In my opinion you might be better off attending a local university in person, not online, to get the full experience. Also if the course does not require as prerequisite an undergraduate engineering or science degree, it may be taught at a low level and get little respect from major employers. You might be able to get some sort of job with it though and gradually build up experience *if* you have the aptitude and lots of drive.
As someone who attended "a good university", then "a good grad school", a couple of times.. I think it mostly comes down to aptitude determining success within the automated-trading-industrial-complex. For example, a few of the better coders I know have undergraduate business degrees, somewhat surprisingly. Find a coder who's really written real time asynchronous systems, to the point of actually preferring to poll when possible. That's a pretty good test. As for India, and other (currently) low cost regions - there can be good guys over there, but, the better ones usually end up physically here.
We are having a hard time finding good programmers (especially architects and lead programmers) in Boston who ideally know about trading. I interviewed for 8 months before placing someone. Resumes welcome.
one of the hint to spot a real good programmer: 1) anti social 2) can't dress 3) beloved of video games (xbox, playstation, wii) 4) cartoon freak. 5) enjoy eating fast foods (pizza) 6) become shy when nice looking women around. (WOMEN whooo hooo) 7) most enjoy rock music P.S a good programmer who is an anti social have time to develop a program vs a programmer who is social able have time or will make time with women rather than working
They don't survive in a trading floor. Maybe at apple building i-somethings & having farting contests.
I know someone who couldn't find a job anywhere. Well not many employers like their staff to roll up at midday, unwashed etc. He thought he had found his niche in life as a sperm donor. They haven't found the " lazy " gene yet !