Me thinks Give the certification a chance. In essence it is evident from the discussion that graduate or not if you do not have an understanding of programming then it is pointless to even discuss about the degree. on the other hand passion for coding is good problem is there's no way to quantify nor determine if it exists in the human being in focus. Truth is the numbers graduating from campus is much more than the available jobs and as such we cannot say we have a shortage of graduates. A couple of pointers - most graduates "major" in anything else apart from programming (web or otherwise) - most graduates have their projects done by programmers in the field - IT graduates do not actually specialize as everything is taught to every one, points of specialization have a hazy grouping ie desktop applications on one hand and branded programming, web programming is in another cluster all together, i thought programming is programming irrespective of desktop or web. - currently languages in "heavy" use are .net, php, java, javascript, c++, but you will find other "funny" languages in the same mix. this is to mean that by the time of graduation a student has been introduced to a whole myriad of languages he/she has no clue of their innards if not their strong points. recommendation The certification becomes a purely hands on type of exam even if it takes 3-4months to complete the exams, that way there can be a way to say that the holder of this paper can do a,b,c etc hence in an interview there's wasting time. me thoughts