San Jose State to offer ground-breaking low-cost, for-credit online courses | Hacker News Reader

San Jose State to offer ground-breaking low-cost, for-credit online courses

mercurynews.com

77 pointswhyenot30 comments

Since it isn't mentioned in the article, here's the program page: http://www.sjsu.edu/plus/

Also, they only offer Intermediate Algebra, College Algebra and Elementary Statistics classes. SJSU's program is clearly intended as a precursor to attending college, not a replacement.

All true. But this could be the start of something beautiful. Within two years surely it'll be possible to get a STEM Associate of Arts degree online from a state system.Online education has many flaws and misfeautures but the only thing I can't see it doing is a thesis, and how many people do those before a Master's?

Nice to see a state university taking the lead here. Not to downplay what Coursera/edX are doing, but for US higher education to get cheaper, it's not the advanced courses that need to go online, it's the introductory ones, so that the required freshman and sophomore courses can be taken on the cheap (maybe while a student is in high school), and advanced ones can then involve tuition, use of labs, specialized equipment, and other university infrastructure.

Completely agree. Anything 100 level should be brought online first; I could see this compressing a "four year" bachelors degree into two years.

Even compressing a "four year" degree into four years would make a substantial difference. At American state universities, only 31% of students graduate in four years.

I thought four-year degrees taking 5 years was a bit ridiculous before I moved abroad... after moving to Holland I see that the US is just not competitive here.

In NL, University students complete a Bachelor's in three years, usually going on to complete a Master's in the following year, or a "Research Masters" in two years ("research" meaning you actually publish articles). Nearly the whole time is spent actually studying the subjects in your major.

True, but a HBO takes four years and is equivalent to an American bachelor's degree. Part of the problem is that in the US, a whole range of institutions shares this category called "college" even though everyone knows that MIT and a regional state university are vastly different.

Actually, this is kind of funny, because last semester they ran their intro to circuits class as a "flipped classroom" of the edX 6.002x Intro to Circuits class. I guess they're trying to get a foot in all camps :)

(I happened to be somewhat involved with edX last year, otherwise I don't think I would have known about this collaboration.)

This could potentially start a tuition cost battle (reverse pricing) in the country and in the end benefit the students. Good to see SJSU taking leads from bigger players like Stanford and Cal in the valley.

Good for students in the short term; long term, it's strongly in students' interests for universities to get more money.

This is great progress, but it needs to be coupled with better funding for public universities.

Could you explain your reasoning? I don't think that universities are a good way to provide education, but I'd like to hear your perspective.

My university provides access to top-of-the-line audio and video editing software and computers for students to use. It also has a fantastic internet connection, a large research library, and numerous other small amenities that help students practice and learn. Those could be cut, and would be cut in a price war, and yet doing so would not be advantageous to students in the long run.

As for whether universities are a good way to provide education: I don't think they are for everyone. Many people do better when they can work on their own, at the pace they need. But for some people that's overwhelming and too unguided. Plus, in-person access to expert professors can be great for independent research and projects.

It is not self-evident to me that it's necessarily in students' interest for universities to get more money.

As a purchaser of anything else -- gas, entertainment, books, electronics, whatever -- is it always in my long-term interest for the seller to "get more money"? (Even when that money doesn't come directly to me -- for example, government subsidies -- their bonanza doesn't necessarily inure to me, the customer, as opposed to insiders.)

Always? No. But when news agencies get more money, they have more careful copy-editing and better investigative journalism. When hardware companies get more money, they can afford better R&D, resulting in nicer products down the road. The things that get cut tend to be what avoids short-term losses, which isn't always good for the consumer.

Here's the announcement by Sebastian Thrun on Udacity:

http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity-anno...

Is the ground-breaking part the cost of it? I just think it sounds like normal online courses. Maybe I am missing something?

It's a for credit online course that's available for cheap and as a non-degree student (i.e. MOOC). So it's the first set of courses to try and bridge the gap between MOOC's and "traditional" online courses/degrees.

Ok, thank you for explaining! I am not from the US so I didn't know it was uncommon with online courses for non-degree students.

edit: Although now that I think about it I should have guessed. Having a system with an expensive tuition to be paid by the student probably doesn't roll so well with pick-and-choose online courses for everyone.

What Udacity and EdX are missing is (1) verifiable testing; (2) accreditation. They are just starting on this with the Pearson deal.

But SJSU can provide the accreditation. But verifying that someone who could be in Bangor or Bangkok is really taking their test or doing their own homework is the big missing piece.

Not only is this important in terms of accessibility (reach and cost), but also to consistently provide quality course content.

An online class won't suffer from potential variabilities in quality that may impact traditional ones. In fact, their quality can easily improve based on feedback.

The University of London offers full distance learning degree courses. They don't offer very much in the way of support but they are cheap and reputable. See: http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/

Open University, too, http://www.open.ac.uk/, and it's got considerably better name recognition...

Hmm, I wonder, if they want to make money out of it as well or not. My question is why I would spend 150$ on a online course, that I can get on edX or elsewhere for free?

what is the catch :?

It's for credit. That's pretty much it. I can't think of any other reasons.

You can take the course for free, but you won't get credit for it. From the Udacity blog:

"Living up to our promise to always provide a free path to high-quality education, we are also offering these courses free of charge as conventional MOOCs, but this path will not include instructor access, additional support services, or a path to college credit."

Blogpost: http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity-anno...

As a recruiter, how can I tell if someone who payed, did really learn something from the course? Does the paid version, has a tougher exam?

FYI: http://online-degrees.findthebest.com

You can take an in-person, face-to-face course at a community college for about the same price. I don't see how this program is ground-breaking.

And just like that, it becomes clear how Udacity can become a multi-billion dollar company. I hope their investors get rich, the World will be a much better place if they do.

I think there has been a lot of interest in the company lately. I put them on my linkedin under education and even though I use a lot of popular keywords, searching 'Udacity' is the #1 way people arrive at my profile by a wide margin.

I find Udacity sort of gimmicky and too gamified. I really wish I could say I really enjoyed the intro to CS course. I hope they get better.

I'd jump at the opportunity to get the equivalent of a BS in CS for free. Or even for a modest per-credit hour fee.

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