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The $100 Masters Degree From Udacity
mikejuk writes "In an interview with Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun, it was revealed that he hopes to offer a Masters degree for only $100, and is close to offering a full computer science degree. 'There are unfortunately some rough edges between our fundamental class CS101 and the next class up, when this is done I believe we can get an entire computer science education completely online and free and I think this is the first time this has happened in the history of humanity.' The latest course from Udacity is on statistics, and he is hoping to top the 160,000 sign up for his first online class on AI. It is also hoped to be the first class where students can visit a testing center to get their achievments formally certified."
Master of first dupe!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
This here is the future of education. Eventually we'll formalize this further by enabling a quick download directly to our brains that brings everyone up to speed fast regarding the facts of science, discipline, critical thinking, analysis.
What education will never be able to teach us is morality. Bertrand Russel, the great philosopher once was asked what he would offer the future generations.
Here is what he had to say about it. He said two things, one intellectual and one moral; when you study any matter, ask yourself only what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out; the moral thing is love is wise, hatred is foolish.
With education like the $100 masters degree, we have the first part down fine. The rest of our development needs to focus on the second.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Good
- anyone can take the course
- it's very affordable
Bad
- how ya gonna stop cheating? With an entirely remote degree course you can't. Therefore, to an employer, it's not worth much.
(Yeah, sure, whatever, start the snark about how degrees aren't worth anything anyway, I disagree)
I am on the fence with this.
The only way you can get $100 for a degree in education is to mass produce it. Pre-Recorded Lectures, Online articles, Mutable choice tests, all done online. Now granted some colleges nearly teach like that, a professor with a well practiced rehearsed lectures, then you do you multiple choice tests, then you got your class credit...
While you may learn, and can get accreditation. It creates a culture of mediocre education. This takes out some of the human elements that are both good and bad. If you are able being able to be noticed by a professor and working with them on his research, having your work properly critiqued.
When I went to college for Computer Science, I came in already knowing how to program, and I was working programming, but I wanted to learn more then just the core requirements, I wanted to learn the nuances. While some students in my class who passed they got the basics, I was able to use education and the work directly with my professors to hone my skills and make me better. I know I used up more then $100 expense on my education.
However I think a hybrid approach would be a good match. There are some classes, that I didn't like spending thousands of dollars on, just because I had to take them, I would much rather pay a lower rate, and take the mediocre online class to get the credit, and save some money. But save the classes I am actually interested in with live people and professors.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is an intriguing idea. I don't know if it is fully the future of education but my hope is that it will be disruptive enough to modulate current universities. Why do we have professors giving the same lecture time and time again? I think the argument that a professor can take questions is also somewhat silly, most of my professors in engineering only took a few questions, and if they did it generally only helped the confused soul who asked the question. It seems to me that having video lectures and office hours, or perhaps the TA directed study sessions, would lower costs overall. Students wouldn't have to worry about scheduling conflicts and they could view the lectures as time allows. Professors would have more time probably to engage in research.
Of course, for this to work it also seems like the professors would have to follow the book closely. I hated it when I had to buy an expensive book that was nearly useless as the professor took a totally different approach. If the lecture and reading generally tracked each other I tended to learn much better.
It really isn't about the cost totaly. His point is that going to school, mastering some aspect of a field and going about your way for the rest of your life isn't working anymore. We constantly have to re-invent ourselves with new skills because things change so rapidly. Udacity will aid in solving that problem and make it cost effective.
It isn't news that someone "hopes" to do something, and the gap between offering a complete Computer Science Masters Degree and working out the "rough edges between our fundamental class CS101 and the next class up" state they are in now is quite immense.
Decoded: They are having a problem coming up with a second semester CS class.
This works out to about $10/class I figure, maybe less - I fully suspect the degree they will offer is worth every penny, but not a penny more - and you won't "fool" anyone with this Masters degree, this is on the same level as the mail-order priest ordinations that were once offered in the back of magazines like Rolling Stone.
Ken
I personally see no value in this kind of master's degree if there is no need to write a thesis/dissertation.
Education needs to be in smaller chunks with more apprenticeship like teaching.
First off for some stuff like IT 2-4 years in the class room is to much even more so at CS where there is a BIG skills gap from say a TECH School.
Also in IT there should be apprenticeship like teaching so people can get the needed hands on skills.
To days colleges seem to have to much gen edus and to much filler (now that time and cost can be better off being used) learning real job skills doing real work (no internships) apprenticeship where you do real work (no coffee boys like some internships) and you don't sit in class room for 2-4 years with out really getting out there and to work.
Lot's of jobs don't need 4 years of pure class room when some kind of mixed community college / tech / voc school / apprenticeship / on going learning / online is a better fit at a lower cost.
well most work is group based and open book.
But what does craming based tests really test????
online is a better fit then the fixed college time tables.
Is it really necessary to explain that this is the first time anyone has offered a CS degree online in the history of humanity?
We're talking about a course about computing offered entirely over the internet. Surely if it hasn't been done recently we can be pretty sure that the Ancient Greeks didn't beat us to it?
Computer Science degrees have been publicly available since the birth of the modern Internet: most papers and tutorials, ranging from basic programming language introductions to lambda calculus and AI, have been freely available for years for whoever is curious about the topics.
The things that a university really offers are accreditation that you have truly mastered the topics and professionals who put together a reasonable, sequential curriculum and help you absorb it. Did they solve it here? Doesn't seem so...
Also, European universities are essentially free, at least for their good students: an Italian PhD student has a total net cost of about -20000 euros, that is after your PhD between scholarships and taxes you have earned 20k (personal experience!).
So this is really of limited interest, and it is so only for the US...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
In reality, we have given colleges simply too much power by indoctrinating everyone about the wonders of education and always equating it as going to college. If you think about it, training people has shifted from the burden of a company to the burden and cost of the individual for, imo, no greater gain. Wages and the like have been stagnant or worse since the 1970s. But it's not all roses for the company either, often they have to train the workers anyway after college.
So much of school is just theory when most people simply learn by doing. It's like trying to learning to cook by reading a book and then doing a dish or two at the end of every semester. Just not going to work if you want to be a line cook at a good restaurant.
I'm taking the CS101 class right now, as I just want to learn python. I already have an MSEE from 16 years ago. While excellent, CS101 is nowhere near a graduate level course; where are the CS500 - 800? Same goes for the statistics course. Not sure how they intend to use these as graduate level classes.
You almost had it ...
In some ways we're almost at the end of the Science Fiction Age because the gaps between what will stay fiction for a long time vs what will show up in 2017 are starting to become clearer. Starships and transporters - not gonna happen in my lifetime. Fully developed augmented reality glasses - 2 more generations of tech away, aka 2014 and then 2017 or so. Pretty easy.
The reason you can't quite "download" information that easily is that people learn by making new live neural pathways among information, and there are hard limits to that. But ... wait for it ... there aren't for AI's! Once all that is pre-processed somewhere, assuming no money distractions, just buy a module for your AI and plug it in and off you go!
It's up there for the top 5 racial fears we have. We did pretty well for a long time ... we kept playing "no true scotsman", scoffing at early stages of things. First it was chess, but then "oh fooey, chess is not intelligence". Then it was Jeopardy. But Jeopardy is more dangerous - because if you can understand *obfuscated* english, then once you get past a few of the knowledge gaps, you can start slamming together expert system modules with the english interface. Think Siri the third generation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
An education is more than that. It's sitting through hours of lectures where students ask questions and topics are discussed at length, not only with the professor but with other students outside of class. It's submitting work and having it critiqued by an expert. It's discussing why your answers were wrong or incomplete. It's discussing why you have answers your professor never thought of but are still correct or more correct than what he was expecting. It's deciding what out-of-major classes are of interest to you or would further your education in your chosen field. It's telling your not-in-major friends about insights you learned from your classes that are applicable to everybody and listening to the same thing from them. Most of these things simply can't be automated and many of them can't be done as well on line. None of them can be done for $100 a degree.
None of that can be force-fed to you one-way down a wire. Education is interactive.
Real education can be had over the internet, but it's NOT the same and not as valuable as learning in-person, and it will never be cheap (unless somebody else is paying for it) and it will always take as long or nearly as long as the traditional route. It just takes that long to have that experience and absorb and digest that much information.
While the students may become knowledgeable in a subject I doubt many employers would give Joey with his Masters degree from Udacity a job over someone with a Masters degree or even a Bachelors degree from an established mainstream university or college. If the applicant had experience as well, possibly, but not a new grad.
I wouldn't trade this for a college education but this would have been pure platinum if it had been around when I was in grade school.
One does not simply get a Master's degree for $100.
And the good news is, mine is equally as accredited as the one from Udacity.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Computer Science? Snooze. I already do that. I want an online degree program in physics, or geology, or something. I want to study the interesting stuff that I didn't do in school because I sold out and went the path that would make me shitloads of money instead of shitloads on happiness and intellectual fulfillment.
If it's not accredited. You might as well buy a master degree from on of the other fake uni's online. They sell Masters degrees for less than $100.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Reminds me of an old advertising slogan...."I'll make anyone a master of science for just $99.95."
"The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?"
- Eben Moglen
Every time this subject comes up on Slashdot, you say the same thing while mutilating the English language in new and distressing ways.
My advice? Learn basic written English. After doing so, you will be able to make your points here without people thinking that you're an idiot.
Education needs to be in smaller chunks with more apprenticeship like teaching.
No. Education needs to no longer be treated like a single thing. Each topic is different, and should be treated so.
The way to teach/learn CS, for example, is (or should be) different than law, or physics.
One of the problems with education right now (among many others) is the search for "on size fits all" solutions.
morcego
Make the text books free and that would help everybody. Most topics stay the same with only slight changes over time; especially the lower level courses.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
From TFA (p.2):
All Udacity courses are free and will remain free, it is the certification, or level of certification which will eventually cost money.
(this excerpt was from 2nd page, about half way down in the question: The recent Forbes Magazine’s article title on Udacity read “$100 for a masters degree” is that a reasonable estimate ? )
This is cool because the material will be available even to very cash poor people, and I will likely look into classes here I'd never think about paying for at a conventional school.
jellomizer wrote:
The only way you can get $100 for a degree in education is to mass produce it. Pre-Recorded Lectures, Online articles, Mutable choice tests, all done online. Now granted some colleges nearly teach like that, a professor with a well practiced rehearsed lectures, then you do you multiple choice tests, then you got your class credit...
btw, JM: I agree with your points about delivery & cost cutting. When the Khan Academy has come up past discussions, people often talk about the idea of "flipping classes" so lectures are on the students time and class sessions are collaborative help sessions roughly like you describe (e.g. hybrid).
All very cool, I'm excited by the potential this offers.
jellomizer wrote:
While you may learn, and can get accreditation. It creates a culture of mediocre education. This takes out some of the human elements that are both good and bad. If you are able being able to be noticed by a professor and working with them on his research, having your work properly critiqued. When I went to college for Computer Science, I came in already knowing how to program, and I was working programming, but I wanted to learn more then just the core requirements, I wanted to learn the nuances. While some students in my class who passed they got the basics, I was able to use education and the work directly with my professors to hone my skills and make me better. I know I used up more then $100 expense on my education.
However I think a hybrid approach would be a good match. There are some classes, that I didn't like spending thousands of dollars on, just because I had to take them, I would much rather pay a lower rate, and take the mediocre online class to get the credit, and save some money. But save the classes I am actually interested in with live people and professors.
Diploma Mills are way more expensive. I hope an acceptable accreditation,(like I won't get laughed at to loudly when I put it on my job application), will come with the $100 and completing the curriculum.
Statistics is my personal Achilles Heal. The Stat class(s) should cover the stats required for the A.I. classes. The ability to drill down an avenue of questions would be a god send. With 160K+ students, there's no way a professor can answer all those questions. But if one could drill down to a sub lecture on a particular subject for a more in depth understanding or refresh of knowledge forgotten; beautiful.
I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, but if you're not learning by doing in school, you're really not getting your money's worth (either because you're shortchanging yourself, or are being shortchanged by someone else).
I'm a professor at a major university. I *do* think some stuff could be changed about the traditional higher educational system.
However, what I've seen is students who come in and expect to "learn by osmosis" sitting in their chairs. They bitch if you actually make them think or do something on their own. They don't show an interest in participating in research, supervised internships (yes, through the university), or field training.
Then they go out into the world and act as if that's what a university degree is supposed to be. I.e., they expect something passive, demand something passive, and then say "hey, you can passively learn this online through other means!" No shit.
My point is that something like this might be the best thing for higher ed, because it would attract all the people thinking education is a passive activity--something they consume rather than produce themselves. Then that would leave the motivated students to actually come to university and participate.
A university education isn't about being lectured at, it's about having you asking questions and being enabled in answering them. The reason to go get a university degree is to go hang out with other students (undergrad or grad) and professors, and do things with them. It's not to sit in a lecture hall.
This is incorrect. A master's degree will, at best, qualify you to lecture basic classes at your local community college. Teaching at a university requires a PhD, almost without exception.
I may be wrong (please please correct me), but I have never seen the source-code to any of the google-car. I can't find it on any DARPA-grand-challenge site either (taxpayer google-car beta).
Help eliminate stupid traffic tickets
then trun it into a badges system.
You silly Americans and your "we have to pay for university education".
Then again I guess that free education is socialist and since we all know that socialism is the terrible evil I guess you'll just have to pay.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the premier open university in India, already offers several Masters programs for USD 100 equivalent (INR5000)
Check it out: http://www.ignou.ac.in/
Where does one go to study Java online with feedback from an instructor.
One course I have found so far is the following:
http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/java-programming.php
Any others ?
already see it here where i am
higher education is basically a "right". government foots the bill with a loan.
now that "everyone" has a degree, businesses want people with a "masters".
mostly because everyone, even complete idiots, managed to end up with a degree
and now we have the "6 minute masters" product
of course now everyone can get a masters, businesses will want people with a doctorate
well i'm gonna start work on my "6 minute doctorate" product
it's a no brainer given everyone will have a masters in a few years time
yay for lowering of standards and making education about shoving people through the system
June 7 http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/06/07/0118228/online-courses-and-the-100-graduate-degree
It's an impractical now as it was 9 days. Stellar editing timothy.
You might like to know that there's some theory about that, and the information stored in our neural networks is fundamentally chaotic. That means there's no way to learn something except by going through the normal learning process. Not in a human mind, not in an (specific kind of) AI mind.
What one could do is make the feedback loop a lot tighter. Learning to fly a plane, for example, by doing it and by directly correcting every time your brain makes a wrong decision, and cause pain immediately at that point (which is a signal to the brain to change it's circuits), and reset the simulation to just before the wrong decision. But you'd still have to learn by doing, and it would still take time.
Of course, we're nowhere near having even the required sensors to actually do that. Well we do have them, but they're "invasive". Which means you have to cut open a brain today, to see what it's doing. Color me skeptical, but I think that'll be a showstopper.
There's also the issue that the current education system doesn't really matter. Technology has advanced to the point that it can run our economy with ~20% of the people alive. That 20% is dropping rather rapidly. It is an inevitable truth that a majority of people worldwide will not be working in 10 years. The question is, of course, whether they'll be dead ...
my country has FREE education on all levels for all citizens, you can be a doctor, engineer, etc for 0 $ ... yay for socialism
Degrees are used for signalling. In other words, employers don't want people with degrees because the employee gained useful job skills from the degree. They want people with degrees because only people who are already smarter (or already have a better work ethic) are willing to pay for the degree and go through the effort to receive one.
Having a degree which only costs $100 and which doesn't require that someone spend years of their life to get will eliminate this signalling effect, so the $100 degree will be useless in the job market.
Needs a bit of english grammar!
"This here dog has fleas."
"That there bean patch is done loaded with pests."
If "this here" be the future of education then we all be down the shit river with no paddle.No wut I mean?
Those jobs still exists. Go to your local McDonalds, and they will hire you as is and give you all the training necessary. What changed wasn't companies willingness to spend a week or month training new hires. The difference is that jobs you can be trained in so quickly have diminished. At my employer, when you make a move within divisions it can sometimes take months to get up to just 80% efficiency, just due to the specialized knowledge in different domains. If you came in not knowing anything about software development, and required 2 years basic education plus 3 months domain expertise...well what kind of employer would pay for that? Especially when you are hired at will and could take all that education someplace else at the drop of a hat.
If the institution isn't accredited and the degree doesn't carry any weight, why *even* waste "only" $100 ?
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee