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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

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.

_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.