8 ms·

Online Degrees That Are Seen as Official

84 points by Futurebot 12y ago

phamilton 12y ago
I'm surprised the Georgia Tech Online Masters in Computer Science[1] isn't mentioned in the article. [1] http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/
- repsilat 12y ago
  I was too, though it doesn't really fit with the author's thesis -- it's actually very similar to traditional distance programs. The price and the class sizes are crazy, and the impact on the market is probably going to be huge, but if anything it'll reinforce the stranglehold of traditional institutions providing traditional degrees.
  - fnayr 12y ago
    The class size for the one course I enrolled in this semester actually wasn't crazy (unless by crazy you meant crazy small). It was ~30 students.
    - nkozyra 12y ago
      I believe they're capped at 200 but I also get the impression they're accepting at a rate that assumes a lot of attrition prior to "full" acceptance (completion of foundational courses with a b or better). For example, this last semester saw a lot of people accepted without compsci or math experience. That would make the prospect pretty daunting.
    - jskonhovd 12y ago
      That must be CS6505 after the drop date. I joke, I think we had at least 200 people in that class, but there was a good amount who dropped. I am guessing you are in CS6290, or one of the newer courses.
PhoenixWright 12y ago
Even regular degrees aren't seen as "official." I'm tempted to pursue a graduate degree but I'm afraid it's just another scam. Education in America is over. Public schools are completely underfunded, mismanaged and ignored. Universities have become businesses that offer a horrendous ROI. If your lucky enough to get in an Ivy or you'd like to work in academia (good luck in both cases), go. Otherwise save your money and figure out your own path because our previous highway to middle-class has crumbled.
- leereeves 12y ago
  Education in America is bigger than ever and still seen as official by the vast majority, though arguably optional in our field. But there's also truth in your comment, particularly about ROI (excluding prestigious or legally required degrees) and figuring out your own path. You're wise to consider the value of a graduate degree before pursuing one.
- ianstallings 12y ago
  That's quite a cynical take. I didn't go to college but I think if people have the opportunity and they want to learn they should take the chance. The resources at a college for learning are second to none. That should be your goal. That knowledge will help you find riches, but it's up to you. You have to put the work in just like you would if you skip college. Nothing comes easy.
- nmrm 12y ago
  Graduate degrees make sense almost always, as long as the prestige and quality of the graduate program is an order of magnitude better than your undergraduate alma mater. The calculation is trivial -- top masters programs often publish entry and mid career salary information.
Chevalier 12y ago
"The new digital credentials can solve this problem by providing exponentially more information. Think about all the work you did in college. Unless you’re a recent college graduate, how much of it was saved and archived in a way that you can access now? What about the skills you acquired in various jobs? Digital learning environments can save and organize almost everything. Here, in the “unlabeled” folder, are all of my notes, tests, homework, syllabus and grades from the edX genetics course. My “real” college courses, by contrast, are lost to history, with only an inscrutable abbreviation on a paper transcript suggesting that they ever happened at all." Exactly. On the merits, a MOOC degree ought to be infinitely more worthwhile than any traditional college degree. MOOC completion (quite literally) demonstrates project work, practical skills, attendance, and interaction. The courses themselves are the highest quality in the world and the rigor and impartiality is available for all the world to see. In a sane world, MOOCs will inherit global education. But the world hasn't caught up yet. Right now the only commonly understood credential is the college degree, which everyone knows can be accomplished through registering for bullshit courses, skipping class, plagiarizing occasional essays nobody will ever read, and earning a one-word major that does nothing to prove any actual skills. Historically, this is as good as we've been able to do. No longer. Give it time. There are entrenched interests here -- not only the massive and powerful education industry, which is now obsolete, but also every existing college graduate whose expensive credentials are now threatened by the radically superior MOOC certificate. Not to pick on teacher unions in particular, but several states require infamously pointless masters degrees in education before you can teach. Lawyers likewise REALLY don't need a three-year JD before we can practice... and the US stands alone in requiring bachelor's degrees prior to legal training or bar passage (with the exception of California). Virtually any non-STEM job that requires a bachelor's can be filled without the aid of expensive four-year certificates in poetry or pottery or communications. That's an enormous threat to basically every working professional in the United States. Employ the D.E.N.N.I.S. system here. First, demonstrate the value of MOOC certificates to employers. Second, engage employers with hiring pipelines direct from Coursera/Udacity/edX. Third, nurture these pipelines and grow them into a viable Github-for-employment. Fourth, neglect protests from existing interests that have demanded advanced degrees in "teaching MOOCs" (seriously) or jeers that MOOC completion rates are low. Fifth, inspire students with visible examples of success through MOOCs. Thiel fellows are the closest to this, but the project more closely resembles a lottery than a structured path. Sixth, separate MOOCs entirely from their current aping of traditional courses. There is no reason whatsoever to release courses on a real-time basis, or to rely on artisanal videotaped lectures. (Though MOOCs have admittedly improved dramatically on the latter, with faster speeds, transcripts, open courseware, etc.) Or... just withdraw federal subsidies for student loans and make host institutions partially liable for student defaults. I'd love to see the argument to pay $50k/year to attend no-name for-profit ripoffs in the middle of nowhere, versus free attendance in every Harvard course at any Starbucks in New York City.
lucaspiller 12y ago
For anyone wondering about Europe, my wife is studying a BSc Psychology with the Open University, which is accredited by the British Psychological Society. The fees are pretty much the same as a regular university though, which isn't great. http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q07 http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q07 As per other UK universities, you can transfer the credits you've earned to brick & mortar universities, so she'll probably do that for the final year.
- wbillingsley 12y ago
  In Australia, I teach at a university that offers degrees both on-campus and off-campus. Many do. The courses are regular university courses (not even a different offering -- off campus students enrol in classes with the on campus students) so naturally that means they are regulated and accredited by the same national bodies as for on-campus students. (Technically they are "off campus" rather than "online", as the exam component of the assessment is an invigilated written exam, not an online exam)
jkot 12y ago
There is long tradition of evening schools.
- VLM 12y ago
  Those are a resume stain along the lines of the paragraph beginning with "Traditional college degrees represent several different kinds of information." and ending with "tell the job market almost exactly the same thing: “This person was good enough to get into Harvard.”" A traditional student trajectory tells the HR lady the following positive (from the point of view of corporate HR) things: 1) Came from a social / economic / racial class able to afford schooling instead of work in early years 2) Dedication to a pointless goal (graduate in 4 years vs 5+, or in the corporate world this would be pointless grinding optimization of meaningless numerical metric goals) 3) Able to take on huge debt load (see #1 above) and has a huge debt load thus easier to mistreat because they've got that loan payment hanging over them (see also the reason why companies love when employees take out a mortgage or car loan, welcome to mandatory unpaid overtime LOL) 4) applicant is a follower not a leader and does whatever people tell them. Once that meant taking out $100K in loans to get a piece of paper, after hiring it'll mean helping the boss "smooth over" some regulations and accounting issues or whatever other form of corruption as long as it comes from above. Because authority wouldn't be authority unless it was correct, right?
  - sago 12y ago
    I'd like to think your points are unnecessarily and viciously cynical. I'd like to think that, but actually I suspect you are dead right.
missn 12y ago
The University of Waterloo is a good example of getting an official degree all while doing courses online. Their transcripts do not differentiate between online courses and regular courses so if you get a BA in English or Philosophy for example (degrees fully offered online - http://cel.uwaterloo.ca/undergraduate.html http://cel.uwaterloo.ca/undergraduate.html), nobody will know you took it entirely online. Love that flexibility when I was there. The cost per credit was the same whether I took the course online or on campus. Did three semesters online before switching to the regular campus (my program wasn't fully online). The education was top-notch too with responsive profs and (for the most part) a good pace even though you're doing a lot of self-studying. My final exams were either held at colleges near my area or proctored at public libraries (the latter though I had to arrange on my own and the school just mailed the exams directly to the library).
- sdenton4 12y ago
  Waterloo is also quite notable for their extensive 'co-op' program, which places students in internships at a really high rate.
  - missn 12y ago
    Definitely. I think that's one of the reasons they have such flexible online course offerings (gives their co-op students a lot of flexibility). At the end of my second year, I transferred to McGill and I was a bit disappointed at the state of their online course offerings (barely had any, apart from some electives, that could count for my degree). Also felt the school had a misguided bias against online courses (if you take one externally, there's a limit of 2 courses that you can apply to your degree - http://www.mcgill.ca/oasis/away/online-courses http://www.mcgill.ca/oasis/away/online-courses). When I was trying to get transfer credits, any mention of the course being taken online got my advisor telling me that my course would probably be denied. It was a good thing Waterloo didn't differentiate in my transcript between the two or else a lot of my credits might have not transferred over. This was such a stark contrast to Waterloo where I really felt they considered their online courses to be just as comparable to their on-campus ones. I suppose though it's the whole culture of the instition. It helps too that Waterloo has a whole department dedicated to just the creation, design, development and testing of online-based courses - where they have designers/devs/subject/qa spcialists working closely with professors to design the courses (both for credit courses and professional development/continuing education courses). I don't believe my school has such a department to rely on.
bruceb 12y ago
Shameless plug. Before open badges can work we need standardization of listings. This is what we are working at http://www.CourseBuffet.com http://www.CourseBuffet.com Like courses are given the same classification and fall under the same CourseBuffet title.
sago 12y ago
I think the problem is fundamentally that two separate concerns are entangled: education, and certification. The certification is what you need. But to get it, the university can require you to purchase a whole bunch of very expensive education you may not need. Only by separating the two will this problem be solved: having certification authorities that are independent of educational providers. In that utopia, even a regular university can't grant you the certification. They can market themselves as the best and most cost effective way for you to reach the competency needed to achieve your certificate. But, perhaps MOOCs are better, or intensive library study, or perhaps you're already that competent, and don't need any education to get there. It is only that which can solve the scandal of indebting vast swathes of young people by tens of thousands of dollars. So I'm suspicious of this article, because the solutions described still make the same mistakes. The body that provides you with the education, certifies you as having had that education. Okay there may be more evidence as metadata, but still, the incentive is there for providers to bias their certification towards the educational products they want to sell.
- wbillingsley 12y ago
  In Australia, certification is effectively governed by TEQSA and the relevant accrediting body for your discipline. TEQSA examine whether a university's degree meets the AQF requirements for being a Bachelor's degree (or other kind of degree), and in our case the relevant discipline body is ACS, and they also look in depth at the quality of what we teach. Each of those is a thick, thick, document full of things that go far beyond the exams. It is the education in a degree, not just the exam-answering, that they attempt to accredit. I realise that degree-certification-bodies isn't what you meant by "certification" -- that you're thinking more of the "industry cert" model, where a training centre teaches you material, and then you pay to take an exam from the certifier. The point though is that's not what society (or at least as represented by government) wants university to be. It is, at least currently, supposed to be education not just training and testing.
  - sago 12y ago
    The same kind of thing happens in other countries, including the US. There are authorities which accredit universities as providing suitable standards of education to award a degree. That wasn't what I was getting at, no. It prevents diploma-mills, certainly, but does nothing to stop the perverse incentives. And doesn't help any alternative methods of achieving the same competency to compete.
tim333 12y ago
The CFA institute provide exams of approximately degree standard for about $630/exam times 3 exams to get the CFA qualification. That also includes a kind of text book. I don't know if that kind of stuff is the way forward. I've done exam 1 and 2 and it's a bit tedious compared to a regular degree but fairly rigorous.
- theVirginian 12y ago
  If you want to become a financial analyst it is fairly important to get. The CFA is nothing new, one of my parents got theirs years ago and a few of my friends are in the program now.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fche 12y ago
Bleedin' passive voice... "seen as official" - seen by whom? - suitable for what office?
nickstefan12 12y ago
Unless the online degrees can signal prestige they'll never be seen as official by employers. Traditional Employers don't actually care about what impractical academic stuff you learned. They like that "you're like me" and that's what college really serves as: the Harry potter sorting hat. It's time we do something else though. Paying 100k just to signal to employers your socioeconomic background is bankrupting everyone.
- Futurebot 12y ago
  Yeah. Some other angles on this would be "people who are able to go 4-6 years without needing an income" and below the top-end "people who have living parents and/or family members/people who receive(d) familial support." The system we have here in the US is a fantastic way to exclude potentially very smart people form non-traditional and poor backgrounds from pursuing higher education. Contrast all this with the Danish model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark Seems like there's a lot we could learn from a system like that.
eranation 12y ago
I'm paying ~ $7,000 for an online degree from a top 10 CS masters program (Georgia Tech). The degree is identical to the on-campus one. If this doesn't disrupt the system then I don't know what will. This is as "real" as it gets. I really wish more universities will follow. In the meantime UC Berkley and Stanford both offer CS master degrees for $60K and $50K respectively. I rather pay about 10th of that and get "just" a 9th ranked program than a 1st ranked one and use all of my kids college fund to pay for it.
- iandanforth 12y ago
  Identical is a strong word. Can you give an overview of how group projects are structured?
  - lfowles 12y ago
    Not sure about that specific school, but when I was an undergrad in higher level classes, it wasn't uncommon to have the online masters students in the same section. Only difference was that oral reports from them would be recorded in advance. Edit: I can't remember having to do a group project with an online student though. I think they may have been able to do a smaller project by themselves for the group assignments.
  - eranation 12y ago
    Well, the given degree (I mean, the diploma) is identical. Take two students, an on campus one and an online one (hopefully the first will graduate around end of 2015 beginning of 2016) and compare them, (except the name of the student), it will be identical. Regarding the degree program itself, the material and rigor (assignments, tests etc), is also identical. However the process it's obviously different. We use Piazza for collaboration, and for group projects google hangouts. I had a great project last semester with a team of people all around the US (the course staff puts people together by timezone and native language spoken to make it more feasible). It worked great! Just like today's workplace is distributed, working with remote teams or working from home is no longer a niche, then why should education be any different? If I had the time (and budget), I would prefer an on-campus program, mostly due to the social aspect, networking, and fun aspect of it. But I'm not in my 20s. I have kids and a day job, and what GT did was simply the only way I would go for a graduate degree. (I didn't need it per-se, I do it because it's fun and interesting and cost effective at their current price range. had it been higher, I don't think I would go for it)
nlawalker 12y ago
The real customers of these MOOCs and other programs are employers, not students. What are these programs doing to work with employers and appeal directly to them?

84 points by Futurebot 12y ago

I'm surprised the Georgia Tech Online Masters in Computer Science[1] isn't mentioned in the article. [1] http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

repsilat 12y ago
I was too, though it doesn't really fit with the author's thesis -- it's actually very similar to traditional distance programs. The price and the class sizes are crazy, and the impact on the market is probably going to be huge, but if anything it'll reinforce the stranglehold of traditional institutions providing traditional degrees.
- fnayr 12y ago
  The class size for the one course I enrolled in this semester actually wasn't crazy (unless by crazy you meant crazy small). It was ~30 students.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    I believe they're capped at 200 but I also get the impression they're accepting at a rate that assumes a lot of attrition prior to "full" acceptance (completion of foundational courses with a b or better). For example, this last semester saw a lot of people accepted without compsci or math experience. That would make the prospect pretty daunting.
  - jskonhovd 12y ago
    That must be CS6505 after the drop date. I joke, I think we had at least 200 people in that class, but there was a good amount who dropped. I am guessing you are in CS6290, or one of the newer courses.

PhoenixWright 12y ago

Even regular degrees aren't seen as "official." I'm tempted to pursue a graduate degree but I'm afraid it's just another scam. Education in America is over. Public schools are completely underfunded, mismanaged and ignored. Universities have become businesses that offer a horrendous ROI. If your lucky enough to get in an Ivy or you'd like to work in academia (good luck in both cases), go. Otherwise save your money and figure out your own path because our previous highway to middle-class has crumbled.

leereeves 12y ago
Education in America is bigger than ever and still seen as official by the vast majority, though arguably optional in our field. But there's also truth in your comment, particularly about ROI (excluding prestigious or legally required degrees) and figuring out your own path. You're wise to consider the value of a graduate degree before pursuing one.
ianstallings 12y ago
That's quite a cynical take. I didn't go to college but I think if people have the opportunity and they want to learn they should take the chance. The resources at a college for learning are second to none. That should be your goal. That knowledge will help you find riches, but it's up to you. You have to put the work in just like you would if you skip college. Nothing comes easy.
nmrm 12y ago
Graduate degrees make sense almost always, as long as the prestige and quality of the graduate program is an order of magnitude better than your undergraduate alma mater. The calculation is trivial -- top masters programs often publish entry and mid career salary information.

Chevalier 12y ago

"The new digital credentials can solve this problem by providing exponentially more information. Think about all the work you did in college. Unless you’re a recent college graduate, how much of it was saved and archived in a way that you can access now? What about the skills you acquired in various jobs? Digital learning environments can save and organize almost everything. Here, in the “unlabeled” folder, are all of my notes, tests, homework, syllabus and grades from the edX genetics course. My “real” college courses, by contrast, are lost to history, with only an inscrutable abbreviation on a paper transcript suggesting that they ever happened at all." Exactly. On the merits, a MOOC degree ought to be infinitely more worthwhile than any traditional college degree. MOOC completion (quite literally) demonstrates project work, practical skills, attendance, and interaction. The courses themselves are the highest quality in the world and the rigor and impartiality is available for all the world to see. In a sane world, MOOCs will inherit global education. But the world hasn't caught up yet. Right now the only commonly understood credential is the college degree, which everyone knows can be accomplished through registering for bullshit courses, skipping class, plagiarizing occasional essays nobody will ever read, and earning a one-word major that does nothing to prove any actual skills. Historically, this is as good as we've been able to do. No longer. Give it time. There are entrenched interests here -- not only the massive and powerful education industry, which is now obsolete, but also every existing college graduate whose expensive credentials are now threatened by the radically superior MOOC certificate. Not to pick on teacher unions in particular, but several states require infamously pointless masters degrees in education before you can teach. Lawyers likewise REALLY don't need a three-year JD before we can practice... and the US stands alone in requiring bachelor's degrees prior to legal training or bar passage (with the exception of California). Virtually any non-STEM job that requires a bachelor's can be filled without the aid of expensive four-year certificates in poetry or pottery or communications. That's an enormous threat to basically every working professional in the United States. Employ the D.E.N.N.I.S. system here. First, demonstrate the value of MOOC certificates to employers. Second, engage employers with hiring pipelines direct from Coursera/Udacity/edX. Third, nurture these pipelines and grow them into a viable Github-for-employment. Fourth, neglect protests from existing interests that have demanded advanced degrees in "teaching MOOCs" (seriously) or jeers that MOOC completion rates are low. Fifth, inspire students with visible examples of success through MOOCs. Thiel fellows are the closest to this, but the project more closely resembles a lottery than a structured path. Sixth, separate MOOCs entirely from their current aping of traditional courses. There is no reason whatsoever to release courses on a real-time basis, or to rely on artisanal videotaped lectures. (Though MOOCs have admittedly improved dramatically on the latter, with faster speeds, transcripts, open courseware, etc.) Or... just withdraw federal subsidies for student loans and make host institutions partially liable for student defaults. I'd love to see the argument to pay $50k/year to attend no-name for-profit ripoffs in the middle of nowhere, versus free attendance in every Harvard course at any Starbucks in New York City.

lucaspiller 12y ago

For anyone wondering about Europe, my wife is studying a BSc Psychology with the Open University, which is accredited by the British Psychological Society. The fees are pretty much the same as a regular university though, which isn't great. http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q07 http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q07 As per other UK universities, you can transfer the credits you've earned to brick & mortar universities, so she'll probably do that for the final year.

wbillingsley 12y ago
In Australia, I teach at a university that offers degrees both on-campus and off-campus. Many do. The courses are regular university courses (not even a different offering -- off campus students enrol in classes with the on campus students) so naturally that means they are regulated and accredited by the same national bodies as for on-campus students. (Technically they are "off campus" rather than "online", as the exam component of the assessment is an invigilated written exam, not an online exam)

jkot 12y ago

There is long tradition of evening schools.

VLM 12y ago
Those are a resume stain along the lines of the paragraph beginning with "Traditional college degrees represent several different kinds of information." and ending with "tell the job market almost exactly the same thing: “This person was good enough to get into Harvard.”" A traditional student trajectory tells the HR lady the following positive (from the point of view of corporate HR) things: 1) Came from a social / economic / racial class able to afford schooling instead of work in early years 2) Dedication to a pointless goal (graduate in 4 years vs 5+, or in the corporate world this would be pointless grinding optimization of meaningless numerical metric goals) 3) Able to take on huge debt load (see #1 above) and has a huge debt load thus easier to mistreat because they've got that loan payment hanging over them (see also the reason why companies love when employees take out a mortgage or car loan, welcome to mandatory unpaid overtime LOL) 4) applicant is a follower not a leader and does whatever people tell them. Once that meant taking out $100K in loans to get a piece of paper, after hiring it'll mean helping the boss "smooth over" some regulations and accounting issues or whatever other form of corruption as long as it comes from above. Because authority wouldn't be authority unless it was correct, right?
- sago 12y ago
  I'd like to think your points are unnecessarily and viciously cynical. I'd like to think that, but actually I suspect you are dead right.

missn 12y ago

The University of Waterloo is a good example of getting an official degree all while doing courses online. Their transcripts do not differentiate between online courses and regular courses so if you get a BA in English or Philosophy for example (degrees fully offered online - http://cel.uwaterloo.ca/undergraduate.html http://cel.uwaterloo.ca/undergraduate.html), nobody will know you took it entirely online. Love that flexibility when I was there. The cost per credit was the same whether I took the course online or on campus. Did three semesters online before switching to the regular campus (my program wasn't fully online). The education was top-notch too with responsive profs and (for the most part) a good pace even though you're doing a lot of self-studying. My final exams were either held at colleges near my area or proctored at public libraries (the latter though I had to arrange on my own and the school just mailed the exams directly to the library).

sdenton4 12y ago
Waterloo is also quite notable for their extensive 'co-op' program, which places students in internships at a really high rate.
- missn 12y ago
  Definitely. I think that's one of the reasons they have such flexible online course offerings (gives their co-op students a lot of flexibility). At the end of my second year, I transferred to McGill and I was a bit disappointed at the state of their online course offerings (barely had any, apart from some electives, that could count for my degree). Also felt the school had a misguided bias against online courses (if you take one externally, there's a limit of 2 courses that you can apply to your degree - http://www.mcgill.ca/oasis/away/online-courses http://www.mcgill.ca/oasis/away/online-courses). When I was trying to get transfer credits, any mention of the course being taken online got my advisor telling me that my course would probably be denied. It was a good thing Waterloo didn't differentiate in my transcript between the two or else a lot of my credits might have not transferred over. This was such a stark contrast to Waterloo where I really felt they considered their online courses to be just as comparable to their on-campus ones. I suppose though it's the whole culture of the instition. It helps too that Waterloo has a whole department dedicated to just the creation, design, development and testing of online-based courses - where they have designers/devs/subject/qa spcialists working closely with professors to design the courses (both for credit courses and professional development/continuing education courses). I don't believe my school has such a department to rely on.

bruceb 12y ago

Shameless plug. Before open badges can work we need standardization of listings. This is what we are working at http://www.CourseBuffet.com http://www.CourseBuffet.com Like courses are given the same classification and fall under the same CourseBuffet title.

sago 12y ago

I think the problem is fundamentally that two separate concerns are entangled: education, and certification. The certification is what you need. But to get it, the university can require you to purchase a whole bunch of very expensive education you may not need. Only by separating the two will this problem be solved: having certification authorities that are independent of educational providers. In that utopia, even a regular university can't grant you the certification. They can market themselves as the best and most cost effective way for you to reach the competency needed to achieve your certificate. But, perhaps MOOCs are better, or intensive library study, or perhaps you're already that competent, and don't need any education to get there. It is only that which can solve the scandal of indebting vast swathes of young people by tens of thousands of dollars. So I'm suspicious of this article, because the solutions described still make the same mistakes. The body that provides you with the education, certifies you as having had that education. Okay there may be more evidence as metadata, but still, the incentive is there for providers to bias their certification towards the educational products they want to sell.

wbillingsley 12y ago
In Australia, certification is effectively governed by TEQSA and the relevant accrediting body for your discipline. TEQSA examine whether a university's degree meets the AQF requirements for being a Bachelor's degree (or other kind of degree), and in our case the relevant discipline body is ACS, and they also look in depth at the quality of what we teach. Each of those is a thick, thick, document full of things that go far beyond the exams. It is the education in a degree, not just the exam-answering, that they attempt to accredit. I realise that degree-certification-bodies isn't what you meant by "certification" -- that you're thinking more of the "industry cert" model, where a training centre teaches you material, and then you pay to take an exam from the certifier. The point though is that's not what society (or at least as represented by government) wants university to be. It is, at least currently, supposed to be education not just training and testing.
- sago 12y ago
  The same kind of thing happens in other countries, including the US. There are authorities which accredit universities as providing suitable standards of education to award a degree. That wasn't what I was getting at, no. It prevents diploma-mills, certainly, but does nothing to stop the perverse incentives. And doesn't help any alternative methods of achieving the same competency to compete.

tim333 12y ago

The CFA institute provide exams of approximately degree standard for about $630/exam times 3 exams to get the CFA qualification. That also includes a kind of text book. I don't know if that kind of stuff is the way forward. I've done exam 1 and 2 and it's a bit tedious compared to a regular degree but fairly rigorous.

theVirginian 12y ago
If you want to become a financial analyst it is fairly important to get. The CFA is nothing new, one of my parents got theirs years ago and a few of my friends are in the program now.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

fche 12y ago

Bleedin' passive voice... "seen as official" - seen by whom? - suitable for what office?

nickstefan12 12y ago

Unless the online degrees can signal prestige they'll never be seen as official by employers. Traditional Employers don't actually care about what impractical academic stuff you learned. They like that "you're like me" and that's what college really serves as: the Harry potter sorting hat. It's time we do something else though. Paying 100k just to signal to employers your socioeconomic background is bankrupting everyone.

Futurebot 12y ago
Yeah. Some other angles on this would be "people who are able to go 4-6 years without needing an income" and below the top-end "people who have living parents and/or family members/people who receive(d) familial support." The system we have here in the US is a fantastic way to exclude potentially very smart people form non-traditional and poor backgrounds from pursuing higher education. Contrast all this with the Danish model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark Seems like there's a lot we could learn from a system like that.

eranation 12y ago

I'm paying ~ $7,000 for an online degree from a top 10 CS masters program (Georgia Tech). The degree is identical to the on-campus one. If this doesn't disrupt the system then I don't know what will. This is as "real" as it gets. I really wish more universities will follow. In the meantime UC Berkley and Stanford both offer CS master degrees for $60K and $50K respectively. I rather pay about 10th of that and get "just" a 9th ranked program than a 1st ranked one and use all of my kids college fund to pay for it.

iandanforth 12y ago
Identical is a strong word. Can you give an overview of how group projects are structured?
- lfowles 12y ago
  Not sure about that specific school, but when I was an undergrad in higher level classes, it wasn't uncommon to have the online masters students in the same section. Only difference was that oral reports from them would be recorded in advance. Edit: I can't remember having to do a group project with an online student though. I think they may have been able to do a smaller project by themselves for the group assignments.
- eranation 12y ago
  Well, the given degree (I mean, the diploma) is identical. Take two students, an on campus one and an online one (hopefully the first will graduate around end of 2015 beginning of 2016) and compare them, (except the name of the student), it will be identical. Regarding the degree program itself, the material and rigor (assignments, tests etc), is also identical. However the process it's obviously different. We use Piazza for collaboration, and for group projects google hangouts. I had a great project last semester with a team of people all around the US (the course staff puts people together by timezone and native language spoken to make it more feasible). It worked great! Just like today's workplace is distributed, working with remote teams or working from home is no longer a niche, then why should education be any different? If I had the time (and budget), I would prefer an on-campus program, mostly due to the social aspect, networking, and fun aspect of it. But I'm not in my 20s. I have kids and a day job, and what GT did was simply the only way I would go for a graduate degree. (I didn't need it per-se, I do it because it's fun and interesting and cost effective at their current price range. had it been higher, I don't think I would go for it)

nlawalker 12y ago

The real customers of these MOOCs and other programs are employers, not students. What are these programs doing to work with employers and appeal directly to them?