then look for a higher-paying job or go back to their old employer with a promotion now that they have an MS. Like I said, you have to get accepted into the actual MS program – but if you can’t build a good enough track record at the actual school to be accepted for their MS program then you probably didn’t belong in it anyway. So while there is no “guarantee” of admission, this is about as close as you can come to letting everyone who can show they are capable of the work (regardless of their previous academic record) get a MS from Stanford Engineering.</p>