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I wonder what is hidden behind the phrase "the college partnerships failed". I took some great courses on Udacity, Coursera, and edX back in the days when they

• argonaut 10y ago
  They need to make money? We should be thankful they haven't resorted to advertising or selling our information.
  • abecedarius 10y ago
    An idea floated around the time of their very first courses was that they'd double as a recruiter, like Stockfighter now (by my vague impression of both). I wonder what happened to that.
• geomark 10y ago
  I feel somewhat the same. I took a couple Udacity courses that were great and quite a few from Coursera. Coursera's free offerings are now partially gutted by restricting non-paying students from taking tests and submitting assignments.
  • cinquemb 10y ago
    Who would have guessed that the new online education revolution™, where effectiveness is measured in similar status/signaling games, would pander to the status quo? That being said, there's an amazing wealth of knowledge on the internet completely free to consume not locked behind any particular walled garden awaiting those who dare step out of their comfort zones of consumption/absorption, but its not nicely packaged in the latest fad de jour… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    • RyanZAG 10y ago
      The issue here is that going through a professional institution is the difference between being a 'self taught amateur' and a 'well studied professional'. Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur, your first media coverage is either going to say 'the Harvard graduate' or 'the self taught .. '. So it's an indicator even then. For Apple and Microsoft, 'college dropout' featured in nearly every early article. It became something of a compliment after a bit though and helped them stand out somehow. Nothing is ever simple, but just being accepted is probably enough even if you don't finish.
      • cinquemb 10y ago
        So does nothing exist for people to strive for between/beyond wanting to work at places that embody the banality of …Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. and Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur…, or such a between state like that just unimaginable?
        • bunni 10y ago
          Small businesses without an HR department.
          • cinquemb 10y ago
            Its funny that these suggestions are antithesis to the typical argument surrounding why people should get "higher" education when faced with the reality of the modern day d̶i̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶d̶i̶g̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ job market… go figure that exploration and the pursuit of knowledge would come in second to these games…
      • tyrael71 10y ago
        I feel like this has become less and less true in engineering and software in the past decade. A portfolio of projects with varying complexity speaks equally or more about your ability to code or build things. Google and other companies have come out and said they haven't found strong correlations between degrees (with GPA measurement included) and being a better engineer. > 'college dropout' featured in nearly every early article. It became something of a compliment after a bit though and helped them stand out somehow. 'Standing out' is irrelevant in this context unless your business is entirely based on you being a famous figure in the press. Gates and Jobs are famous because of the incredible companies they built, not the other way around. The press needed to paint a story, so they went with the college dropout narrative. However their success, and the success of every company/founder is entirely independent of founder social validation.
  • uulbiy 10y ago
    I think the big mistake was offering something for free and then asking money for it. The first backlash was with the (unverified) certificates and the latest with the tests and assignments. It might have been a different story if they announced from the beginning that they are only offering their services for free for a certain period of time. They focused on gaining users and they succeeded on that, but now that they are focused on making money they seem to lose users.
    • gedrap 10y ago
      I think it's just basic human psychology that once you have access to something, you start feeling entitled to it. However, in reality, Coursera (or any other company) is under no obligation to keep providing free stuff. It's natural that you are losing users once you start asking for money, it's just impossible to have it otherwise. Let's not forget that Coursera is a business so they obviously need to generate some revenue, sooner or later. What they did seems like a sensible business decision to me. They focused and succeeded with the marketing and branding initially (Coursera became almost synonymous with online courses) and they are collecting the revenue from it now.
      • geomark 10y ago
        Agree. They are running a business so can charge if/what they want. I just think they were a little clumsy how they made the transition. It was particularly annoying for people mid-way through a specialization to find out that the rest of the courses in the specialization would be crippled.
      • threesixandnine 10y ago
        I do agree with you that we sometimes feel entitled to something and we shouldn't. However, I remember when Udacity started and it was all ah, yes, oh, uh, free courses, free education, access for everyone. Charge for it but don't try and fool me with "I am nice and doing good" talk.
        • TeMPOraL 10y ago
• canistr 10y ago
  As a current Georgia Tech student doing the Online Master's in CS, I wonder this too because it's the primary method of delivery for lectures. For the most part, I'm not crazy about the Udacity platform and the lectures (they're too short, the mini-quizzes aren't always that great, and the platform doesn't feel like it has been improving in the past 2 years). However, all the value and learning is coming from the interactions with other students/TAs/professors on Piazza as well as the assignments/projects we do. If you were to ask me how I would rate each component independently, I would say that Udacity is the weakest part of the experience.
  • dikaiosune 10y ago
    How would you rate the rest of the experience?
    • nkozyra 10y ago
      Not the addressee but it's spectacular all around. There are a few classes that have a reputation for being poorly designed/maintained and a few with somewhat "unreasonable" time requirements (ie 50 hours a week for a single class). There are classes where you only interact with TAs/students (which is fine) and some where the professor is seemingly on a 24-hour modafinil drip, there to answer any question posed at any time. For the most part it's intensive and immersive with enough learn-at-your-own-pace aspects to accommodate full-time jobs, families, hobbies, etc. I feel like I come away from every class like I've actually learned something that's embedded in me. Udacity is what it is: a platform for watching videos with some minor ability to interact with coding examples / quizzes throughout. I have no issue with it, but agree that most of the meat of the courses come from other parts of the classes. My hunch here, through Thrun's quotes and some in this, is that there were some aspects of CEO at this level that really didn't appeal to him. How many CEOs truly get to be personally creative in their position?
      • CardenB 10y ago
        "There are a few classes that have a reputation for being poorly designed/maintained and a few with somewhat "unreasonable" time requirements (ie 50 hours a week for a single class)." As a current Georgia Tech student, I welcome you.
• nipst 10y ago
  I believe the failure was a reference to the failed partnership with San Jose state.. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/18/citing-disappointing-student-outcomes-san-jose-state-pauses-work-udacity https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/18/citing-disapp...
  • ghaff 10y ago
    Which, in a lot of ways, really highlighted the failure of MOOCs promoting themselves as expanding the reach of top-level education to underserved audiences. (As did Open Courseware and its ilk previously.) The problem (well, one of them) is that MOOCs didn't really help students with weak groundings in the basics and, perhaps, middling to low motivation. Instead, if you read the stats, they largely (though not exclusively) have ended up providing ongoing professional education to a range of motivated learners who already have undergrad and advanced degrees.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  I feel it's a failed graft. MOOC cannot play nice enough with current education system without causing too much interferences, hence the no parternships.
• tobz 10y ago
  (edX employee here) I'm not particular privy to whatever tactical insight our leadership has on Udacity, Coursera, etc... but I can tell you where edX is looking to head as a MOOC when it comes to college/university partnerships. We have our partner-developed content. This is stuff like Harvard's CS50, MIT's 6.00.1x, etc. High quality content. People are very eager to take the courses -- they're developed by professors, TAs, etc, from these schools, and, to be honest, there's a lot of front-loaded name recognition -- but there's also a good chunk of learners who go on to pay for a verified certificate. On the flipside, we've talked to major businesses (tens of thousands of employees) who say they're willing to treat these certificates, the output of these courses, in line with their campus equivalents. That's pretty huge for someone looking to beef up their resume. The next evolution of what we're doing by partnering with these institutions are things like Arizona State University's Global Freshman Academy or MIT's MicroMasters. ASU's Global Freshman Academy is taking your entire "freshman" year on edX, and getting real credit from it. MIT's MicroMasters (in Supply Chain Management) is taking a semester online, which makes you eligible for taking the rest of the degree (which is two semesters total) on campus. These cost money; they aren't entirely free like the standard courses on edX. However, they're deeply discounted and this is what our learners say they want. Many people want credentials, they want them from top colleges and universities, and they want them targeted to specific fields. Ultimately, these people just don't feel confident figuring out which courses to take, and they want to be told which courses to take to get them to a specific place: better comprehension of X, better chances of job in a given field, etc. This is what is precipitating a lot of the advent of the specializations/nanodegrees, as you say. (sorry, a little long-winded)
• mathattack 10y ago
  The specializations and nanodegrees sell brand, and perhaps motivation. (I am more likely to complete what I have paid for and can brag about)
• mathattack 10y ago
  The specializations and nanodegrees sell brand, and perhaps motivation. (I am more likely to complete what I have paid for and can brag about)
• skywhopper 10y ago
  The main problem is that great courses require great faculty to create and manage them semester by semester. Udacity and the like are built on the premise that we can scale up a professor's reach by orders of magnitude. But you can't do that without losing quality. The state of online course software is such that in most cases it's a hindrance, rather than a help. Software should make our jobs easier, but for professors building an online course versus building a traditional lecture/paper/chalkboard sort of course, technology far too often gets in the way and makes their jobs harder.
  • robbiemitchell 10y ago
    The assumption that classes should be taught on a semester ("seat time") basis, with everyone starting and stopping at the same time, is a professor-centric view of the world. A student-centric view would use technology to help students have an educational experience around their own schedule and needs (e.g., varied pace; reinforcement or skipping where appropriate).
    • ghaff 10y ago
      It's a structured learning view of the world rather than professor- or student-centric. The issue is that, if you take away all structure, you also tend to take away most real-time interactions (which admittedly are a serious weakness of MOOCs anyway) and you end up with an experience that's not much different from reading a book and/or watching online video talks/lectures/documentaries/etc. or, indeed, just doing some project. Of course, there's nothing wrong with learning that way. But, at some point, you then go--why bother with this MOOC thing anyway if I just want to learn something?
      • robbiemitchell 10y ago
        There must be other ways to provide structure than one built around a fixed schedule oriented around when a professor is delivering lectures, no? Simple ideas: - Rolling start dates - Weekly collaboration days/times where all students who happen to be at a shared point in the course, or a shared point in their understanding of the material, discuss These have their own drawbacks, too, but they're possible. Especially if the network is big enough. Once you have a bunch of students doing this, you then go--why bother affiliating with one particular university if I can get the classes I need no matter where I sit?