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The $100 Masters Degree From Udacity

Posted by timothy on from the hope-of-udacity dept.

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."

8 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Future of Education by mfh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Future of Education by Cryacin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it will eventually become accessible to only the upper class (as education always is).

      A famous man once said, give a man a fish, he eats today and owes you a fish forever. But teach a man to fish, and he'll be competing with you for fish tomorrow.

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    2. Re:Future of Education by Auroch · · Score: 5, Informative

      it will eventually become accessible to only the upper class (as education always is).

      A famous man once said, give a man a fish, he eats today and owes you a fish forever. But teach a man to fish, and he'll be competing with you for fish tomorrow.

      Another famous man (pratchett) said - Make a man a fire, you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

      --
      Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
    3. Re:Future of Education by WaywardGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm almost done with Udacity's free on-line robotic car course. It's fascinating, probably more for the new ideas in teaching than the actual course, though the course is pretty good. I don't know where this is heading, but the impact on the world of having 160,000 people take the online course has to outweigh the impact of teaching a lecture once a semester at Stanford.

      The old system works, and offers opportunity for personal growth that's so far simply not available on line. I learned more from my peers in Berkeley undergrad engineering than from actual course work. I see no good online substitute for having a group of super-geek peers who love to hack stuff, build stuff, and pull off audacious stunts. Communicating by e-mail is just not the same as an all nighter group session of mathematical noodling on an unsolved problem.

      So, somewhere there will be a new balance, where we take advantage of this super affordable access to learning, while somehow giving our young people a college experience. I don't know where it's heading, but it will be exciting to watch.

      --
      Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
    4. Re:Future of Education by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Funny

      A famous man once said, give a man a fish, he eats today and owes you a fish forever. But teach a man to fish, and he'll be competing with you for fish tomorrow.

      Actually, what the proponent of this adage really meant was "teach a man to fish, then for the rest of his life he'll have to pay through the nose to rent tackle, boat and launch privileges from you because you own the only bait shop and dock because the only body of water around is your private lake, you bastard!

  2. Key Word "Hope" by kenh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Re:Mass Produced education. by kenh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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."

    With absolutely no offense intended, what you want makes perfect sense, but it is more of a technical certification than a college degree.

    A college degree is an indication that the student is well-rounded, has a breadth of knowledge and not just depth of knowledge in a particular area, as with a technical certification. There is nothing wrong with a technical certification (think "Master Plumber or Electrician", not MSCE).

    The classes you dismiss (classes you "had to take") don't have to be of interest to you, but are the differentiator between a college degree and a technical certification. If someone presents themselves to me as a graduate of, say, Harvard, with a CS degree, I expect them to know more that computer science topics - I expect them to be fairly well-rounded. But that (apparently) isn't what you want, nor is it likely what your potential employers are looking for particularly, but the college degree is the only game in town to denote a certain level of education on a subject.

    --
    Ken
  4. Course material is not an education by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.