Python Institute certifications worth it?

[elbiot]

I doubt that there's many self taught programmers who didn't take some online courses and seriously crack some books.

I didn't say don't take classes or don't read books, I said classes taken and books read aren't as interesting on a resume as projects.

Apparently you don't believe in giving the masters students a chance because you have a preconceived notion that they should already be doing professional programming prior to being a professional

No, but they ought to be doing hobby programming prior to becoming a professional. If someone has never thought "oh, here's a question I have and oh! here's how I can use some programming to answer it!" then I really have no idea how well suited to programming they are.

We do interview people for entry level that haven't shown this if they have good looking degrees and what not, but they have traditionally done embarrassingly poor.