World's First Massive Online Degree Program Starts Today | Hacker News Reader

World's First Massive Online Degree Program Starts Today

blog.udacity.com

102 pointsibsathish66 comments

Since when is a 375 person class massive?

I'm all for what Udacity, Coursera, and others are trying to do, but there have been proper online universities such as the Open University doing this for years with hundreds of types of degrees, and with bigger classes.

Let's put the "massive" back in "MooC".

Also, $7k? I can get a on-campus CS masters in a world top 100 university here in Ireland for that price. I guess education in the US must be ultra expensive.

Everything that is near-socialized in other western industrialized countries is paradoxically more expensive here. 3 Years of law school is $150k, not counting actual cost of living. Schools run in the realm of $14k to $50k a year in tuition costs alone.

Out of interest, why can't you do law (or indeed medicine) as a first degree in the US?

On a mechanical level, a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools.

On a more practical level, the schools that are good enough to land you a job as a doctor/lawyer are all so competitive that a hole in your CV like not having a bachelor's degree when everyone else has one is a real disadvantage.

"a 4 year degree is an entrance requirement at med/law schools"

Yes, I know that - but why have this requirement - as far as I know most other countries don't (certainly the UK doesn't).

The requirement that one have a bachelor's degree prior to entering a first-degree law program gradually took hold, mainly during the earlier part of the 20th century I believe. One reason was to make it harder for people (particularly people from immigrant communities) to enter the legal profession. Another reason was to increase the prestige of the legal profession by turning it into a graduate degree program. This latter reason is also behind two later developments (making it standard for the law degree program to be 3 years, and rebranding the name of the degree from the traditional LLB (Bachelor of Laws) to the pretentious JD (Juris Doctor). The 3-year standardization was not fully in place until the mid-20th century, IINM, and the LLB->JD rebranding largely took place during the early post-WW2 era. The JD rebranding no doubt had something to do with the high prestige enjoyed by the medical profession by the mid-20th century.

As for why the bachelor's degree is required for medical schools, I don't know as much about that (I'm a lawyer and have studied the history of the US legal profession a bit). I suspect some of the reasons are the same (other than competition with the other profession, since I think the medical profession was the earlier mover here).

Edit: postwar -> post-WW2 as I realize most HN readers may not have grown up with that long-default US usage of "postwar".

Thanks - my wife is a solicitor in Scotland (and has been called to the Bar as an Advocate) and she did her LLB as a second degree as she already had a first degree. Although her route was unintentional it certainly used to be "traditional" to do law as second degree (and some universities here do an accelerated 2 year ordinary LLB) after a degree in classics or similar. She trained in the Civil Service as a solicitor (when you get a law degree you are still 3 years away from actually qualifying - you have to do a postgraduate course then do two years training in a a law firm) and their filtering criteria for trainees was that they have 2 first degrees....

Only a very small number of people do law as a second degree these days.

Amusingly, the process for training as an advocate is known as devilling - where you are apprenticed to a senior junior and during that time you are literally an advocate's devil :-)

I should add that we're starting to see some reverse movement in the US legal profession on this stuff, glacially speaking. The 3-year requirement for American Bar Association-accredited law schools has come increasingly into question during the past few years, partly a result of the current perceived crisis of historically high unemployment and lack of practical skills among (typically heavily-in-debt) law school graduates. A reduction from 3 to 2 years is foreseeable. In which case it may become marginally tougher to maintain that the degree should have the word 'Doctor' in it.

Edit: Another thing we're starting to hear in conjunction with calls to reduce the 3-year program is to institutionalize something like the 'devilling' that you speak of, i.e. to replace the third academic year with an apprenticeship year.

On the practical point, I suppose that's true. There are a few US universities that offer slightly shortened paths to getting a medical or law degree for students entering as undergraduates. I seem to recall that CUNY (City University of New York) offered a six-year B.S./M.D. program, and Columbia offered a six-year bachelor's/JD program, and maybe they still do, but of course you get a bachelor's degree during the course of such programs.

Education, like most things in the US, is supported by debt. Tuition for a single semester at Georgia Tech, for an out of state student like myself, would run $14,861: http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spr...

For anyone skimming over this post, $14,861/semester adds up to $118,888 over four years.

And that doesn't include a place to live or food to eat. The hidden costs can be quite substantial as well.

Or books either. Probably $1,000 in books per year. Maybe more.

This kind of sky high prices necessarily deprives a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA. This directly has an impact on the economy in the long run. Instead of funding an expensive military, US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education and recover it over the entire working life of the person in small bits. Better to have high national debt in return for an extremely well educated population instead of a white elephant of a military.

Supply and demand. The demand is extremely high, with every high school graduate being pressured to "go to college!" (to what end, few know) and student loans being so easy to get. The supply is limited, as a nation can only produce so many professors and places for them to teach.

Your suggestion "US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education" (however paid for) would just increase the demand even more. You'd still be depriving a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA by the sheer mass of bodies signing up - and you'd still have a limited supply of teachers & facilities, so odds of the "deserving" getting what they need remains low.

Demand outstripping supply, prices naturally rise until equilibrium. Making payment easier thru cheap debt or government handouts doesn't solve the problem because that increases the demand without improving supply. MOOCs, by improving the teacher/student ratio by orders of magnitude, does work toward solving the problem (and decreases costs as well!).

Would it really take four years to do a masters? I thought most masters degrees were one- or two-year programs.

Don't you need a bachelor's degree to begin a masters? So it'd be up to 6 years.

Also the debt cannot be gotten rid of by declaring yourself bankrupt. It is a 'federal' debt.

Think the UK has sort of got this right. Your tuition fees are a debt (at very low interest rates) that you never have to pay off unless you start earning significant amounts of money. It's repaid as a percentage of your salary above a certain income level.

Hmm, "right" is a pretty contentious point here still given the still recent betrayal of the Lib Dems.

And 20 years ago it used to be completely free and you'd even be given money to go in the form of grants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities_in_the_United_King...

Not sure a political party can be relied on to do the right thing. It's the nature of politics.

20 years ago I could buy a house for a decent price. I started Uni in 1990 and that was the first year student loans were introduced. So you'd have to have graduated in 1989 (25 years ago) to not have been impacted by student loans.

What has changed is that the cost of going to University has now been transferred correctly to the student. I see nothing wrong in somebody choosing to go to University and I know many people of my era that just went to University because that is what you did. Now people try and evaluate if going to University is the correct career choice.

The important thing to remember is that this 'debt' is not an issue. You have to be financially 'successful' to even start to need to pay it off and the interest rate is currently at 1.5% (Commercial rates are around 6-9%) and is written off after 25 years, unlike the US student debt which is at commercial rates and you cannot escape.

I definitely don't agree with "Correctly"?

It's a social investment in the future of the country, there's nothing objectively correct that at some arbitrary point in your education you suddenly need to pay. I wonder when you want to start having school children accrue their loans for primary/secondary school?

Why is part of your education free and part of it not? And perhaps the most important part that you arguably desperately need if you want to access a middle class job?

Isn't that massively elitist and a class discriminator? That when you do finally get that job you have to pay a load of money back that your richer peers just put in a saving account and earned some free money?

And if that's what's changed why do so many more people go to university now than previously?

Everything you've just said makes absolutely no sense from a different perspective.

The world is unfair and some people are born into money and many many more are not. The government has taken the decision to provide free education up to a specific level. Should you wish to pursue a degree, the government provides a debt mechanism to do this.

The debt is non-repayable until you have pretty much become financially successful and is written off after 25 years. I really don't see this as a major issue. There is nothing financially stopping you going to University.

I'd actually argue that the government debt should also cover residential accommodation and minimum living costs.

It isn't really "completely free" if it's coming out of tax revenue, is it? Paid for by taxation would be the correct way to describe that situation, it seems.

I am curious whether the tuition fee is same on international (non-EU) students or non-research courses.

> Since when is a 375 person class massive

That isn't all -- none of the classes actually have 375 students. There are several classes being offered per semester, and most students are doing only one or two. I can't find the figure at the moment, but iirc class sizes are ~150.

Most interesting to me was this: "88% of the applicants are US-based as compared to 10% for the on-campus degree." My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. At lot of international students do come to the US, but that's for traditional on-campus education. If you're not going all-in in that manner, might as well attend a local institution for a fraction of the cost. This kinda puts paid to some of the MOOC rhetoric of opening education to the masses.

On the other hand, I'm really happy to see Udacity developing a viable business model. Coursera has received a lot more publicity, with their wider range of courses, but haven't seem to put as much emphasis on developed a sustainable income stream. I like what both of these companies do and would like to see them stick around.

>My guess is that the $7K price that seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context.

Yep! That would be my guess too. As an American who immigrated to Europe for an affordable Master's degree, I can understand both sides of this. $7K would have sounded completely reasonable to me 5 years ago, but now after I have paid only 500 Euros a semester, that is my new threshold for what I'd probably be willing to pay... Not that there is any strict logic behind what an education is or is not "worth," but compared to other opportunities there is no reason for me to pay more.

I think many MOOC studies show that while "the poor girl in Afghanistan" is theoretically possible and a nice heart-warming story, the reality is that it's mostly used by already fairly well educated Caucasian males from well developed countries. [classes are also mostly not completed etc.]

I'm really wondering why that is the case and feel like they should focus a lot on fixing this because bringing great education to people that otherwise can't get it would be the real breakthrough (insert solar powered mini-TV story by Christensen for the old compete with nonconsumption here)

Either way I hope this prototype succeeds and which them luck.

Interestingly, 8k€ is what it would cost an American for a year's tuition in Belgium (where I'm from). For Belgians, it's less than 1k€.

I don't understand why studying in Europe is not a more popular choice amongst young Americans.

Probably lack of awareness in both directions - apart from Oxford and Cambridge, how many European universities are well known in the US?

And for Europeans - apart from Harvard, Yale (and MIT and Stanford for people in the tech world) how many people know about other US universities? This also probably applies within Europe - I have no idea what the top rated universities are for CS or engineering are in Germany or France... and I'm in the UK (showing my own ignorance - I really should know).

I was at a conference in New Jersey and met two guys. One said, "I'm from Cornell", and stood back waiting for applause. The next said, "I'm from Rice", and also stood back waiting for applause.

Somewhat perturbed by the expectant looks, having never heard of these institutions, and meaning to be polite and sound interested, I asked, "Are they campus universities or city universities?".

Following twenty minutes of discussing relevant technical developments in our fields, we got on like a house on fire, but the assumption of name-recognition more than a 100km from home (that about 5 x umpteen miles) stood unfirmly.

Cornell and Rice would be known in the U.S. in general, but most likely, not known outside of the U.S. -- unless you are in a field where those particular institutions are leaders.

That would be correct. In Portugal, university fees are around €1000 per annum. A private university costs around €5000. So by our standards, this is expensive.

A second disadvantage is that American degrees are not automatically recognized here - you have to ask for an equivalence; and very likely an online degree would not be recognized, because it does not follow a traditional format in terms of course attendance and examinations.

The only advantage of this degree is the fact that you can take it online, and that is not very compelling, as you can find most of this material for free.

  and very likely an online degree would not be recognized

The actual degree that will be granted for this particular program is simply "MS in Computer Science" from Georgia Tech. So it is not going to differentiated from the on-campus degree.

Yeah, but what happens when a job interviewer asks you about his favorite pizza place at Georgia Tech and you have to admit you have never been there :-(

Indeed. Giving a blank/puzzled reaction to a reference to "The Varsity" will raise lots of red flags.

Tell the interviewer that the program is a remote learning program. What's wrong with that?

Georgia Tech student here. Can confirm how good that pizza place is.

That's good to know, but it might still not be accepted. While an Ivy-league education is sure to earn recognition, many second- or third-tier American institutions might fall short.

In terms of Computer Science, Georgia Tech is ranked #10 (by US News & World Report [1]). I'd say that's a first tier institution.

[1] http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

I won't call Georgia Tech second tier.

I have learned in this thread that it isn't, but the parent has a good point: in the European country that I live in the name is not recognized at all. Potential employers will not know the value of the education and might assume it is just a degree farm.

I'm one of the students that was admitted to this first round of classes. I've been taking MOOC's since the first round of Stanford courses in 2011, so I was excited to see this program develop just as I was applying to other graduate schools.

Admission for the first round was very limited to keep it manageable while they address any issues that come up early in the new program (and there have been a few, though nothing major). I think the original idea was to offer 6 classes and allow 100 students per class - 600 total. But only 5 classes ended up being offered, and the total acceptance was lowered further as students will take more than one class at a time. Within a few semesters they intend to accept anyone who meets the qualifications, with no regard to class size.

Regarding the cost, it is in fact revolutionary for US residents. My bill for the one class I'm taking was $700 ($400 in flat fees and $100 per credit hour). My next choice of school was NC State which would have cost several times that even though I'm an NC resident. A good out of state school, even a public one, would have likely been unaffordable to me. At this rate my employer's limited education reimbursement program will cover the entire cost of my degree with GaTech.

I am very interested in this program and will be applying for the Summer 2014. I've also been taking online courses off and on at Coursera, Udacity, and Stanford. Currently, I'm writing my statement of purpose and background essay. Do you think your history of taking online classes was significant to your admission? I'd also appreciate any pointers for SoP...

A few thoughts:

2,360 people applied, each paying a $50 admission fee [0]. That's a cool 118k for admissions triaging. Also on that page, we can see they originally said up to 600 people would be admitted for the pilot program. They admitted 375, with some deferring admission. Maybe the entire 225 other people deferred, but if not I wonder why they scaled back the pilot program.

The average age is 35 for the pilot program vs. 24 for on-campus masters. Interesting, but not very surprising. I'm not far past the on-campus age, but I'm keeping my eyes on such programs for the future.

The specialities they plan to offer is also in [0]. When I first read that page, I was saddened not to see any options related to programming languages. My only other major speciality interest was operating systems, but I burnt out on that a little. The software development process material sounds interesting. I bet there will be a lot of interest in the AI/Robots and machine learning specialities through this program.

I wonder when the courses will be made available for free? An early post about the program promised that "the bare content will be available free of charge." [1] I was hoping to get an idea of what the courses would be like early this year. I don't see anything on Udacity about the courses at the moment.

All that said, I'm excited about this program by Udacity and Georgia Tech, even given the apparent failure of MOOCs we have been hearing about. I say apparent, as I think measuring percent-to-complete is misguided, as I know I have gained plenty of knowledge from courses being offered without completing them. The movement to corporate sponsored project courses is interesting, but I'm not a big fan of the idea to pay to "commit to your success" [2]. The extra guidance will be a boon for some people, though.

[0] https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech

[1] http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-o...

[2] https://www.udacity.com/success

Some dreaming on my part...

I'm rooting for this to work out. If you can do it alongside a job they could very well "compete with nonconsumption" of sorts. This already exists on somewhat large scale in some countries. The biggest (by enrolment) university in Germany is a "Fernuniversität"

Ultimately I hope these take off, prices go down (they become essentially free with payments for taking tests i.e. universities become more certification agencies). Hope the brand name of universities will be measured by the quality of the free education they provide in the future. 7k$ is not a price point that excites me.

And of course I hope this leads to the non-online classes getting better and better as they have to provide truely great value.

[especially for CS I could also see companies tapping in and offering some sort of mentoring/intern programs]

I had to look up "Fernuniversität" (Google Translate says it's "distance university")

I guess you're referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen

"a public research university focused on distance teaching"

Yes, sorry for leaving that untranslated. It's distance learning/teaching and that's the university I was referring to.

There are also a couple of more focused distance learning offers, usually started by some professor and then spun out as a not for profit (usually focused on a MA in a single field) which can be pricey (5-10k Euro for a MA).

Does U.S.(or any other country) government recognize this degree for working visa or immigration? (H-1B / green card)

You can't get a visa to study this degree inside the US, but Georgia Tech has said that the actual degree given at the end will be the same as that given to on-campus students. It is a "Masters in Computer Science" -- the "Online" bit is only for marketing and internal administrative purposes (or so I've been led to believe.)

It's a not particularly massive online degree program using similar mechanisms to those used in MOOCs for classes—but it's not the first such program by any stretch of the imagination. Such programs are actually older than free MOOCs, and a number of instutions have had them for years; Kaplan has several, including a JD program.

This seems to be the first to try to leverage the attention to MOOCs in te marketing, and might be the first non-professional graduate program of the type.

I have to admit I don't see the difference between what Udacity are doing in this particular course and what Open University has been doing for years.

MOOC! YouTube!

Less Silicon Valley investment in OU would be my guess.

For more information on the cross section of those admitted, see this article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-a...

I like Udacity's new focus on courses designed by companies.

Traditional education is far too detached from what is required in industry, and has trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation.

Funny, as I have found most of the newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness (Intro to Hadoop/MapReduce took a few hours and barely covered the basics). The old Artificial Intelligence or Parallel Programming are probably some of the best on the site.

The newer courses seriously lacking any tangible depth or usefulness

Interesting. I have to admit that I didn't participate in one of the newer coures yet.

Sure, good ideas != good execution.

That's my general impression as well. That's why I didn't get a master in CS rather a MBA which is kind of relaxing and fun (my company offered for my master degree, otherwise I'd never go... ). Pretty much all CS master courses not that much in depth in comparison to an engineering master degree. And all these tech degree are quite "generic", which greatly reduce their usefulness in real life.

I feel like graduate school are for people who do not know what they want or interested in at the moment. Once they do, you already locked up in that degree plan, and have no time to go ahead implement the idea.

I much prefer to take classes from edX-like course education sites which I'm not obligated to anything. Once I feel I got a hang of this new field, I can just go and do my stuff.

Ha, yeah, very funny.

Why would anyone pay for a degree, let alone online degree, is still a mystery for me. You don't need a degree if you are really interested in computer science.

(Enough of) Education has been free since at least 2010 in my experience. Employability is not.

wait, the admissions are closed?!?! What gives :(

Btw it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs. Lower the drop-out rate by introducing an entry barrier. And also restict the class size to reach a manageable amount for actual class-like experience. Also, offer an ACTUAL degree, thus providing incentive to students to carry on with the program.

"it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs ... "

So its exactly the same as a traditional distance course then?

In what way does this solve any of the problems of MOOCs? (And I question whether MOOCs should even look at drop-out rates as a failure, but thats another rant)

Its not "massive" by any stretches of the imagination. It just happens to be an online course. I welcome the age of online degrees and I hope the trend continues and that they can scale it to become 'massive' in the future without damaging the prestige of the degree. But they have a way to go yet.

This is the beginning of a revolution for affordable,accessible education.

Make it free and you'll have a million applicants.

That's disruptive.

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