Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

I took their Self-driving car Nanodegree and it was hands down the best online course I've ever taken in my life (and I took some crazy courses from MIT and Stanford). Where else could you end up with a capstone of actually programming a real self-driving car that is then running your code on some course in Mountain View?

Offerings right now:

1. If you want academic rigor only, go with edX

2. If you want academic rigor and some more approachable/practical courses, go with Coursera; or if you want to do full MS/MBA/MSA online (they have the widest selection right now comparing to edX/Udacity)

3. If you want unique practical skills in hot areas like self-driving/flying cars, deep (reinforcement) learning etc. without fully committing to rigorous practices, go with Udacity

4. If you need anything else, go with Udemy, Masterclass, School of AI and similar

View on HN

For me, Udacity just has crazy prices.

I mean I can pay ~40-50 euros for Coursera and edX (and lots of them are free).

But Udacity costs thousands of euros - I could attend a brick and mortar school with a great reputation for that price here in Spain.

Would it be a private, subsidies free school, or a public one? Quite likely the actual cost of a public school will be 10 or 100 more than you have to pay in tuition.

A public school - but ultimately that makes little difference to me as the consumer.

Furthermore, none of the MOOC providers have cracked the issue of credibility to employers, if I felt an Udacity nanodegree would be taken as seriously as a 'real' masters degree then I'd be willing to pay much more for it.

But when I'm just doing them more for self-fulfillment (as I'm sceptical employers give much credit to Coursera, Udacity etc.) then paying any more than 50 euros doesn't make sense.

What most students don't realize is that education is Europe is heavily subsidized. What are the fees for international students? That gives a more accurate picture of the cost.

Education in the US is heavily subsidized too, students just also pay a lot more.

Of course it is heavily subsidized. Everyone knows that all our education is paid through taxes.

And that is how it should be. Because it makes a better society for all. More highly educated people gives more productivity and prosperity for all. That it isn't your parent's wealth that decides what school you can go to decreases inequality and we get less people that feel that they never got a chance in life.

For the record I think education should be free.

Atleast in Germany it is free for international students in many states. In some states where it is not completely free for international students, the fees is still pretty low.

"4. If you need anything else, go with Udemy, Masterclass, School of AI and similar"

+. I am huge udemy fan. I love that profits get back to the creator of the content. Usually, I wait until there is a good sale then pick up a security [1] course for $10. The teachers are positive and reply back to me. I think the only way this model could work is if Udemy had a total of 5 employees and took a small fee. VCs need to get out of this business - these aren't unicorns.

https://www.udemy.com/kali-linux-hacking/

This comment doesn't make a lot of sense. Udemy is a 2500 person company (https://www.linkedin.com/company/udemy/). It is awesome that the profits are 50% shared with the creator of the course. There are many smaller Udemy clones that take less of a percentage but will offer fewer sales.

There really aren't any companies that compete with Udemy. Why would a course creator accept 0.1% of the sales Udemy brings, in exchange for a slightly smaller fee?

Competitors to Udemy really need to do better marketing. The fee doesn't matter.

I was driving south on 101 in Mt. View and a car came out of the left lane and cut me off to take the 85S exit. Was that your code? (The responsible thing is to use a linter to catch these things so they don't become "runtime" errors.)

This actually made me laugh.

Path-planning algorithm might have been set to "racing mode" and your driving was evaluated as non-threatening/non-colliding for the duration of the maneuver ;-)

At EPFL we're trying a model with the Extension School that is somewhere between 2 and 3. We don't quite do flying cars (yet) but we're developing more and more advanced material - and the big plus being that learners in the programs get a diploma (e.g. https://exts.epfl.ch/courses-programs/applied-data-science-m...).

I do think that universities should invest more heavily in this mix, obviously without losing their strong standing in 1.

Where else could you end up with a capstone of actually programming a real self-driving car that is then running your code on some course in Mountain View?

You can get all that and more if you actually went to university.

Not at the well-respected school I went to.

Yeah, you'd have to go to schools in California because Mountain View is in California and the big programs are at Stanford, Berkeley, etc. My alma mater is actually building its own mobility research center in Flint, MI. Home of the lead poisoned peasants. And my alma mater isn't that well respected.

Oh, right. Just go to Stanford. Sure, no problem.

"Go to Stanford" is a muuuuch bigger barrier than "go to a university."

And considering it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a degree at Stanford, it's not clear that it's the far superior option.

It only costs hundreds of thousands if you get no scholarships, did no curricular activities, took no AP courses, and didn't do well in school in general.

Most schools will provide students with academic scholarships. My school paid for the first year of my schooling because of my GPA and test scores.

Plus I'm pretty sure getting into Kettering University is a lot easier than Stanford. They didn't even have an admissions essay when I applied.

Nor at my non-respected school

Interesting, I never ranked them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com