Udacity the new ITT Tech?
tech.masters3d.com
tech.masters3d.com
1) Not all new nanodegrees use the new pricing model. So far, only the more rigorous ones announced do: Self Driving Car Engineer & AI Engineer. The new VR one is the same monthly model. All existing courses are the monthly model, for now.
2) The monthly ones offer a 50% back offer. If you finish within a year, you get half your tuition back, so $100 for every month it took. To be fair, they could stop this at any time, but it was supposed to only last a few months, but they've been doing it since early last year.
3) Per their terms, to graduate, you must complete all projects and pay at least one month of tuition which is $200 in the US. With the half back offer, this becomes $100 if you finish in the first month + 7 day trial. The article quotes $400
4) Most of the courses are free to take.
5) Some of the degrees offer a job guarantee if you pay a bit more.
6) The content is damn good quality, from what I've been exposed to. Google people teach Android classes, Nvidia people teach graphics, MongoDB people tech MongoDB. At the very least, the quality is more consistent than other MOOC platforms.
I might have went overboard O.O
I tried to graduate after paying just one month's tuition. They told me I had to pay for the next month before they would issue the certificate. I told them it wasn't fair, but they pointed out the 2-month requirement was somewhere in their T&Cs.
However, their Deep Learning course was nowhere near as helpful. The instructor dove into complex topics and skimmed them lightly without offering much context. The exercises required me to do a lot of research outside the course to complete them. I essentially had to teach myself the topic. If the course had cost money I would've wanted a refund.
Python is primarily used because the machine learning libraries within it are very mature and play nicely with each other.
It is easy to get started in Python (and most of its libraries) by downloading the freely-available Anaconda distribution. This usually "just works", cross-platform. The language itself is extremely straightforward to pick up.
Within the Python ecosystem there are many mature libraries. In particular NumPy was written for carrying out vectorised computation. This enabled more libraries, such as pandas (for dataframe manipulation), SciPy (for general scientific computation) and scikit-learn (for ML) to be developed. Each of these libraries also possess clean and consistent APIs for carrying out their specialty tasks.
Thus it becomes straightforward in Python to import data from many sources, "wrangle" it into the correct format (even with real-world, messy data), put it into an ML data pipeline and then visualise it easily (via Matplotlib or Seaborn). In addition there is Jupyter for straightforward "notebook" style research.
Finally, Theano and TensorFlow are two great deep learning libraries. There are a few hiccups on installation sometimes, but for the most part they "just work".
There are still some "missing pieces" however. The statsmodels library does a good job of time series analysis, but it doesn't yet compete fully with R in this respect.
Julia is also likely to make serious inroads into Python's usage in the near future. I'm excited about where the project is heading.
Yes. Python has the best collection of sufficiently user-friendly and fast modules for machine learning. Other languages tend to have fast, friendly, or many modules, but not all three. I suppose R is somewhat competitive on those aspects, but R isn't a great general-purpose language.
I am hoping that udacity is able to keep this sort of pricing. I am also hoping that the udacity doesn't get subsidized through student loans like ITT was. I think it skews things so student and education company goals are no longer aligned. They have an interest in churning out as many students as possible with little quality control then.
By making the student cough up a good but not insurmountable chunk of cash upfront udacity has to ultimately answer to the student market.
Don't sell yourself short -- how do you know you couldn't have done it with just books?
- if you want academic rigor, you take edX and to some extent Coursera
- if you want to learn something between academic and practical you never did before while working full time, you take Coursera courses
- if you want to train yourself on some of the latest trends, you take Udacity
- everything else that is outside big companies/academia you seek on Udemy and similar platforms
I am happy with all these, I initially spent most of my learning time on Coursera, then moved mostly to edX for big-name university curriculum and now I am taking Udacity's self-driving car nanodegree and maybe later AI nanodegree if I get in.
You simply need to choose what you want and then look at the appropriate platform. I am very happy we have now different shades of a good thing and I applaud to all people making this possible! Big thanks!
I have taken courses on all the above MOOC offerings and completed courses to varying degrees. For a Software professional, the rigor in increasing order is: Udemy, Udacity, Coursera and edX. Of course, this is a very high level generalization and depends on each course/professor.
You could even try putting your top few choices in a hat, and letting chance decide. Perhaps your visceral reaction after randomly picking one will help reveal what you actually want.
Also, this may be completely off base, if so disregard this paragraph, but have you considered looking into mindfulness? Over time, it can help with getting past these brain blocks. It's personally been very helpful for me.
Compared to some of the courses I've taken on Coursera (e.g. Andrew Ng's Machine Learning), the general quality from Coursera blew Udacity out of the water.
End of the day, I'm not going to pay for content that is poorly stitched together, contradictory, constantly interrupting you, short on delivering insightful explanations and simply unclear in many places. I'm not going to pay to waste my time on forums to tease out information for solving quizzes / programming challenges that should have been covered in the course content. I'm not going to pay to deal with snarky TA's on a power trip. I'm not going to pay to waste my time because the course quizzes or programming assignments are expecting you to magically gain some insight that could not be reasonably attained by viewing the course content only.
And I'm not saying these courses should necessarily be easy - not at all - but there should be some reasonable level of success attainable without having to endlessly scour the internet for why your solution, which looks pretty correct based on the course material, isn't passing in their test harness - only to learn that the author of the course decided to arbitrarily switch the order of two operations in his solution (that were previously demonstrated over and over in the reverse order), and that's why your submission is failing. Sorry, but screw that.
Not worth my time, not worth my money. And to anyone else about to shell out a large chunk of cash to Udacity - think long and hard before you do - there are likely better options out there.
If a university / professor / hiring manager is behind the free content, they're promoting their brand, so they need really compelling material to stand out from everyone else.
My first experience with MOOCs was the Fall 2011 Stanford courses (AI Class and ML Class) - which ultimately spawned Udacity and Coursera (respectively).
I wasn't able to finish the AI Class, but I did complete the ML Class. In the spring of 2012, Udacity announced their "CS373 - How to Build a Self-Driving Vehicle" course, which was supposed to be what Thrun could offer as comparable to the old AI Class (CS373 became the AI for Robotics course, IIRC). Later Udacity was able to offer the AI Class content. Coursera from the beginning offered the ML Class content. In both of these, I don't know how they each compare to the inaugural Stanford courses.
I want to note here that when I say "Stanford", I am not meaning to imply that Stanford offered them, or you got credit or anything like that - it was just that these courses were initially linked to them, via the instructors and the "experiment" in MOOCs. The response was so large, that the spinoff of Udacity and Coursera was the result.
Anyhow - I found that the CS373 course was really tough for me, though I was able to complete it fully. For me, it really help to open my eyes and mind more on how certain things worked (Kalman filters, PID, etc), and expanded on things I learned in the ML Class (ANNs especially). It also highlighted areas I needed help with (probability and stats, mainly). Coding wasn't the issue, as I has been employed as a software developer for over 20 years.
When the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree popped up, I jumped at the chance. I got in, I paid my initial money. I guess we'll see if it is worth it. I have no illusions that I am going to "land a new job" from this - if I do, great. I do hope that it will further my knowledge and understanding though in this field, and maybe it can help me with other things (I dabble in hobbyist robotics, for instance).
So yeah - one could say I am spending $2400.00 on a lark, but I have wasted similar large amounts for less on the payback end (worst one was paying for a year at TechShop - which I only went to a few times - but I know how to use a laser cutter and 3d printer now - w00t?). I am trusting that the level of the course will be on par with the CS373 course; I guess we'll see.
Not sure this is comparable to ITT Tech, which charged a lot of money for useless degrees.
This said, many of the early Udacity classes are quite useful for general skills. Quality varies though and one problem they had was not updating content in reaction to feedback, not correcting either errors or areas that were unclear. These issues are somewhat irrelevant in their current targeted domain in which one either is able to pick it up with the training offered and get the job or not.
Do you have any sources for this? I see that a lot of companies sponsor courses and nanodegrees, but I still haven't seen any statistics about jobs after "graduation". I had considered taking some nanodegrees myself but can't really justify it since I have to work full time and make a living which is difficult enough.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the key metric for education in a field like software development where students build projects to show to a potential employer: do graduates have the knowledge needed that they can go out and build projects that will get them hired, without naming where they acquired the knowledge. If you succeed in that for long enough, then the value of the brand name will develop naturally. Udacity still appears to be quite strong in what matters most, actually educating students, regardless of their marketing materials, which is where ITT Tech failed.
But, its remarkable how much that ad feels like a University of Phoenix ad. Most for-profit school ads seem to push flexibility and future job earnings. University of Phoenix (and Udacity) go for a much subtler route for the TV ads I've seen. They glamorize the ending jobs and the college-student/professional lifestyle.
In my mind, the worst for-profit schools suffer from two distinct issues: bad instruction and bad credentialing. Udacity supposedly has fixed the instruction problem with strong industry ties. But, they haven't fixed the credentialing problem. A Udacity nanodegree is still worth very little, if anything, compared to any other form of education.
3 months at (US federal) minimum wage is roughly $3500, well over a year's tuition.
> 3 months at (US federal) minimum wage is roughly $3500, well over a year's tuition.
The problem is that the interesting metric is income - (minus) necessary expenses (e.g. living costs). The latter are very high for example in San Francisco, where there are more jobs.
"The reality is that the for profit school’s only goal was to make money for their investors. It doesn’t matter if the students are not able to find jobs in their field. It doesn’t matter if most students work dead end jobs waiting for a tech job that never arrives."
While it's not true for all programs, Udacity's nanodegree+ offers a full refund unless you can find a job.
There are perfectly valid concerns about the quality of the job.
Having said that, the even bigger and more fundamental difference between Udacity and ITT is that the vast majority of Udacity material is available for free online. Aside from the credential, what you're really paying for is personal feedback on projects. Because Udacity has to pay actual qualified engineers to give that feedback, it's appropriately expensive.
The problem is that in countries as German, Austria (and I heard Brazil, too) there is a mentality of "credential or it did not happen". So for me, living in Germany, the only reason why I might be taking a course offering no credentials is that I am deeply interested in the topic. So perhaps it would be a good idea to offer a "very cheap certificate without any personal feedback".
Unlike ITT Tech or any other for-profit universities, you can do a majority of the Udacity curriculum for free. e.g For the VR Nanodegree (shown in the video), you can signup for the courses for free [1] and evaluate it whether the format/quality works for you. And like any other content provider, some courses might not be good as others.
I am currently doing Udacity's Machine Learning Nanodegree [2] and also did the first AI class from Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. Part of the Nanodegree involves doing courses from Georgia Tech's Masters in Computer Science curriculum.
[1] https://www.udacity.com/course/vr-software-development--ud10... [2] https://www.udacity.com/uconnect/intensive
It just can't be compared to ITT without having in mind they enabled the world best "ranking to cost" ratio program in the world in my opinion. Source: I'm a GT OMSCS student.
I prefer the Pluralsight approach. Quickly going through some Pluralsight courses has really broadened my toolset.
I prefer to think of MOOCS as a way to augment what you learn via traditionally methods as opposed to replacing traditional education entirely.
At some point I realized I was watching Pluralsight courses and declaring success because I finished the last video and therefore I was leveled up in that thing.
Quizzes on Udacity stuff and Coursera courses (especially Odersky's Scala one) often catch me cheating where I realize I had drifted and missed the information I'm being quizzed on. I'll go back and watch the relevant bit thoughtfully and then be able to answer.
I like short videos cause much easier to recover where you left off from.
Also I am not a paying member of Udacity but seriously considering them for Android dev program.
On the other hand, I've taken -- and given up on -- both Udacity and Coursera (more lecture oriented) courses that had absolutely abysmal instruction. I had no doubt in the instructor's skill at the particular domain, but it was clear they had no idea how to teach.
Personally though, I do think the content itself and the project reviews are helpful.
From the ones I've taken, they would be great as a replacement to the various Intro To X courses in a traditional curriculum. Although, I'm pretty sure half of my senior classes for my bachelors degree were still Intro To X!
Udacity/Coursera wanted to offer the courses for free. It is a fact that employers are searching for employees who are smart, self-determined and love to learn new, complicated things on their own. So they wanted to make money from making their database of learners with their list of completed courses etc. available to employers/recruiters etc. for pay.
If it had worked out, I must say that it would in my opinion not have been a bad idea.
P.S.: Different topic, related business model: I am still waiting for a postmortem on Stockfighter: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/771533037666390017
The skills you need for programming competitions are in my opinion quite different from the skills that you need for a "typical" programming job. Programming competitions "usually" mean hacking together a barely working program using ugly tricks that any project manager would strongly frown upon. Also one does not care about maintainability, understandability etc.
Also there a programmers (like me) who love to learn new things (such as in MOOCs), but hate the time pressure and competitiveness of programming competitions and thus never participate.
In other words: I would be very careful to hire people by looking at programming competitions.
> It was doubly difficult since they needed mostly applied classes
On the other hand: This could have been used to bring in some of the cost: If there are employers who would love to hire graduates with knowledge in CurrentHotTechnology, they could sponsor the development of courses for that.
Reasonably, they had a max of 5k per matched employee which would only be fraction of students that complete a program and even want a new job in one of a handful of places in the US. Competing recruiters would collectively take more than half those students, especially when the students were already in industry and not completing whole tracks.
I also think the sponsored courses backfire as these things are out of date immediately and/or completely irrelevant in most of the market; they probably had to turn most down to prevent alienating students that trust udacity to recommend learning paths.
So I think for expanding your knowledge base while being employed or doing other things, it's quite good (and, there is also Udacity's MS program with Georgia Tech for more serious education and credentials). It is even perhaps worth paying the $100 a month yourself if you put in the work to finish a bit early (the deadlines are set so it takes 13 months if you don't try to finish early). But, there is a lot they could do to improve - the nano degrees really are a bunch of totally separate MOOC classes strung together.
The courses did not push me to work that hard - all of them had just one deadline which was the project submission, and there were usually 2-3 months between deadlines and I got away with only seriously working on it the last 3-4 weeks most of the time. That being said, the projects were of good quality - pretty substantial, with good rubrics, and good ability to choose from easy options or do your own things. And, once again my extensive background in CS and ML probably made things easier than it would be for many people.
To be clear, I did not mind the courses not being that deep since I did not really want to be really busy with courses while working full time. I just think if these are for getting into being a professional in the field, they are not quite as deep as I might like for that.
In comparison, I have taken classes in my grad school that I spent $1200+ on that I ended with anything to show for it.
I will say though that Udacity show more preview content and maybe a longer trial period (currently 7 days). I did try the Android nanodegree and felt it was not worth my time but that was because of my experience in it.
ITT Tech was viewed as cheap because their commercials played in the cheapest time slots, alongside adult hotlines and As Seen on TV ads.
If an employer had never heard of Udacity and did research from scratch, they might like what they see. If they recognize it as one of those commercials that play in the middle of the night, they might just skip right over the resume.
I was interested in pursuing a new field at Western Governors University after reading comments on sites like this and Reddit where a couple people said "I happily hire WGU grads because I know they put real work in". Then, I saw one of their commercials play on Comedy Central at 2 AM, and it immediately stopped those plans for me. You can't take anything seriously when it airs after this: http://www.perfectsmileteeth.com/
- From student's perspective, it can't get better than this - learning from the top instructors in the world at a very low price. Learning AI at a fraction of the cost.
- From employer's perspective - I have hired more than 50 engineers both at startups and at world's biggest company. I would definitely value people with a nano-degree from Udacity over a course that they studied a decade ago in the college. The students from Udacity have more practical knowledge and understand the latest concepts.
In my viewpoint, the biggest potential is the reach - people from all over the world can learn advanced technologies like Self-driving cars. Who could have imagined this few years ago!
I am positive that companies worldwide would LOVE to interview candidates who have studied at Udacity.
With that aside, I think the article makes a good points. Prices are rising and they seem to be mainly beneficial for existing professionals.
IMO: Nano-degree's would only be a step above certifications - A+, Network+, etc. And a step below a 2 year degree... then most important, experience.
A class from 10 years ago is definitely meaningless... after your first few jobs, college as a whole is meaningless outside of connections made and HR checkboxes to be met.
For the same reason this nano-degree might help... but it'll be just as meaningless sooner - because its specialized, quickly out-dated and still less important than demonstratable experience or a 2/4 year degree.
Now, in the catalog, the various Nanodegrees appear before any individual course. But if you scroll down, you'll see they still offer the old courses in topics like Programming Languages, Theoretical CS, and Differential Equations.
Personally, I'm not in a rush to find employment, and am deliberately focusing on edX in order to prepare for a Masters. I took MIT's Intro to Programming with Python, and am now in Software Construction with Java. Both feel like timeless courses teaching principles applicable to any language or environment. Do Udacity Nanodegrees similarly teach transferable skills?
Anyone?
(PS - I'm not ashamed to ask. I think it's a tiny public service to ask the meaning of an acronym as it reminds everyone else that these aren't necessarily universally understood even in our own little tech bubble)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute
"By 1999, ITT Corporation (which had merged with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide the year before) had divested itself completely of ITT Tech's shares. The schools were allowed to continue using the "ITT" name under license."
The problem with courses is not only money, it is also valuable time spend. Another issue is that Courses often tend to give you the false impression that you master something once you've completed it. There is always that difference between selling a course and what students actually gain.
Why not spend your time to become a better autodidact, and use this vast free resource called the internet? Maybe it's just me, but I really don't want to depend on paid courses.
I have been working in the technology industry for several years now. If your goal is to work in the tech space, then it’s especially important to commit to lifelong learning. Working thru various Udacity courses has refreshed long dormant forgotten facts from university days. In addition, I have gained new skills and knowledge which to further build upon. But the one aspect I think I value the most is the interaction with the other Udacity students, project reviewers and Udacity instructors. Each person brings a unique composite of varying experience which has broadened my perspective. I realized I lived in a bubble and my bubble was very small. The bubble is still there today, but witnessing some of the transparency coming from Udacity has helped my bubble to grow.
Up front cost is a valid concern for a student. I applaud Udacity for keeping education available at zero cost. I can't even imagine the effort involved in behind the scenes to compose educational material for a global audience. Further, to make that material available on a global scale all while trying to balance a pertinent curriculum with changes in the fast-moving technology sector.
For the perspective student, I would advise caution when reading some of the marketing material from Udacity. I view it as "marketing speak". I personally find some of the "guarantee job" promo's distasteful. But I do not view it at the same level as say a typical twitter stream or a politician running for office promising everything under the sun if only "you elect me!".
I have had some negative experiences while enrolled with Udacity. I do recall having a beef during the rollout of the new classroom that occurred earlier this year. But that’s an execution aspect and executing at 100% is a tough bar to maintain. If only I maintained my New Year’s resolutions 100% of the time ;)
The one thing I can say, unequivocally, is the genuine sincerity of the people that work at and with Udacity. I do believe they sincerely care for a student’s success. Where that success bar lies are going to be unique for each person and as such, the road to that success will vary and of course change with time.
Also, I've got a few friends who have gotten nanodegrees from Udacity, and every single one has been more than satisfied, which may color my opinion a bit. That said, I'm a firm believer in the idea that there should be options for those of us who prefer a structured curriculum of courses, but aren't interested in the breadth education required from a traditional degree, and that is priced in a way that someone who lives frugally can save for and pay for up front, out of pocket.
I am currently going through the course for Autonomous Robots on Udacity. I am not in it for a job and I am not even in that domain to begin with. I just want to write code for an autonomous toy car. I find the course very good, particularly for someone without a AI background. Its intuitive and very simply laid out. I really like the small videos and quizzes at the end of each. This is precisely because I have no backgroud in AI, however even I am finding it annoying when I have to review an old lecture. On the whole I really like it though.
My understanding is that it was accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), which was recognized by the Department of Education as an accrediting body until about 3 months ago[1].
[1] http://www.esrcheck.com/wordpress/2016/10/10/department-of-e...
It's possible ITT tech started without accreditation and they earned it over a half decade period of time ("earning" doesn't ensure quality... it means you jumped through the hoops and haven't deliberately walked away with students money without providing at least the illusion of education)
It's what I recommend to anyone who asks, what's the best way to learn how to code. It's: 1. Udacity - Intro to computer science 2. Udacity - Steve's Huffman's web development course 3. and from there you're up and running and can make your own path
A University's revenue is basically defined by it's capacity, which means that lowering tuition doesn't let you "win" in any sense of the word.
The huge boom in EdTech startups is partially attributable to tech allowing for the easy dissemination of information, but has even more to do with a huge unmet need for talented developers in a culture that isn't particularly concerned with degrees. All we're seeing now is the logical conclusion of those forces playing out.
I know the founder and he really cares about people, especially his students
Nothing turns me off a service like being unable to find the price without signing up and/or starting a "free trial".
When's the IPO, know anybody in Congress to trade the enforcement actions in advance on my behalf?
There are way too many courses I have come across, which are there only to grab the money. There is no quality control there.
In my opinion, Edx, Coursera, Khan Academy, are a better deal.
If anything it's more "free" than coursera.
When it comes to Internet, i.e, virtual material which you can't touch or feel...branding is all there is.