8 ms·

College, all you can learn, $99/month

117 points by sethg 17y ago

puredemo 17y ago
Four full courses in 2 months... amazing. I wonder how many of these credits are transferable? Edit: It appears there are currently nine courses that can be taken for transfer credit. http://www.straighterline.com/courses/ http://www.straighterline.com/courses/
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  EDIT: accreditation via some partners, varying flexibility: http://www.straighterline.com/about/partners/partner-college-details.cfm http://www.straighterline.com/about/partners/partner-college... Personally, I don't care too much - this is very interesting to me. I have thought about completing my education for years but been put of by the time commitment and cost. For me it's about gaining academic and self-disciplinary skills, not so much about the letters. I am bad with long-term horizons, so the ability to focus on the goal rather than the time commitment - and save money while doing so - is huge to me. Thanks, sethg.
adityakothadiya 17y ago
Too bad that there was no URL of StraighterLine on the first page of article. In a quick glance, it was hard to find which site/service they are talking about. Here is it for your convenience - http://StraighterLine.com http://StraighterLine.com
- Estragon 17y ago
  Oh, yeah, that was tough. It was only the top hit in google for the first thing I tried, "straigherline" (note the typo.)
tokenadult 17y ago
"StraighterLine is the brainchild of a man named Burck Smith, an Internet entrepreneur bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and--most importantly--fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge." This is the opportunity for Web-based services hackers in this industry. There are huge amounts of spending devoted to "education" (currently defined mostly as school attendance), and anything that can make that massive spending more efficient has got to be good for society, and good for the early promoters of the new efficiencies. Especially anything that reduces the expense of higher education should be appealing as student debt continues to pile up. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204731804574388682129316614-lMyQjAxMDA5MDAwMzEwNDMyWj.html http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020473180...
- gojomo 17y ago
  StraighterLine sounds as close as you can get to David Gelernter's "Tracks and Clusters" concept within the framework of traditional courses and credits. See Gelernter at: http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter
rick888 17y ago
College is as much about the experience as it is the education. It is a time for many kids to get out on their own and learn to be independent. It is also one of the last chances for you to be around many people your own age (and one of the last chances you will have to be around many single men/women). Once you start working, it's different. It's more difficult to meet people and you have an entire set of new responsibilities. Although I don't think it will completely replace college, it might work well for people already working (and don't have the time to actually sit in class for a few hours a day).
- jerf 17y ago
  Yes, that's the talking point we'll be hearing from the colleges. I have news for you. There's no way in hell people are going to value that "experience" to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year when a credible alternative emerges. And you see, that's the real problem. People don't spend money by deciding whether a thing is "good" or "bad". People decide whether something is the best thing they can do with their money. There is no way blowing that much money on an expensive college that produces the same degree as the much cheaper alternative is going to be a popular choice. (Might I add that the online college will also let you go at your own pace, and is even quite likely to have superior courses, once all the tech and experience is in place.) Arguing that college is "good" won't win. You have to establish it as the best choice. There's no way it will meet that bar. You can berate them all you like for making choices you feel are wrong, but it's hopeless. Live-in colleges are doomed.... long term, anyhow. Other things will spring up to fill the social void. They won't be the same. There will be a chaotic transition period. They'll be worse in some ways and better in others, and old-fogeys will bemoan the ways in which they are worse without seeing (or comprehending) the better ones. All terribly predictable. All but unstoppable.
  - sharpn 17y ago
    We've had an acredited distance learning university in the UK for 20 years - the degrees issued are considered equal to the equivalent course in normal universities (although less prestigious). The idea was copied/partnered in the US - I think in the early '80s, but it never took off there. I do agree that live-in colleges will likely be overtaken by some form of virtual equivalent, but it's not a 100% done deal that this will happen.
rms 17y ago
The essential hack: >So he devised a clever way under the accreditation wall, brokering deals whereby a handful of accredited traditional and for-profit institutions agreed to become “partner colleges” that would allow students to transfer in StraighterLine courses for credit. After the credits were accepted—laundered, a cynic might say—students could theoretically transfer them anywhere else in the higher education system. The partner colleges stood to benefit from the deal as well. They all had their own online endeavors, but those required hefty marketing investments to keep new students enrolling. The schools reasoned that the StraighterLine relationship would introduce them to potential new students, with some StraighterLine customers sticking around to take their more advanced (and expensive) courses.
- hristov 17y ago
  Right, so we get more corruption that further invalidates my degree for which I actually had to do a lot of very difficult actual work. As if accrediting places like University of Phoenix and IDT wasn't enough.
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    How would you substantiate your implicit claim that student in on-line courses don't do "real work". I can't see the slightest difference between an accredited community college and accredit on-line college. Of course, all these schools have individual reputations and accreditation doesn't immediately give a school the reputation of Harvard.
    - steveplace 17y ago
      University of Phoenix is nationally accredited-- and that's bad. Most universities are regionally accredited, which means if you get a degree from Phoenix and you want to pursue a masters at another uni, you're degree may not count.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    While I don't have a degree at all, myself, when I get one, it will probably include quite a lot of distance learning, given that I have a full time job I'm loathe to give up. Can you explain in what way my earning a degree will invalidate yours?
bcl 17y ago
Interesting. But the classes are all fairly low level. I need someplace where I can finish a BSCS for $99 a month :)
- callmeed 17y ago
  Same here. I'm only roughly 30 quarter units from my CS degree ... but I don't live near my old school nor do I have much desire to be on campus a lot.
- andreyf 17y ago
  "Low-level"? More like scam. The "College Algebra" [1] covers what high-school curriculum covered in either sophomore or junior year (depending on whether they were in the "AP track"). Claiming that "learning to graph linear, quadratic, absolute value, and piecewise-defined functions, and solve and graph exponential and logarithmic equations" is "college math" is plain false. So not only are the classes "low-level" (because, at least in my Math courses, we didn't get very far before high-bandwidth back-and-forth interaction with the professor becomes essential to the process), but it completely misses the point of college for most people who attend it. No online course could have replaced the socratic questioning my PolySci professor gave us (he told us he modeled the teaching after his professor who would use it to make students cry, but toned it down a bit), or the vigorous debate with a Elizabethan poetry professor about whether the themes in Shakespeare were comprable to modern soap operas, or the engagement in political and academic groups. Sure, it might replace crappy community colleges or degrees for middle aged people seeking to improve their career, but it won't do much for the 17 year olds who are looking to form an identity and foothold in the world. (OTOH, the undergrad CS program at Rutgers could mostly have been replaced with online or self-study. I think that's because the undergrad CS program is so pressured into training tech workers that they can't be nearly as selective as the Math dept). 1. http://www.straighterline.com/courses/descriptions/algebra/ http://www.straighterline.com/courses/descriptions/algebra/
  - billswift 17y ago
    I guess you think the University of Maryland College Park is a scam school too? The MATH 115 Precalculus course I took there actually covered slightly less material than my Algebra II/Trig course I had taken several years earlier in HS.
wsprague 17y ago
I think the debates about online education confuse the different roles that educational institutions serve: 1. Impart knowledge. And when it comes to teaching grammar or differential equations, online education is probably a more effective delivery agent than classrooms ... sorry guys. 2. Train people in face-to-face social skills. Much important work is done in an educational environment by teaching people how to behave in their later professional careers. This goes FAR beyond technical skill, into things like how to make appropriate jokes, how to drop names, how to socialize off work, how to dress at what occasion, how not to expose the fact that you came from a poor background, etc, etc. I think high level centralized education is probably pretty good at this; some of this can be done online, but online interaction doesn't give you practice at face work. 3. Grow social networks with a high level of emotional charge. One goes to Yale largely so that one can become a Yale Alumn and mobilize those networks. This network building doesn't work without an emotional attachment to the university, though, and this is probably more easily cultivated when people are there in person, lose their virginity on campus, go to rituals together, etc. 4. Control the flow of people into various levels of the elite. I think there are a lot more capable people in the world than there are open positions, so education partly serves to withhold training and entitlement by imposing fairly arbitrary cutoffs for admission and by making people feel personally responsible for their prior lack of training (a lack which is generally due to their bad luck in being born into a less fortunate segment of society). Better to have unemployed pissed off illiterate peasants than unemployed pissed off educated folks -- the latter organize and execute revolutions while the former just break windows and make a lot of noise. This categorizing based on supposed talent begins at a very young age -- google "Pygmalion effect". Choking off the flow of talented people who might make trouble will be harder if education escapes its current stranglehold by the academy. 5. Provide physical equipment. If you need to provide access to lab equipment and libraries, it is more efficient to put them in one place and share them. This is obviously changing rapidly, with central libraries becoming obsolescent in many ways (not all though -- browsing the shelves is a good thing and impossible to do in the same way online). So, if we are discuss the pros and cons of online versus offline education, I think we should do it broken down more, either my way or some other. Two more comments -- it is pretty funny to hear professors going on about cheapening the value of a degree from Fort Whatever in Kansas. And as far as I am concerned, the sooner the internet bomb goes off in academia, the better.
raheemm 17y ago
Really, higher ed needs a major overhaul! Straighter liner is a start, but there needs to be more flexibility, less hyperbole classes and lower cost.
johnnybgoode 17y ago
This was a pretty good article. It's long, but if you read the whole thing, you'll see that the biggest challenge these newer institutions face is the accreditation problem. The hack they used to get around that was clever, but as we could've guessed, it didn't last forever. I believe the only long-term solution to this is to encourage people to bypass accreditation entirely. Yes, many jobs still have legal barriers (i.e., you can't be hired unless you have a government-approved credential), but for those that don't, the barriers are only psychological. I am working now to help eradicate these barriers. But whatever I do personally, I am confident that the situation will change in the future. (Also see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645523)
asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
If there's is a higher education bubble, then this is what might burst it. We desperately need cut throat price competition between colleges.
- steveplace 17y ago
  I don't think it will be this; rather, it will be the free and open accessibility to knowledge and discussion via MIT OCW, Stanford lecture youtube channels, etc.
  - psawaya 17y ago
    As great as those are, they still don't provide a replacement for student interactions with a professor and/or tutoring, which are things a site like this could conceivably provide for a monthly fee.
tedunangst 17y ago
Damn, I read the whole thing to find out what happened to the woman and her four courses that would cost "roughly the gross domestic product of a small Central American nation at an elite private university", but it doesn't say. So she spent $200, learned some maths, and then... What happened?
- christopherolah 17y ago
  My impression was that it was a developing story: they only told it to the point that events had progressed to. It mentioned her getting laid off, so this seems likely.
rsingel 17y ago
But, but, isn't part of the point of college to keep 18 to 22 year olds out of the job market? And perhaps more to the point, the real function of college is supposed to be creating citizens, not just employees. That said, it's pretty clever. Even smarter would be finding a way to accredit classes that use Berkeley and MIT's online course material, including their YouTube lectures. Add on a virtual TA and you could get to $49 a month.
I_got_fifty 17y ago
My college costs $-957/month. I hate to be so smug, but Scandinavian-socialism really does rule.
- jrmurad 17y ago
  It must be quite an education-system to teach math like that. Elsewhere, one might be taught that a variable in calculating those costs would be the taxes paid to fund the college. Maybe you haven't paid much yet but I suspect that your parents may have and that you will (unless you emigrate soon after graduation.)
jerf 17y ago
A couple days ago there was some complaints that technology hasn't actually changed anyone's lives, and I made the claim that while we may be paused now while we consolidate some things, the changes are coming. Here's one for you now: In twenty years (by the time my son would be graduating), the centuries-old idea of college will probably be gone. I've been thinking about the implications of this article for the past couple of hours (since my previous posts), and I think it could very easily cut far deeper than people realize. Once we have ~$100/month college education, why wouldn't an advanced high schooler opt for that instead of standard high school classes as we see them now? And once the mental block of "schooling must take place in a school" is gotten past, what's going to prevent that from going ever-lower in age? Why wouldn't even a middle-schooler prefer to learn math at their own pace instead of locked to all of his or her classmates? And... once "school" consists to some significant degree of distance learning, what is the purpose of clocking in at a school building? Now, there are answers to that question (two-working-parent households using it for child care, for instance), but it's going to radically rewrite the school social contract. If this sort of thing even remotely succeeds it'll start rewriting more than just the college social contract, it's going to extend way down. (Of course today it's just introductory courses, but that is very, very correctable over the timespan I'm looking at here. This is a game-changing price point even if they triple it.)
- netsp 17y ago
  I think the interesting point to look at is the 'traditional' non-university institutions teaching university-like courses (Nursing, IT, etc.). They tend to move faster then anyone else because of size and their economy is more straightforward in most places. They provide education & accreditation in exchange for tuition. For this reason. They are moving towards self paced learning via the kinds of 'modules discussed here. They still have buildings and teachers (standing around or answering questions). But the distinction between this and online schooling is much harder to make.
- andreyf 17y ago
  In twenty years (by the time my son would be graduating), the centuries-old idea of college will probably be gone. The idea of college as it exists now isn't very old. The idea of centers of study and learning predates not just computers, but also books.
robryan 17y ago
The question is though, If I were to take one of these degrees on this website and pass it, how would it compare in a perspective employers mind to a 4 year cs major degree?
- astrec 17y ago
  This specific website? Or just a degree delivered online? In general, the only thing a CS degree tells me is that you had the fortitude to complete a CS degree, and perhaps (it's not a given) you might be able to practically apply some of what you learned. Things higher up on the list of considerations include experience (side projects count for graduates), natural ability, hunger, and cultural fit. Many in our technical team don't have even have a degree and of those that do, around half are not CS or IS degrees.
robryan 17y ago
Another point about online courses, it's would be like working from home as a one man startup. Unless your very driven, have good support around you or know friends doing the online courses as well, it could be a very lonely experience.
jbellis 17y ago
It's a real shame that the established players can use accreditation so well to prevent competition. I briefly taught at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumont_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumont_University, which used a more expensive hack to handle the accreditation problem: they bought an existing college. (Neumont is VC-backed; obviously that's not something you can bootstrap. It's also probably not something a $99/m model can afford anyway...)
clay 17y ago
This is cool, but I think it's missing something. My startup will address the something that it's missing. :)
glen 17y ago
Great article. Accreditation has to evolve. At www.nixty.com we are working on a form of open accreditation - or personal accreditation - that employers/peers can look at to assess a person's competencies. Degrees are still somewhat valid indicators of a person's knowledge, but their predictive value is steadily decreasing for a number of "anonymous institutions". What is needed, instead, is a form of personal accreditation that is based on test scores, work display (papers the individual has written that others can download/comment on), resume, and recommendations. We hope that this type of open accreditation will yield strong results that can help support the current form of accreditation.
jlintz 17y ago
I've found iTunes University to be a great resource for education, top level schools offering their course material is just great in so many ways. It's also interesting to see how courses at MIT compared to the same courses I took at my state university and realizing they are really not that all different.

117 points by sethg 17y ago

Four full courses in 2 months... amazing. I wonder how many of these credits are transferable? Edit: It appears there are currently nine courses that can be taken for transfer credit. http://www.straighterline.com/courses/ http://www.straighterline.com/courses/

anigbrowl 17y ago
EDIT: accreditation via some partners, varying flexibility: http://www.straighterline.com/about/partners/partner-college-details.cfm http://www.straighterline.com/about/partners/partner-college... Personally, I don't care too much - this is very interesting to me. I have thought about completing my education for years but been put of by the time commitment and cost. For me it's about gaining academic and self-disciplinary skills, not so much about the letters. I am bad with long-term horizons, so the ability to focus on the goal rather than the time commitment - and save money while doing so - is huge to me. Thanks, sethg.

adityakothadiya 17y ago

Too bad that there was no URL of StraighterLine on the first page of article. In a quick glance, it was hard to find which site/service they are talking about. Here is it for your convenience - http://StraighterLine.com http://StraighterLine.com

Estragon 17y ago
Oh, yeah, that was tough. It was only the top hit in google for the first thing I tried, "straigherline" (note the typo.)

tokenadult 17y ago

"StraighterLine is the brainchild of a man named Burck Smith, an Internet entrepreneur bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and--most importantly--fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge." This is the opportunity for Web-based services hackers in this industry. There are huge amounts of spending devoted to "education" (currently defined mostly as school attendance), and anything that can make that massive spending more efficient has got to be good for society, and good for the early promoters of the new efficiencies. Especially anything that reduces the expense of higher education should be appealing as student debt continues to pile up. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204731804574388682129316614-lMyQjAxMDA5MDAwMzEwNDMyWj.html http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020473180...

gojomo 17y ago
StraighterLine sounds as close as you can get to David Gelernter's "Tracks and Clusters" concept within the framework of traditional courses and credits. See Gelernter at: http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter

rick888 17y ago

College is as much about the experience as it is the education. It is a time for many kids to get out on their own and learn to be independent. It is also one of the last chances for you to be around many people your own age (and one of the last chances you will have to be around many single men/women). Once you start working, it's different. It's more difficult to meet people and you have an entire set of new responsibilities. Although I don't think it will completely replace college, it might work well for people already working (and don't have the time to actually sit in class for a few hours a day).

jerf 17y ago
Yes, that's the talking point we'll be hearing from the colleges. I have news for you. There's no way in hell people are going to value that "experience" to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year when a credible alternative emerges. And you see, that's the real problem. People don't spend money by deciding whether a thing is "good" or "bad". People decide whether something is the best thing they can do with their money. There is no way blowing that much money on an expensive college that produces the same degree as the much cheaper alternative is going to be a popular choice. (Might I add that the online college will also let you go at your own pace, and is even quite likely to have superior courses, once all the tech and experience is in place.) Arguing that college is "good" won't win. You have to establish it as the best choice. There's no way it will meet that bar. You can berate them all you like for making choices you feel are wrong, but it's hopeless. Live-in colleges are doomed.... long term, anyhow. Other things will spring up to fill the social void. They won't be the same. There will be a chaotic transition period. They'll be worse in some ways and better in others, and old-fogeys will bemoan the ways in which they are worse without seeing (or comprehending) the better ones. All terribly predictable. All but unstoppable.
- sharpn 17y ago
  We've had an acredited distance learning university in the UK for 20 years - the degrees issued are considered equal to the equivalent course in normal universities (although less prestigious). The idea was copied/partnered in the US - I think in the early '80s, but it never took off there. I do agree that live-in colleges will likely be overtaken by some form of virtual equivalent, but it's not a 100% done deal that this will happen.

rms 17y ago

The essential hack: >So he devised a clever way under the accreditation wall, brokering deals whereby a handful of accredited traditional and for-profit institutions agreed to become “partner colleges” that would allow students to transfer in StraighterLine courses for credit. After the credits were accepted—laundered, a cynic might say—students could theoretically transfer them anywhere else in the higher education system. The partner colleges stood to benefit from the deal as well. They all had their own online endeavors, but those required hefty marketing investments to keep new students enrolling. The schools reasoned that the StraighterLine relationship would introduce them to potential new students, with some StraighterLine customers sticking around to take their more advanced (and expensive) courses.

hristov 17y ago
Right, so we get more corruption that further invalidates my degree for which I actually had to do a lot of very difficult actual work. As if accrediting places like University of Phoenix and IDT wasn't enough.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  How would you substantiate your implicit claim that student in on-line courses don't do "real work". I can't see the slightest difference between an accredited community college and accredit on-line college. Of course, all these schools have individual reputations and accreditation doesn't immediately give a school the reputation of Harvard.
  - steveplace 17y ago
    University of Phoenix is nationally accredited-- and that's bad. Most universities are regionally accredited, which means if you get a degree from Phoenix and you want to pursue a masters at another uni, you're degree may not count.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  While I don't have a degree at all, myself, when I get one, it will probably include quite a lot of distance learning, given that I have a full time job I'm loathe to give up. Can you explain in what way my earning a degree will invalidate yours?

bcl 17y ago

Interesting. But the classes are all fairly low level. I need someplace where I can finish a BSCS for $99 a month :)

callmeed 17y ago
Same here. I'm only roughly 30 quarter units from my CS degree ... but I don't live near my old school nor do I have much desire to be on campus a lot.
andreyf 17y ago
"Low-level"? More like scam. The "College Algebra" [1] covers what high-school curriculum covered in either sophomore or junior year (depending on whether they were in the "AP track"). Claiming that "learning to graph linear, quadratic, absolute value, and piecewise-defined functions, and solve and graph exponential and logarithmic equations" is "college math" is plain false. So not only are the classes "low-level" (because, at least in my Math courses, we didn't get very far before high-bandwidth back-and-forth interaction with the professor becomes essential to the process), but it completely misses the point of college for most people who attend it. No online course could have replaced the socratic questioning my PolySci professor gave us (he told us he modeled the teaching after his professor who would use it to make students cry, but toned it down a bit), or the vigorous debate with a Elizabethan poetry professor about whether the themes in Shakespeare were comprable to modern soap operas, or the engagement in political and academic groups. Sure, it might replace crappy community colleges or degrees for middle aged people seeking to improve their career, but it won't do much for the 17 year olds who are looking to form an identity and foothold in the world. (OTOH, the undergrad CS program at Rutgers could mostly have been replaced with online or self-study. I think that's because the undergrad CS program is so pressured into training tech workers that they can't be nearly as selective as the Math dept). 1. http://www.straighterline.com/courses/descriptions/algebra/ http://www.straighterline.com/courses/descriptions/algebra/
- billswift 17y ago
  I guess you think the University of Maryland College Park is a scam school too? The MATH 115 Precalculus course I took there actually covered slightly less material than my Algebra II/Trig course I had taken several years earlier in HS.

wsprague 17y ago

I think the debates about online education confuse the different roles that educational institutions serve: 1. Impart knowledge. And when it comes to teaching grammar or differential equations, online education is probably a more effective delivery agent than classrooms ... sorry guys. 2. Train people in face-to-face social skills. Much important work is done in an educational environment by teaching people how to behave in their later professional careers. This goes FAR beyond technical skill, into things like how to make appropriate jokes, how to drop names, how to socialize off work, how to dress at what occasion, how not to expose the fact that you came from a poor background, etc, etc. I think high level centralized education is probably pretty good at this; some of this can be done online, but online interaction doesn't give you practice at face work. 3. Grow social networks with a high level of emotional charge. One goes to Yale largely so that one can become a Yale Alumn and mobilize those networks. This network building doesn't work without an emotional attachment to the university, though, and this is probably more easily cultivated when people are there in person, lose their virginity on campus, go to rituals together, etc. 4. Control the flow of people into various levels of the elite. I think there are a lot more capable people in the world than there are open positions, so education partly serves to withhold training and entitlement by imposing fairly arbitrary cutoffs for admission and by making people feel personally responsible for their prior lack of training (a lack which is generally due to their bad luck in being born into a less fortunate segment of society). Better to have unemployed pissed off illiterate peasants than unemployed pissed off educated folks -- the latter organize and execute revolutions while the former just break windows and make a lot of noise. This categorizing based on supposed talent begins at a very young age -- google "Pygmalion effect". Choking off the flow of talented people who might make trouble will be harder if education escapes its current stranglehold by the academy. 5. Provide physical equipment. If you need to provide access to lab equipment and libraries, it is more efficient to put them in one place and share them. This is obviously changing rapidly, with central libraries becoming obsolescent in many ways (not all though -- browsing the shelves is a good thing and impossible to do in the same way online). So, if we are discuss the pros and cons of online versus offline education, I think we should do it broken down more, either my way or some other. Two more comments -- it is pretty funny to hear professors going on about cheapening the value of a degree from Fort Whatever in Kansas. And as far as I am concerned, the sooner the internet bomb goes off in academia, the better.

raheemm 17y ago

Really, higher ed needs a major overhaul! Straighter liner is a start, but there needs to be more flexibility, less hyperbole classes and lower cost.

johnnybgoode 17y ago

This was a pretty good article. It's long, but if you read the whole thing, you'll see that the biggest challenge these newer institutions face is the accreditation problem. The hack they used to get around that was clever, but as we could've guessed, it didn't last forever. I believe the only long-term solution to this is to encourage people to bypass accreditation entirely. Yes, many jobs still have legal barriers (i.e., you can't be hired unless you have a government-approved credential), but for those that don't, the barriers are only psychological. I am working now to help eradicate these barriers. But whatever I do personally, I am confident that the situation will change in the future. (Also see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645523)

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago

If there's is a higher education bubble, then this is what might burst it. We desperately need cut throat price competition between colleges.

steveplace 17y ago
I don't think it will be this; rather, it will be the free and open accessibility to knowledge and discussion via MIT OCW, Stanford lecture youtube channels, etc.
- psawaya 17y ago
  As great as those are, they still don't provide a replacement for student interactions with a professor and/or tutoring, which are things a site like this could conceivably provide for a monthly fee.

tedunangst 17y ago

Damn, I read the whole thing to find out what happened to the woman and her four courses that would cost "roughly the gross domestic product of a small Central American nation at an elite private university", but it doesn't say. So she spent $200, learned some maths, and then... What happened?

christopherolah 17y ago
My impression was that it was a developing story: they only told it to the point that events had progressed to. It mentioned her getting laid off, so this seems likely.

rsingel 17y ago

But, but, isn't part of the point of college to keep 18 to 22 year olds out of the job market? And perhaps more to the point, the real function of college is supposed to be creating citizens, not just employees. That said, it's pretty clever. Even smarter would be finding a way to accredit classes that use Berkeley and MIT's online course material, including their YouTube lectures. Add on a virtual TA and you could get to $49 a month.

I_got_fifty 17y ago

My college costs $-957/month. I hate to be so smug, but Scandinavian-socialism really does rule.

jrmurad 17y ago
It must be quite an education-system to teach math like that. Elsewhere, one might be taught that a variable in calculating those costs would be the taxes paid to fund the college. Maybe you haven't paid much yet but I suspect that your parents may have and that you will (unless you emigrate soon after graduation.)

jerf 17y ago

A couple days ago there was some complaints that technology hasn't actually changed anyone's lives, and I made the claim that while we may be paused now while we consolidate some things, the changes are coming. Here's one for you now: In twenty years (by the time my son would be graduating), the centuries-old idea of college will probably be gone. I've been thinking about the implications of this article for the past couple of hours (since my previous posts), and I think it could very easily cut far deeper than people realize. Once we have ~$100/month college education, why wouldn't an advanced high schooler opt for that instead of standard high school classes as we see them now? And once the mental block of "schooling must take place in a school" is gotten past, what's going to prevent that from going ever-lower in age? Why wouldn't even a middle-schooler prefer to learn math at their own pace instead of locked to all of his or her classmates? And... once "school" consists to some significant degree of distance learning, what is the purpose of clocking in at a school building? Now, there are answers to that question (two-working-parent households using it for child care, for instance), but it's going to radically rewrite the school social contract. If this sort of thing even remotely succeeds it'll start rewriting more than just the college social contract, it's going to extend way down. (Of course today it's just introductory courses, but that is very, very correctable over the timespan I'm looking at here. This is a game-changing price point even if they triple it.)

netsp 17y ago
I think the interesting point to look at is the 'traditional' non-university institutions teaching university-like courses (Nursing, IT, etc.). They tend to move faster then anyone else because of size and their economy is more straightforward in most places. They provide education & accreditation in exchange for tuition. For this reason. They are moving towards self paced learning via the kinds of 'modules discussed here. They still have buildings and teachers (standing around or answering questions). But the distinction between this and online schooling is much harder to make.
andreyf 17y ago
In twenty years (by the time my son would be graduating), the centuries-old idea of college will probably be gone. The idea of college as it exists now isn't very old. The idea of centers of study and learning predates not just computers, but also books.

robryan 17y ago

The question is though, If I were to take one of these degrees on this website and pass it, how would it compare in a perspective employers mind to a 4 year cs major degree?

astrec 17y ago
This specific website? Or just a degree delivered online? In general, the only thing a CS degree tells me is that you had the fortitude to complete a CS degree, and perhaps (it's not a given) you might be able to practically apply some of what you learned. Things higher up on the list of considerations include experience (side projects count for graduates), natural ability, hunger, and cultural fit. Many in our technical team don't have even have a degree and of those that do, around half are not CS or IS degrees.

robryan 17y ago

Another point about online courses, it's would be like working from home as a one man startup. Unless your very driven, have good support around you or know friends doing the online courses as well, it could be a very lonely experience.

jbellis 17y ago

It's a real shame that the established players can use accreditation so well to prevent competition. I briefly taught at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumont_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumont_University, which used a more expensive hack to handle the accreditation problem: they bought an existing college. (Neumont is VC-backed; obviously that's not something you can bootstrap. It's also probably not something a $99/m model can afford anyway...)

clay 17y ago

This is cool, but I think it's missing something. My startup will address the something that it's missing. :)

glen 17y ago

Great article. Accreditation has to evolve. At www.nixty.com we are working on a form of open accreditation - or personal accreditation - that employers/peers can look at to assess a person's competencies. Degrees are still somewhat valid indicators of a person's knowledge, but their predictive value is steadily decreasing for a number of "anonymous institutions". What is needed, instead, is a form of personal accreditation that is based on test scores, work display (papers the individual has written that others can download/comment on), resume, and recommendations. We hope that this type of open accreditation will yield strong results that can help support the current form of accreditation.

jlintz 17y ago

I've found iTunes University to be a great resource for education, top level schools offering their course material is just great in so many ways. It's also interesting to see how courses at MIT compared to the same courses I took at my state university and realizing they are really not that all different.