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Comment by wyc | Hacker News Reader

When you're applying for online-only degrees, keep in mind what you're giving up. While the quality of the education may be comparable, much of the value of attending in-person is to build career-lasting relationships with smart, interesting, and trustworthy people. For many of us, sitting directly across from someone else while having a meaningful conversation is still unparalleled by what any communications technology can offer us today.

Of course, everyone has a different situation so an online CS program might actually be the best for you. For master's degrees, I've heard good things about programs at GTech, UIUC, and UCB (UCB is data science only)...not too much in the direction of undergraduate degrees.

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(full disclosure, i work as an engineer at coursera)

just wanted to highlight that one of the degrees that UIUC (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) offers, the Master of Computer Science in Data Science, is available on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/masters-in-computer-data-sc...

the benefit of this is that the way we structure our degrees, they mostly end up being a collection of courses and specializations already provided on the platform; you can try some of the courses without having to go all-in on the degree just yet. (of course, there's a ton of added benefits for enrolling in the degree program, like high-engagement learning opportunities that you don't normally get from the MOOC experience)

I'm paying for a specialization on Coursera, and while the content is good (also I really like the professor's style so far), there is next to no support available with assignments. The starter code is typically out of sync with the specs, and a lot is left for you to figure out by reverse engineering the test-runner scripts. I kind of enjoy this process, but I know people who got frustrated and gave up (and no, posting on the forums yields absolutely nothing in a reasonable amount of time).

I am an iMBA degree student at UIUC. I took a leap of faith and got admitted in the iMBA program (Jan'17 cohort). I can say with confidence that UIUC is not only the first one to give such an affordable education but their online education platform is pretty stable.

Lots of my friends who are in the iMBA program are pretty serious about the Masters in DS. They had to be, after all they are getting 2 masters degree for half the price. I might be wrong but Berkeley is offering their DS Masters (online program for 100k+)

That’s through Coursera or the university directly?

It looks interesting but I’d have to qualify for federal financial aid to do the program and trust the university more than Coursera.

Whoa. From UCB's DS admissions page:

For Master of Information and Data Science students starting the program in academic year 2017-2018 (July 2017 – June 2018), tuition will be $2,333* per unit, plus a $693.75* semester fee. Tuition is charged per unit; datascience@berkeley is a 27 unit program.

That's crazy.

This kind of thing makes me sad. Not that it's bad in any way, it just doesn't fit my personality type. What you say is completely true, it just.. sucks for my preferences in social interaction heh.

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