4 ms·

But it is educating more people for less money.

by waterlesscloud 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
saraid216 13y ago
Can you enumerate the costs involved so that we can see how much less they are?
- psbp 13y ago
  4 courses at coursera: $0 4 courses at my local state university: $5000 - Hell lets be a little bit more equitable: 4 courses at coursera with the signature track: $200 4 courses at my local community college: $400
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I think the question was about costs of providing the service, not the tuition charged to students. How much does it cost to produce and operate a MOOC, in terms of total resources put into it? It's a bit difficult to account for, because in this early stage there is quite a bit of unaccounted-for labor. For example, there is some cross-subsidy from existing universities, because much of the Coursera/Udacity curriculum-dev and teaching work is done by professors who're drawing a full-time salary from a university (not from Coursera or Udacity). Nonetheless it'd be interesting to see some kind of ballpark estimate of how many total resources it takes to put together and teach a Coursera course, if hypothetically they were actually all billed.
    - psbp 13y ago
      I couldn't imagine the costs of running an online class being more than a brick and mortar.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        That's the thing: if we're going to make claims about costs, we need to stop imagining them and actually run numbers. The numbers might be wrong, incomplete, or poorly chosen/framed, but those things can be pointed out and discussed.
        fspeech 13y ago
        There are two types of costs. First fixed cost that can be amortized such as professor's time. The cost is lower if it can be amortized over more students: MOOC 10000 students enrolled x 10% completion = 1000 students Stanford 100 students x 100% completion = 100 students So MOOC can potentially amortize over many more students and thus lower the cost to serve each student. In addition at least for instruction purpose the cost of real estate: MOOC negligible Stanford owner's capitalized rent equivalent for the classroom The second kind of cost is variable cost that is associated with each student: MOOC: video streaming cost * 10 (to account for 10% completion rate; being very conservative here since students who don't complete likely will also not consume the allotted video bandwidth) Stanford: transportation cost and student's time to get to and from the classroom; additional room and board living on or near campus vs living at home etc
        _delirium 13y ago
        I'm not entirely sure the faculty cost will be lower longer-term, but it depends on a lot of factors that influence how the market will develop, so I can't say for sure. One reason I think it might turn out higher is that MOOCs may be taught by fewer but more super-star professors than traditional universities. Right now the difference between a top and a mediocre professor in pay is not huge, maybe 2x-3x. But if MOOCs succeed in producing really massive-scale courses, the most popular, charismatic professors could become real media superstars. And if they do, and the market is big and competitive enough to support it, they might be able to garner huge salaries through bidding wars between MOOC providers. For example, imagine that someone like Richard Feynman, rather than giving his famous lecture series at Caltech for his regular Caltech salary, were doing it in a future era of well-developed MOOCs. He announces he's going to do one final series of physics lectures, but he hasn't decided which MOOC company he's going to do it for. I bet he could negotiate a huge fee for that, much more than even a top-end professor is currently paid. Moving back to the modern day, what if, say, Elon Musk offered to teach a MOOC? You could go for a cheaper, less well-known lecturer, but then you risk looking like the 2nd-rate MOOC company compared to your competitors. If that's how the market develops, MOOCs might have to pay fees closer to what the public-speaking circuit currently pays prominent lecturers, if they want to attract the top speakers. And those fees are orders of magnitudes higher than what a professor currently makes.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    1997 Cambridge and Oxford University: FREE 1998 University tuition fees: 1000 GBP/yr 2004 University tuition fees: 3000 GBP/yr 2012 University tuition fees: 9000 GBP/yr Thanks Tony Blair.
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Call it 7,000 undergrad students at Stanford. 80,000 courses complete at Udacity would be about 11 courses per student, or a very solid academic year of courses. So we could reasonably say the number of Udacity student-courses complete is similar to a year of Stanford's. Call it $40,000 for a Stanford undergrad for a year. A total of $280,000,000 for those 7000 undergrads. Udacity has raised $22 million. So an entire order of magnitude less than Stanford tuition costs for a similar number of student-courses complete. Of course Stanford tuition doesn't just go to classroom operations, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Doesn't make an order-of-magnitude change, but two quibbles with the numbers: 1. Stanford sticker-price tuition is ~$44k, but a very small percentage of students pay full price. For example anyone whose family earns less than $100k/year (!) pays no tuition at all. A ballpark guess at average tuition actually paid is ~$20k, though I can't find an official number. Plus Stanford is probably not really the right peer; Udacity is competing to a large extent (in terms of who they might conceivably displace) with cheaper education providers, like community colleges or even the Cal State system. 2. In addition to the $22m, Udacity is currently getting some $millions in donated labor from universities, which are lending out their professors to develop Udacity curricula and teach courses as part of experimental partnership agreements. Long-term it seems that Udacity will need to pay for this labor themselves, if it's to be revenue-neutral rather than cross-subsidized by universities.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      1 - It's not about what the students themselves pay, it's about the cost. And I picked Stanford as sort of middle of the road cost-wise for private education. Public schools are of course subsidized heavily by tax dollars, which reduces tuition but certainly not the actual cost of the education. As far as quality, Udacity instructors and courses are far, far above a typical community college. 2. I picked Udacity since their courses are custom developed for the platform. Coursera courses are often very similar to the courses the instructors developed at their "day job" univeristies, the Udacity courses aren't really. They're new beasts.

But it is educating more people for less money.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

saraid216 13y ago

Can you enumerate the costs involved so that we can see how much less they are?

psbp 13y ago
4 courses at coursera: $0 4 courses at my local state university: $5000 - Hell lets be a little bit more equitable: 4 courses at coursera with the signature track: $200 4 courses at my local community college: $400
- _delirium 13y ago
  I think the question was about costs of providing the service, not the tuition charged to students. How much does it cost to produce and operate a MOOC, in terms of total resources put into it? It's a bit difficult to account for, because in this early stage there is quite a bit of unaccounted-for labor. For example, there is some cross-subsidy from existing universities, because much of the Coursera/Udacity curriculum-dev and teaching work is done by professors who're drawing a full-time salary from a university (not from Coursera or Udacity). Nonetheless it'd be interesting to see some kind of ballpark estimate of how many total resources it takes to put together and teach a Coursera course, if hypothetically they were actually all billed.
  - psbp 13y ago
    I couldn't imagine the costs of running an online class being more than a brick and mortar.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      That's the thing: if we're going to make claims about costs, we need to stop imagining them and actually run numbers. The numbers might be wrong, incomplete, or poorly chosen/framed, but those things can be pointed out and discussed.
      - fspeech 13y ago
        There are two types of costs. First fixed cost that can be amortized such as professor's time. The cost is lower if it can be amortized over more students: MOOC 10000 students enrolled x 10% completion = 1000 students Stanford 100 students x 100% completion = 100 students So MOOC can potentially amortize over many more students and thus lower the cost to serve each student. In addition at least for instruction purpose the cost of real estate: MOOC negligible Stanford owner's capitalized rent equivalent for the classroom The second kind of cost is variable cost that is associated with each student: MOOC: video streaming cost * 10 (to account for 10% completion rate; being very conservative here since students who don't complete likely will also not consume the allotted video bandwidth) Stanford: transportation cost and student's time to get to and from the classroom; additional room and board living on or near campus vs living at home etc
        _delirium 13y ago
        I'm not entirely sure the faculty cost will be lower longer-term, but it depends on a lot of factors that influence how the market will develop, so I can't say for sure. One reason I think it might turn out higher is that MOOCs may be taught by fewer but more super-star professors than traditional universities. Right now the difference between a top and a mediocre professor in pay is not huge, maybe 2x-3x. But if MOOCs succeed in producing really massive-scale courses, the most popular, charismatic professors could become real media superstars. And if they do, and the market is big and competitive enough to support it, they might be able to garner huge salaries through bidding wars between MOOC providers. For example, imagine that someone like Richard Feynman, rather than giving his famous lecture series at Caltech for his regular Caltech salary, were doing it in a future era of well-developed MOOCs. He announces he's going to do one final series of physics lectures, but he hasn't decided which MOOC company he's going to do it for. I bet he could negotiate a huge fee for that, much more than even a top-end professor is currently paid. Moving back to the modern day, what if, say, Elon Musk offered to teach a MOOC? You could go for a cheaper, less well-known lecturer, but then you risk looking like the 2nd-rate MOOC company compared to your competitors. If that's how the market develops, MOOCs might have to pay fees closer to what the public-speaking circuit currently pays prominent lecturers, if they want to attract the top speakers. And those fees are orders of magnitudes higher than what a professor currently makes.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  1997 Cambridge and Oxford University: FREE 1998 University tuition fees: 1000 GBP/yr 2004 University tuition fees: 3000 GBP/yr 2012 University tuition fees: 9000 GBP/yr Thanks Tony Blair.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Call it 7,000 undergrad students at Stanford. 80,000 courses complete at Udacity would be about 11 courses per student, or a very solid academic year of courses. So we could reasonably say the number of Udacity student-courses complete is similar to a year of Stanford's. Call it $40,000 for a Stanford undergrad for a year. A total of $280,000,000 for those 7000 undergrads. Udacity has raised $22 million. So an entire order of magnitude less than Stanford tuition costs for a similar number of student-courses complete. Of course Stanford tuition doesn't just go to classroom operations, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
- _delirium 13y ago
  Doesn't make an order-of-magnitude change, but two quibbles with the numbers: 1. Stanford sticker-price tuition is ~$44k, but a very small percentage of students pay full price. For example anyone whose family earns less than $100k/year (!) pays no tuition at all. A ballpark guess at average tuition actually paid is ~$20k, though I can't find an official number. Plus Stanford is probably not really the right peer; Udacity is competing to a large extent (in terms of who they might conceivably displace) with cheaper education providers, like community colleges or even the Cal State system. 2. In addition to the $22m, Udacity is currently getting some $millions in donated labor from universities, which are lending out their professors to develop Udacity curricula and teach courses as part of experimental partnership agreements. Long-term it seems that Udacity will need to pay for this labor themselves, if it's to be revenue-neutral rather than cross-subsidized by universities.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    1 - It's not about what the students themselves pay, it's about the cost. And I picked Stanford as sort of middle of the road cost-wise for private education. Public schools are of course subsidized heavily by tax dollars, which reduces tuition but certainly not the actual cost of the education. As far as quality, Udacity instructors and courses are far, far above a typical community college. 2. I picked Udacity since their courses are custom developed for the platform. Coursera courses are often very similar to the courses the instructors developed at their "day job" univeristies, the Udacity courses aren't really. They're new beasts.