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Comment by washedup | Hacker News Reader

Yea, I came to the same conclusions. $60K seems like a lot for any online degree. Obviously there are still people working behind the scenes, but to me a majority of the cost is covering the Berkeley brand. While that is very attractive, I wouldn't pay more than $20,000 for this program. The knowledge itself is very valuable, but attaining it should not be so costly when there are amazing free resources all over the place.

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I was contemplating this master's degree as well. In the past couple of months we had a bunch of emails go back and forth. However, the $60K tag on an online program makes no sense.

I would rather pay that kind of money for a brand name if I will actually make connections with people in real life.

Just having a piece of paper from a reputable institution with no real human connection is just not worth the price in my opinion.

This is based on my assumption that I do make better connections with people in real life compared to virtual setups.

I like the Georgia Tech MS Computer Science [0] which was in the 8K range. That seems reasonable for an online education that's mostly self-driven.

I hate the feeling pay to play of a lot of our higher-level education as it seems that what you learn has nothing to really do with where you learn it.

[0] http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

So much of the value of going to a place like Stanford or Caltech or Harvard, etc. is in the people you will interact with. In an online program, that value is probably completely lost. Given that, I just don't see why someone would choose this over a much more cost-effective program. While a "top tier" university does look nice on the resume, I don't believe it is mandatory, anymore. If you're competent and work hard, you can build a reputation in Open Source software that will get you a job at most places, including the really sought after places (I've gotten two recruitment letters from Google, and a handful from other places), regardless of where your degree is from.

Of course, if you're competent and work hard, you can probably build your own job from scratch in any number of software and technology fields.

Not to diminish your accomplishments, but you should know that Google casts a very wide net in their recruiting. I've been contacted several times by them for positions that I am not even remotely qualified for.

Yes, that's probably true; and I doubt I would actually get a job at Google were I interested in one (I don't have a degree; I started my first company before finishing any school). They were pretty specific about why they were contacting me, and it was well-targeted for the position they were hiring for (and my company co-founder currently works in that role for Google). But, I've never posted anything anywhere ever that would indicate I'm looking for work, so I don't get a lot of recruitment overtures except from people that actually know what I do.

Anyway, that probably wasn't a useful addition to my point. I believe you're more likely to get hired for a good company if somebody within the company knows you, and you're more likely to know people in good companies if you go to one of the "good" schools for your field. That doesn't happen with online degrees, no matter how prestigious the school.

Totally see your point. The true value of a program like this would be the personal network, recruiters on campus, etc. It is going to be a lot of work to create a similar team spirit in a virtual context. By the way, the Harvard Extension School has its Master degrees priced around the $20,000 area so your estimate is pretty much on spot.

Knowledge: $0. Accreditation: $60k.

> when there are amazing free resources all over the place.

in fact, most of the worthwhile resources are free, since this isn't a discipline that has really been taught at any level until recently, but draws from several.

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