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Online Courses and the $100 Graduate Degree
First time accepted submitter GCA10 writes "Forbes reports on the latest project of Google Fellow Sebastian Thrun (the proponent of self-driving cars.) He's moved on to education now, believing that conventional university teaching is way too costly, inefficient and ineffective to survive for long. So he started Udacity, which aims to deliver an online version of a master's degree for $100 per student. From the article: 'Udacity’s earliest course offerings have been free, and although Thrun eventually plans to charge something, he wants his tuition schedule to be shockingly low. Getting a master’s degree might cost just $100. After teaching his own artificial intelligence class at Stanford last year—and attracting 160,000 online signups—Thrun believes online formats can be far more effective than traditional classroom lectures. “So many people can be helped right now,” Thrun declares. “I see this as a mission.”'"
I thought his whimsical attitude and passion for teaching were amazing and I learned a lot for zero dollars. I'd easily pay 100 bucks to have him teach me more stuff.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
You get what you pay for
And yet some of the best things in life are free. It would be nice to add a world class education to that list.
Everybody knows you can't get a quality education for cheap! This is the land of the Private University that offers freedom by enslaving you in debt.
I want to see free education thru the PhD level as some countries offer.
A PhD is free in the United States. I just completed my Doctorate and I was paid $20,000 per year to do it. In the sciences and engineering fields, at a research university, you're paid off of grant money. Tuition usually either waved or paid for you off the grant.
Now if you go into a non reacher field like the humanities or the pure mathematics, you will have to pay your own way.
That said, there are many important things that simply can't be taught via computer. I am an evolutionary biologist (specifically human evolution), so that is what I know: you can't learn anatomy at the graduate level without cadavers, period. You can't learn biological variation without dissecting and studying many cadavers. You can't learn comparative anatomy without dissecting animals. You can't learn the fossil record without handling the fossils (or high quality casts). You can't learn population genetics without spending time in a sequencing lab. You can't learn field biology without going to the field. You can't learn paleontology without going to the field. There are many things that I learned in my graduate training that simply can't be taught on a computer.
Personal tutelage by a master is similarly an irreplaceable experience. I've learned an enormous amount of information from watching online lectures and taking online courses in subjects outside of my specialties - but I would absolutely not consider myself on par with people who have traditional graduate training in these fields. I loved the AI class - but Professor Thrun never discussed my ideas with me, criticized my writings on the topic, and certainly never helped me design a project and then execute it. I can't call, Skype, or email authorities in AI to chat about the newest papers in the field - because I simply never met them through the online course.
As enthusiastic as I am about the exciting possibilities of newfangled gadgetry, computers and the internet are still tools with limitations. Powerful tools, but not totipotent tools. Sometimes newer isn't better. Sometimes newer is worse.
Right now we have testing centers for vendor-specific certifications.
Run the classes on-line for whatever price.
Those who just want to learn can stop there.
Those who want a degree can pay to take the tests at the testing centers.
For more complex tests either offer them in central locations or have traveling test sites. These would be more expensive than the other tests, but probably a LOT cheaper than the current model.
Of course it is possible to get a world class education for $100 or less, but education isn't why people go to college. The real reasons to get a college degree go beyond simple knowledge:
A) Get a worthless piece of paper to distinguish yourself. Sure, it isn't good, it isn't a positive trend, but in many fields unless you have a bachelor's or master's degree your application won't even be looked at.
B) Provides opportunities for networking with like minded students and employers. In high school most people couldn't meet with very many like minded students, especially if they were into computer science. There is a reason many start-ups happen in college, you can get all the "right" type of people, you get the people with vision, you get the code monkeys skilled with every programming language under the sun, you get the hardware people and you have thousands of potential customers right at your university.
C) It provides a chance to go out and see the world. Being a student you usually don't have much of anything tying you down to a single country. I mean, sure, you've got family, but spending a year in France, six months in Singapore, a few weeks in Andorra isn't anything major.
D) It provides a lot of "hobby time" to work on pet projects and research, especially at graduate level. When you are employed for a company, everything needs to be justified in terms of profit. In college you can just do things for the heck of it.
Every "book knowledge" thing you can learn in college can be learned for free online. In the rare case it can't be found online, it can be found in the textbook which you can buy without registering for the class. Yes, you do have a handful of really good professors, but the best thing they provide isn't book knowledge, it is guidance.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Your problem (and most people's it seems) is that you think higher ed is supposed to be vocational training. That is what trade schools and community colleges should be for. Universities exist not only to train you in a particular field, but also to make you a well rounded educated person. Yes, that even involves some level of education in physical skills you may not possess (I certainly enjoyed my Archery class). Unfortunately our society has grown to value the Bachelor's degree so much, that institutions of higher education are being pushed more and more into being really long, expensive, trade schools.
I did not particularly like his teaching style (in the AI class), however that comment applies to any class, free or not. I do 100% like the idea of offering education for a reasonable price.
Look at it this way; in the future an employer needs to select a new hire. 2 people apply, both with master's degress. One paid $40,000 a year for it, one paid $100 a year. Which is the smarter one?
Indeed, you get what you paid for, not.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
As part of that $40k you're also getting contacts and connections. You think Prof. Thrun is going to recommend you to a colleague who might be hiring, or provide a reference for you? Because I know my master's advisor certainly will.
Which one is going to stick to the job because he sold his first born child to cover the debts?
You're nothing; like me.
An awful lot of Americans are paying a lot and getting very little out of college right now... especially at for-profit universities. Every taxpayer has an interest in this subject because of federal student loans.
Major reform is going to be necessary because the college debt bubble is going to pop sooner rather than later. I applaud this man's effort to bring some fiscal sanity to the world of higher education.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
for $40,000 I bet HE would.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
As a scientific programmer, I find it amazing that any significant portion of people in serious IT place no value on math higher than and including trigonometry. Is this actually the case?
And as a citizen in a democracy, I find it amazing and frightening that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in general education courses. When I was a kid in the 90's, we used to call someone a "tool" as an insult.
So, you say, it's a meritocracy where ass licking skills are what matters instead of academics. Yeah, I've been to a U.S. school too, and while the quality of education was way better than what I had in Europe, the social side of it was a disaster. I tried to stay on campus only for the classes and library time.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It's very sad that those connections matter. School should be about what you know and what you can do, not about your ass licking skills :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I paid a total of 10000$ to get a BSc, an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science in Italy. I now work happily as a researcher in the Netherlands.
Higher education should not be treated as an enterprise. Higher knowledge is a very scarce commodity (an online recording system/whatever is not the same thing, otherwise the easily available books would be more than sufficient to get any degree); this means that schools are effectively a monopoly without much competition.
Who can solve this? The state. Look all over Europe for the simple solution: higher education benefits everyone and is paid (because paid it must be) by the state mostly and the end user a little bit. The little bit in some cases is increased if the student is not passing enough exams. There are also *lots* of scholarships that both look at ability and low income, and these often end up supporting poorer students who do not necessarily have excellent results but just ok results.
Why does the state need to step in? Because Communism is great and Mother Russia is close-by? No: the state needs to step in because the gain with more educated citizens is of the collective, not just the subject of the education.
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
The business case here is that it is expensive (time-wise) to develop content for 100 students, but becomes much cheaper to do so for 200,000. There is a whole industry built on updating learning material every year. Sure, we learn more about how to effectively teach all the time, but neither our knowledge of the universe (at least the sub-set of that knowledge that we need to teach the average student) nor our knowledge of how to teach better grows so fast as to require a complete re-write of the curriculum each year. There is a lot of fat in the system that can be done away with. This is an attempt to do just that. Maybe we can't effectively teach without face-to-face contact. Maybe we can use that face-to-face contact better. The lines and limits are worth exploring, especially since the cost of keeping the status quo in place is to place effective education out of the reach of most of the worlds population.
The amount of personal time you get from instructors for $100 is at most a few hours. For some students, that's enough. For most, it isn't.
I'd strongly disagree with "most". 200 students and one hour of office hours and the guy doesn't speak english anyway is not an unusual situation.
There is nothing wrong with people who have learning problems going to special schools that cost $50K/yr and everyone else goes to the $50/yr school.
The purpose of higher ed is not to hold your hand like a kindergartner anyway, its to teach you how to teach yourself. Look at the environment you'll be in when you graduate.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Panflation is an interesting theory - one that there is more truth to than I would like to think about. I also employ people, or rather used to, before I got my soul back.
What I find most interesting about panflation, though, is that it is directly related to the baby-boomer lesson of 'you're special, there's never been anyone like you' that we've been force fed for the last 50 years or so. It starts with participation trophies in youth sports. It is highlighted by inflated grades, and the relative inability to hold a student back in today's educational system. I say relative inability, because this is how it goes: The school says, 'this child isn't learning anything - s/he needs to be held back,' which causes the parents to squawk 'NOPE,' while flailing their arms. Why? Because all of the research states that holding students back isn't effective (in minority and students in poverty), is over applied (in minority and students in poverty), and has alternatives that are as simple as increased parent participation (for minority and students in poverty) and even as simple as better classroom management practices! You hear that? It's not your fault!!! It never was!!! What's the issue here? -----The people who are reading this research are generally White, Suburban, Middle- to Upper-Middle Class folks. NOT the folks living in poverty, or minority groups that it is intended for.
What we are seeing with grade inflation at brick and mortar universities is the end result of two facts: (a) no one wants to be the bad guy anymore, so no one fails, and (b) we have been fed, for 50 years or so, that if we don't agree with a decision, we can FIGHT THE POWER, and DESERVE to get our way; and if we can't get our way, just call Mommy and Daddy, so they can threaten the school with lawsuits or some other bullshit.
I'm not sure where that came from, but there it is. I'm not saying that I disagree with you, I'm just saying that when articles point out whole-life inflation, but refuse to call attention to the underlying problem, I get a bit steamed.
I wish there was an online option for when I went through graduate school. At least then I wouldn't have needed to play monkey-boy for a Faculty Member to pay for it (yes, those words are capitalized; he made that abundantly clear to me).