6 ms·

World's First Massive Online Degree Program Starts Today

102 points by ibsathish 13y ago

busoni 13y ago
For more information on the cross section of those admitted, see this article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-admits-first-cohort-ahead-online-masters-degree-program-launch http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-a...
RafiqM 13y ago
Since when is a 375 person class massive? I'm all for what Udacity, Coursera, and others are trying to do, but there have been proper online universities such as the Open University doing this for years with hundreds of types of degrees, and with bigger classes. Let's put the "massive" back in "MooC". Also, $7k? I can get a on-campus CS masters in a world top 100 university here in Ireland for that price. I guess education in the US must be ultra expensive.
- repsilat 13y ago
  > Since when is a 375 person class massive That isn't all -- none of the classes actually have 375 students. There are several classes being offered per semester, and most students are doing only one or two. I can't find the figure at the moment, but iirc class sizes are ~150.
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  Everything that is near-socialized in other western industrialized countries is paradoxically more expensive here. 3 Years of law school is $150k, not counting actual cost of living. Schools run in the realm of $14k to $50k a year in tuition costs alone.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Out of interest, why can't you do law (or indeed medicine) as a first degree in the US?
    - bgilroy26 13y ago
      On a mechanical level, a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools. On a more practical level, the schools that are good enough to land you a job as a doctor/lawyer are all so competitive that a hole in your CV like not having a bachelor's degree when everyone else has one is a real disadvantage.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        "a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools" Yes, I know that - but why have this requirement - as far as I know most other countries don't (certainly the UK doesn't).
        richardfontana 13y ago
        The requirement that one have a bachelor's degree prior to entering a first-degree law program gradually took hold, mainly during the earlier part of the 20th century I believe. One reason was to make it harder for people (particularly people from immigrant communities) to enter the legal profession. Another reason was to increase the prestige of the legal profession by turning it into a graduate degree program. This latter reason is also behind two later developments (making it standard for the law degree program to be 3 years, and rebranding the name of the degree from the traditional LLB (Bachelor of Laws) to the pretentious JD (Juris Doctor). The 3-year standardization was not fully in place until the mid-20th century, IINM, and the LLB->JD rebranding largely took place during the early post-WW2 era. The JD rebranding no doubt had something to do with the high prestige enjoyed by the medical profession by the mid-20th century. As for why the bachelor's degree is required for medical schools, I don't know as much about that (I'm a lawyer and have studied the history of the US legal profession a bit). I suspect some of the reasons are the same (other than competition with the other profession, since I think the medical profession was the earlier mover here). Edit: postwar -> post-WW2 as I realize most HN readers may not have grown up with that long-default US usage of "postwar".
        arethuza 13y ago
- navyrain 13y ago
  Education, like most things in the US, is supported by debt. Tuition for a single semester at Georgia Tech, for an out of state student like myself, would run $14,861: http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spring14-all_fees.pdf http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spr...
  - whichdan 13y ago
    For anyone skimming over this post, $14,861/semester adds up to $118,888 over four years.
    - ajtaylor 13y ago
      And that doesn't include a place to live or food to eat. The hidden costs can be quite substantial as well.
      - ef47d35620c1 13y ago
        Or books either. Probably $1,000 in books per year. Maybe more.
    - zhaphod 13y ago
      This kind of sky high prices necessarily deprives a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA. This directly has an impact on the economy in the long run. Instead of funding an expensive military, US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education and recover it over the entire working life of the person in small bits. Better to have high national debt in return for an extremely well educated population instead of a white elephant of a military.
      - ctdonath 13y ago
        Supply and demand. The demand is extremely high, with every high school graduate being pressured to "go to college!" (to what end, few know) and student loans being so easy to get. The supply is limited, as a nation can only produce so many professors and places for them to teach. Your suggestion "US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education" (however paid for) would just increase the demand even more. You'd still be depriving a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA by the sheer mass of bodies signing up - and you'd still have a limited supply of teachers & facilities, so odds of the "deserving" getting what they need remains low. Demand outstripping supply, prices naturally rise until equilibrium. Making payment easier thru cheap debt or government handouts doesn't solve the problem because that increases the demand without improving supply. MOOCs, by improving the teacher/student ratio by orders of magnitude, does work toward solving the problem (and decreases costs as well!).
- eonil 13y ago
  I am curious whether the tuition fee is same on international (non-EU) students or non-research courses.
xerophtye 13y ago
wait, the admissions are closed?!?! What gives :( Btw it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs. Lower the drop-out rate by introducing an entry barrier. And also restict the class size to reach a manageable amount for actual class-like experience. Also, offer an ACTUAL degree, thus providing incentive to students to carry on with the program.
- polymatter 13y ago
  "it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs ... " So its exactly the same as a traditional distance course then? In what way does this solve any of the problems of MOOCs? (And I question whether MOOCs should even look at drop-out rates as a failure, but thats another rant) Its not "massive" by any stretches of the imagination. It just happens to be an online course. I welcome the age of online degrees and I hope the trend continues and that they can scale it to become 'massive' in the future without damaging the prestige of the degree. But they have a way to go yet.
freigeist 13y ago
I like Udacity's new focus on courses designed by companies. Traditional education is far too detached from what is required in industry, and has trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation.
- nightski 13y ago
  Funny, as I have found most of the newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness (Intro to Hadoop/MapReduce took a few hours and barely covered the basics). The old Artificial Intelligence or Parallel Programming are probably some of the best on the site.
  - freigeist 13y ago
    The newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness Interesting. I have to admit that I didn't participate in one of the newer coures yet. Sure, good ideas != good execution.
  - dferlemann 13y ago
    That's my general impression as well. That's why I didn't get a master in CS rather a MBA which is kind of relaxing and fun (my company offered for my master degree, otherwise I'd never go... ). Pretty much all CS master courses not that much in depth in comparison to an engineering master degree. And all these tech degree are quite "generic", which greatly reduce their usefulness in real life. I feel like graduate school are for people who do not know what they want or interested in at the moment. Once they do, you already locked up in that degree plan, and have no time to go ahead implement the idea. I much prefer to take classes from edX-like course education sites which I'm not obligated to anything. Once I feel I got a hang of this new field, I can just go and do my stuff.
- kjjw 13y ago
  Ha, yeah, very funny.
eonil 13y ago
Does U.S.(or any other country) government recognize this degree for working visa or immigration? (H-1B / green card)
- repsilat 13y ago
  You can't get a visa to study this degree inside the US, but Georgia Tech has said that the actual degree given at the end will be the same as that given to on-campus students. It is a "Masters in Computer Science" -- the "Online" bit is only for marketing and internal administrative purposes (or so I've been led to believe.)
dmunoz 13y ago
A few thoughts: 2,360 people applied, each paying a $50 admission fee [0]. That's a cool 118k for admissions triaging. Also on that page, we can see they originally said up to 600 people would be admitted for the pilot program. They admitted 375, with some deferring admission. Maybe the entire 225 other people deferred, but if not I wonder why they scaled back the pilot program. The average age is 35 for the pilot program vs. 24 for on-campus masters. Interesting, but not very surprising. I'm not far past the on-campus age, but I'm keeping my eyes on such programs for the future. The specialities they plan to offer is also in [0]. When I first read that page, I was saddened not to see any options related to programming languages. My only other major speciality interest was operating systems, but I burnt out on that a little. The software development process material sounds interesting. I bet there will be a lot of interest in the AI/Robots and machine learning specialities through this program. I wonder when the courses will be made available for free? An early post about the program promised that "the bare content will be available free of charge." [1] I was hoping to get an idea of what the courses would be like early this year. I don't see anything on Udacity about the courses at the moment. All that said, I'm excited about this program by Udacity and Georgia Tech, even given the apparent failure of MOOCs we have been hearing about. I say apparent, as I think measuring percent-to-complete is misguided, as I know I have gained plenty of knowledge from courses being offered without completing them. The movement to corporate sponsored project courses is interesting, but I'm not a big fan of the idea to pay to "commit to your success" [2]. The extra guidance will be a boon for some people, though. [0] https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech [1] http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-online.html http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-o... [2] https://www.udacity.com/success https://www.udacity.com/success
dragonwriter 13y ago
It's a not particularly massive online degree program using similar mechanisms to those used in MOOCs for classes—but it's not the first such program by any stretch of the imagination. Such programs are actually older than free MOOCs, and a number of instutions have had them for years; Kaplan has several, including a JD program. This seems to be the first to try to leverage the attention to MOOCs in te marketing, and might be the first non-professional graduate program of the type.
- James_Duval 13y ago
  I have to admit I don't see the difference between what Udacity are doing in this particular course and what Open University has been doing for years.
  - philosophus 13y ago
    Less Silicon Valley investment in OU would be my guess.
  - cma 13y ago
    MOOC! YouTube!
noelwelsh 13y ago
Most interesting to me was this: "88% of the applicants are US-based as compared to 10% for the on-campus degree." My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. At lot of international students do come to the US, but that's for traditional on-campus education. If you're not going all-in in that manner, might as well attend a local institution for a fraction of the cost. This kinda puts paid to some of the MOOC rhetoric of opening education to the masses. On the other hand, I'm really happy to see Udacity developing a viable business model. Coursera has received a lot more publicity, with their wider range of courses, but haven't seem to put as much emphasis on developed a sustainable income stream. I like what both of these companies do and would like to see them stick around.
- tinkerdol 13y ago
  >My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. Yep! That would be my guess too. As an American who immigrated to Europe for an affordable Master's degree, I can understand both sides of this. $7K would have sounded completely reasonable to me 5 years ago, but now after I have paid only 500 Euros a semester, that is my new threshold for what I'd probably be willing to pay... Not that there is any strict logic behind what an education is or is not "worth," but compared to other opportunities there is no reason for me to pay more.
- kriro 13y ago
  I think many MOOC studies show that while "the poor girl in Afghanistan" is theoretically possible and a nice heart-warming story, the reality is that it's mostly used by already fairly well educated Caucasian males from well developed countries. [classes are also mostly not completed etc.] I'm really wondering why that is the case and feel like they should focus a lot on fixing this because bringing great education to people that otherwise can't get it would be the real breakthrough (insert solar powered mini-TV story by Christensen for the old compete with nonconsumption here) Either way I hope this prototype succeeds and which them luck.
- norswap 13y ago
  Interestingly, 8k€ is what it would cost an American for a year's tuition in Belgium (where I'm from). For Belgians, it's less than 1k€. I don't understand why studying in Europe is not a more popular choice amongst young Americans.
sarojt 13y ago
This is the beginning of a revolution for affordable,accessible education.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kriro 13y ago
Some dreaming on my part... I'm rooting for this to work out. If you can do it alongside a job they could very well "compete with nonconsumption" of sorts. This already exists on somewhat large scale in some countries. The biggest (by enrolment) university in Germany is a "Fernuniversität" Ultimately I hope these take off, prices go down (they become essentially free with payments for taking tests i.e. universities become more certification agencies). Hope the brand name of universities will be measured by the quality of the free education they provide in the future. 7k$ is not a price point that excites me. And of course I hope this leads to the non-online classes getting better and better as they have to provide truely great value. [especially for CS I could also see companies tapping in and offering some sort of mentoring/intern programs]
- GFischer 13y ago
  I had to look up "Fernuniversität" (Google Translate says it's "distance university") I guess you're referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen "a public research university focused on distance teaching"
  - kriro 13y ago
    Yes, sorry for leaving that untranslated. It's distance learning/teaching and that's the university I was referring to. There are also a couple of more focused distance learning offers, usually started by some professor and then spun out as a not for profit (usually focused on a MA in a single field) which can be pricey (5-10k Euro for a MA).
someguy235 13y ago
I'm one of the students that was admitted to this first round of classes. I've been taking MOOC's since the first round of Stanford courses in 2011, so I was excited to see this program develop just as I was applying to other graduate schools. Admission for the first round was very limited to keep it manageable while they address any issues that come up early in the new program (and there have been a few, though nothing major). I think the original idea was to offer 6 classes and allow 100 students per class - 600 total. But only 5 classes ended up being offered, and the total acceptance was lowered further as students will take more than one class at a time. Within a few semesters they intend to accept anyone who meets the qualifications, with no regard to class size. Regarding the cost, it is in fact revolutionary for US residents. My bill for the one class I'm taking was $700 ($400 in flat fees and $100 per credit hour). My next choice of school was NC State which would have cost several times that even though I'm an NC resident. A good out of state school, even a public one, would have likely been unaffordable to me. At this rate my employer's limited education reimbursement program will cover the entire cost of my degree with GaTech.
- Omnipresent 13y ago
  I am very interested in this program and will be applying for the Summer 2014. I've also been taking online courses off and on at Coursera, Udacity, and Stanford. Currently, I'm writing my statement of purpose and background essay. Do you think your history of taking online classes was significant to your admission? I'd also appreciate any pointers for SoP...
Eleutheria 13y ago
Make it free and you'll have a million applicants. That's disruptive.
marsay 13y ago
Why would anyone pay for a degree, let alone online degree, is still a mystery for me. You don't need a degree if you are really interested in computer science.
- th0114nd 13y ago
  (Enough of) Education has been free since at least 2010 in my experience. Employability is not.

102 points by ibsathish 13y ago

For more information on the cross section of those admitted, see this article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-admits-first-cohort-ahead-online-masters-degree-program-launch http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-a...

RafiqM 13y ago

Since when is a 375 person class massive? I'm all for what Udacity, Coursera, and others are trying to do, but there have been proper online universities such as the Open University doing this for years with hundreds of types of degrees, and with bigger classes. Let's put the "massive" back in "MooC". Also, $7k? I can get a on-campus CS masters in a world top 100 university here in Ireland for that price. I guess education in the US must be ultra expensive.

repsilat 13y ago
> Since when is a 375 person class massive That isn't all -- none of the classes actually have 375 students. There are several classes being offered per semester, and most students are doing only one or two. I can't find the figure at the moment, but iirc class sizes are ~150.
mmanfrin 13y ago
Everything that is near-socialized in other western industrialized countries is paradoxically more expensive here. 3 Years of law school is $150k, not counting actual cost of living. Schools run in the realm of $14k to $50k a year in tuition costs alone.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Out of interest, why can't you do law (or indeed medicine) as a first degree in the US?
  - bgilroy26 13y ago
    On a mechanical level, a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools. On a more practical level, the schools that are good enough to land you a job as a doctor/lawyer are all so competitive that a hole in your CV like not having a bachelor's degree when everyone else has one is a real disadvantage.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      "a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools" Yes, I know that - but why have this requirement - as far as I know most other countries don't (certainly the UK doesn't).
      - richardfontana 13y ago
        The requirement that one have a bachelor's degree prior to entering a first-degree law program gradually took hold, mainly during the earlier part of the 20th century I believe. One reason was to make it harder for people (particularly people from immigrant communities) to enter the legal profession. Another reason was to increase the prestige of the legal profession by turning it into a graduate degree program. This latter reason is also behind two later developments (making it standard for the law degree program to be 3 years, and rebranding the name of the degree from the traditional LLB (Bachelor of Laws) to the pretentious JD (Juris Doctor). The 3-year standardization was not fully in place until the mid-20th century, IINM, and the LLB->JD rebranding largely took place during the early post-WW2 era. The JD rebranding no doubt had something to do with the high prestige enjoyed by the medical profession by the mid-20th century. As for why the bachelor's degree is required for medical schools, I don't know as much about that (I'm a lawyer and have studied the history of the US legal profession a bit). I suspect some of the reasons are the same (other than competition with the other profession, since I think the medical profession was the earlier mover here). Edit: postwar -> post-WW2 as I realize most HN readers may not have grown up with that long-default US usage of "postwar".
        arethuza 13y ago
navyrain 13y ago
Education, like most things in the US, is supported by debt. Tuition for a single semester at Georgia Tech, for an out of state student like myself, would run $14,861: http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spring14-all_fees.pdf http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spr...
- whichdan 13y ago
  For anyone skimming over this post, $14,861/semester adds up to $118,888 over four years.
  - ajtaylor 13y ago
    And that doesn't include a place to live or food to eat. The hidden costs can be quite substantial as well.
    - ef47d35620c1 13y ago
      Or books either. Probably $1,000 in books per year. Maybe more.
  - zhaphod 13y ago
    This kind of sky high prices necessarily deprives a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA. This directly has an impact on the economy in the long run. Instead of funding an expensive military, US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education and recover it over the entire working life of the person in small bits. Better to have high national debt in return for an extremely well educated population instead of a white elephant of a military.
    - ctdonath 13y ago
      Supply and demand. The demand is extremely high, with every high school graduate being pressured to "go to college!" (to what end, few know) and student loans being so easy to get. The supply is limited, as a nation can only produce so many professors and places for them to teach. Your suggestion "US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education" (however paid for) would just increase the demand even more. You'd still be depriving a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA by the sheer mass of bodies signing up - and you'd still have a limited supply of teachers & facilities, so odds of the "deserving" getting what they need remains low. Demand outstripping supply, prices naturally rise until equilibrium. Making payment easier thru cheap debt or government handouts doesn't solve the problem because that increases the demand without improving supply. MOOCs, by improving the teacher/student ratio by orders of magnitude, does work toward solving the problem (and decreases costs as well!).
eonil 13y ago
I am curious whether the tuition fee is same on international (non-EU) students or non-research courses.

xerophtye 13y ago

wait, the admissions are closed?!?! What gives :( Btw it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs. Lower the drop-out rate by introducing an entry barrier. And also restict the class size to reach a manageable amount for actual class-like experience. Also, offer an ACTUAL degree, thus providing incentive to students to carry on with the program.

polymatter 13y ago
"it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs ... " So its exactly the same as a traditional distance course then? In what way does this solve any of the problems of MOOCs? (And I question whether MOOCs should even look at drop-out rates as a failure, but thats another rant) Its not "massive" by any stretches of the imagination. It just happens to be an online course. I welcome the age of online degrees and I hope the trend continues and that they can scale it to become 'massive' in the future without damaging the prestige of the degree. But they have a way to go yet.

freigeist 13y ago

I like Udacity's new focus on courses designed by companies. Traditional education is far too detached from what is required in industry, and has trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation.

nightski 13y ago
Funny, as I have found most of the newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness (Intro to Hadoop/MapReduce took a few hours and barely covered the basics). The old Artificial Intelligence or Parallel Programming are probably some of the best on the site.
- freigeist 13y ago
  The newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness Interesting. I have to admit that I didn't participate in one of the newer coures yet. Sure, good ideas != good execution.
- dferlemann 13y ago
  That's my general impression as well. That's why I didn't get a master in CS rather a MBA which is kind of relaxing and fun (my company offered for my master degree, otherwise I'd never go... ). Pretty much all CS master courses not that much in depth in comparison to an engineering master degree. And all these tech degree are quite "generic", which greatly reduce their usefulness in real life. I feel like graduate school are for people who do not know what they want or interested in at the moment. Once they do, you already locked up in that degree plan, and have no time to go ahead implement the idea. I much prefer to take classes from edX-like course education sites which I'm not obligated to anything. Once I feel I got a hang of this new field, I can just go and do my stuff.
kjjw 13y ago
Ha, yeah, very funny.

eonil 13y ago

Does U.S.(or any other country) government recognize this degree for working visa or immigration? (H-1B / green card)

repsilat 13y ago
You can't get a visa to study this degree inside the US, but Georgia Tech has said that the actual degree given at the end will be the same as that given to on-campus students. It is a "Masters in Computer Science" -- the "Online" bit is only for marketing and internal administrative purposes (or so I've been led to believe.)

dmunoz 13y ago

A few thoughts: 2,360 people applied, each paying a $50 admission fee [0]. That's a cool 118k for admissions triaging. Also on that page, we can see they originally said up to 600 people would be admitted for the pilot program. They admitted 375, with some deferring admission. Maybe the entire 225 other people deferred, but if not I wonder why they scaled back the pilot program. The average age is 35 for the pilot program vs. 24 for on-campus masters. Interesting, but not very surprising. I'm not far past the on-campus age, but I'm keeping my eyes on such programs for the future. The specialities they plan to offer is also in [0]. When I first read that page, I was saddened not to see any options related to programming languages. My only other major speciality interest was operating systems, but I burnt out on that a little. The software development process material sounds interesting. I bet there will be a lot of interest in the AI/Robots and machine learning specialities through this program. I wonder when the courses will be made available for free? An early post about the program promised that "the bare content will be available free of charge." [1] I was hoping to get an idea of what the courses would be like early this year. I don't see anything on Udacity about the courses at the moment. All that said, I'm excited about this program by Udacity and Georgia Tech, even given the apparent failure of MOOCs we have been hearing about. I say apparent, as I think measuring percent-to-complete is misguided, as I know I have gained plenty of knowledge from courses being offered without completing them. The movement to corporate sponsored project courses is interesting, but I'm not a big fan of the idea to pay to "commit to your success" [2]. The extra guidance will be a boon for some people, though. [0] https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech [1] http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-online.html http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-o... [2] https://www.udacity.com/success https://www.udacity.com/success

dragonwriter 13y ago

It's a not particularly massive online degree program using similar mechanisms to those used in MOOCs for classes—but it's not the first such program by any stretch of the imagination. Such programs are actually older than free MOOCs, and a number of instutions have had them for years; Kaplan has several, including a JD program. This seems to be the first to try to leverage the attention to MOOCs in te marketing, and might be the first non-professional graduate program of the type.

James_Duval 13y ago
I have to admit I don't see the difference between what Udacity are doing in this particular course and what Open University has been doing for years.
- philosophus 13y ago
  Less Silicon Valley investment in OU would be my guess.
- cma 13y ago
  MOOC! YouTube!

noelwelsh 13y ago

Most interesting to me was this: "88% of the applicants are US-based as compared to 10% for the on-campus degree." My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. At lot of international students do come to the US, but that's for traditional on-campus education. If you're not going all-in in that manner, might as well attend a local institution for a fraction of the cost. This kinda puts paid to some of the MOOC rhetoric of opening education to the masses. On the other hand, I'm really happy to see Udacity developing a viable business model. Coursera has received a lot more publicity, with their wider range of courses, but haven't seem to put as much emphasis on developed a sustainable income stream. I like what both of these companies do and would like to see them stick around.

tinkerdol 13y ago
>My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. Yep! That would be my guess too. As an American who immigrated to Europe for an affordable Master's degree, I can understand both sides of this. $7K would have sounded completely reasonable to me 5 years ago, but now after I have paid only 500 Euros a semester, that is my new threshold for what I'd probably be willing to pay... Not that there is any strict logic behind what an education is or is not "worth," but compared to other opportunities there is no reason for me to pay more.
kriro 13y ago
I think many MOOC studies show that while "the poor girl in Afghanistan" is theoretically possible and a nice heart-warming story, the reality is that it's mostly used by already fairly well educated Caucasian males from well developed countries. [classes are also mostly not completed etc.] I'm really wondering why that is the case and feel like they should focus a lot on fixing this because bringing great education to people that otherwise can't get it would be the real breakthrough (insert solar powered mini-TV story by Christensen for the old compete with nonconsumption here) Either way I hope this prototype succeeds and which them luck.
norswap 13y ago
Interestingly, 8k€ is what it would cost an American for a year's tuition in Belgium (where I'm from). For Belgians, it's less than 1k€. I don't understand why studying in Europe is not a more popular choice amongst young Americans.

sarojt 13y ago

This is the beginning of a revolution for affordable,accessible education.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kriro 13y ago

Some dreaming on my part... I'm rooting for this to work out. If you can do it alongside a job they could very well "compete with nonconsumption" of sorts. This already exists on somewhat large scale in some countries. The biggest (by enrolment) university in Germany is a "Fernuniversität" Ultimately I hope these take off, prices go down (they become essentially free with payments for taking tests i.e. universities become more certification agencies). Hope the brand name of universities will be measured by the quality of the free education they provide in the future. 7k$ is not a price point that excites me. And of course I hope this leads to the non-online classes getting better and better as they have to provide truely great value. [especially for CS I could also see companies tapping in and offering some sort of mentoring/intern programs]

GFischer 13y ago
I had to look up "Fernuniversität" (Google Translate says it's "distance university") I guess you're referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen "a public research university focused on distance teaching"
- kriro 13y ago
  Yes, sorry for leaving that untranslated. It's distance learning/teaching and that's the university I was referring to. There are also a couple of more focused distance learning offers, usually started by some professor and then spun out as a not for profit (usually focused on a MA in a single field) which can be pricey (5-10k Euro for a MA).

someguy235 13y ago

I'm one of the students that was admitted to this first round of classes. I've been taking MOOC's since the first round of Stanford courses in 2011, so I was excited to see this program develop just as I was applying to other graduate schools. Admission for the first round was very limited to keep it manageable while they address any issues that come up early in the new program (and there have been a few, though nothing major). I think the original idea was to offer 6 classes and allow 100 students per class - 600 total. But only 5 classes ended up being offered, and the total acceptance was lowered further as students will take more than one class at a time. Within a few semesters they intend to accept anyone who meets the qualifications, with no regard to class size. Regarding the cost, it is in fact revolutionary for US residents. My bill for the one class I'm taking was $700 ($400 in flat fees and $100 per credit hour). My next choice of school was NC State which would have cost several times that even though I'm an NC resident. A good out of state school, even a public one, would have likely been unaffordable to me. At this rate my employer's limited education reimbursement program will cover the entire cost of my degree with GaTech.

Omnipresent 13y ago
I am very interested in this program and will be applying for the Summer 2014. I've also been taking online courses off and on at Coursera, Udacity, and Stanford. Currently, I'm writing my statement of purpose and background essay. Do you think your history of taking online classes was significant to your admission? I'd also appreciate any pointers for SoP...

Eleutheria 13y ago

Make it free and you'll have a million applicants. That's disruptive.

marsay 13y ago

Why would anyone pay for a degree, let alone online degree, is still a mystery for me. You don't need a degree if you are really interested in computer science.

th0114nd 13y ago
(Enough of) Education has been free since at least 2010 in my experience. Employability is not.