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You can get a K12 education on Khan Academy, sure, but in the US that's already "free" (property taxes). Can you find a collection of Coursera courses that is

You can get a K12 education on Khan Academy, sure, but in the US that's already "free" (property taxes). Can you find a collection of Coursera courses that is actually a reasonable substitute for a 4-year degree in CS? There are certainly a handful of interesting topics, but I'm not seeing the whole picture.

bcheung 10y ago
> reasonable substitute for a 4-year degree You're still thinking in terms of a "degree". Education is not a checkbox on the road to getting a job. That's the old thinking, and it is doomed. A better question is what skills and experience would I need to be valuable in the workplace. Education, especially CS is an ongoing process that never ends. Speaking from personal experience, I did a little bit of community college but dropped out because I didn't think it was worth paying tons of money for something I could learn from a $40 book (or free online now). I'm working as a software engineer now and am earning more than most of my peers with CS degrees. No college degree, no Coursera certificates, just real world experience and learning what I needed to.
- superuser2 10y ago
  >Education is not a checkbox on the road to getting a job Hit the nail on the head. There is education for its own sake, for personal intellectual growth - reading, writing, and discussing philosophy, literature, (pure) math, social sciences, etc. which is really best served by a 4-year residential experience with others who actually care about it. And there is education for >what skills and experience would I need to be valuable in the workplace. which may be best served in MOOCs, community college, specialty career training schools, or simply on the job. Their unholy alliance in the university system is making both worse. Education for its own sake is dragged down by people who don't want to be there and don't really have the mental horsepower but are simply collecting a credential on their way to a job. It's made unaffordable to those who actually want it by all this demand from people who just want credentials. Career training is dragged down by adherence to the structures and costs associated with liberal education (dorms, classrooms, libraries, etc), slowed down by all that "distracting" liberal education imposed along the way. It's time the two were severed entirely.
ulucs 10y ago
You can already find a reasonable substitute for a 2-year Masters in CS [1]. MIT Open Courseware has more classes than you can take in four years. [1] http://omscs.gatech.edu/ http://omscs.gatech.edu/

bcheung 10y ago

> reasonable substitute for a 4-year degree You're still thinking in terms of a "degree". Education is not a checkbox on the road to getting a job. That's the old thinking, and it is doomed. A better question is what skills and experience would I need to be valuable in the workplace. Education, especially CS is an ongoing process that never ends. Speaking from personal experience, I did a little bit of community college but dropped out because I didn't think it was worth paying tons of money for something I could learn from a $40 book (or free online now). I'm working as a software engineer now and am earning more than most of my peers with CS degrees. No college degree, no Coursera certificates, just real world experience and learning what I needed to.

superuser2 10y ago
>Education is not a checkbox on the road to getting a job Hit the nail on the head. There is education for its own sake, for personal intellectual growth - reading, writing, and discussing philosophy, literature, (pure) math, social sciences, etc. which is really best served by a 4-year residential experience with others who actually care about it. And there is education for >what skills and experience would I need to be valuable in the workplace. which may be best served in MOOCs, community college, specialty career training schools, or simply on the job. Their unholy alliance in the university system is making both worse. Education for its own sake is dragged down by people who don't want to be there and don't really have the mental horsepower but are simply collecting a credential on their way to a job. It's made unaffordable to those who actually want it by all this demand from people who just want credentials. Career training is dragged down by adherence to the structures and costs associated with liberal education (dorms, classrooms, libraries, etc), slowed down by all that "distracting" liberal education imposed along the way. It's time the two were severed entirely.

ulucs 10y ago

You can already find a reasonable substitute for a 2-year Masters in CS [1]. MIT Open Courseware has more classes than you can take in four years. [1] http://omscs.gatech.edu/ http://omscs.gatech.edu/