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UC's For-Pay Online Course Draws 4 Non-UC Students
slew writes "In the shadow of Stanford and Harvard offering free on-line courses, The University of California has been attempting to offer pay-courses for credit. UC online took out a $6.9M loan from UC and spent $4.3M to market these courses. For their efforts, they've been able to quadruple their enrollment year over year. The first year results: only one person not already attending UC paid $1,400 for an online pre-calculus class worth four credits. Now four non-UC are signed up. 'UC Online has to pay back the loan in seven years and expected to sell 7,000 classes to non-UC students for $1,400 or $2,400 apiece, depending on each course's duration. China was thought to be a lucrative potential source of students, but few expressed interest. The U.S. military also fell through.' Methinks head will roll on this one..."
I could go full-time to my local community college for less than that. Hell, I could almost go full time to my local 4-year university for that (paying in-state tuition). And UC isn't even that prestigious.
They seriously thought the Chinese were going to pay that kind of tuition, for a single course at the fucking University of California, that probably isn't even applicable to a degree? And the U.S. military? Hey, the military may be legendary for wasting money, but even they have limits.
For that, you would think they would at least have offered a complimentary reach-around.
The prestige of an American university does not warrant the cost. We pay for the implied value of the college we go to, and it is cheapened when the class is not taught in person.
Nothing to see.
It's been about six years since I've been in school, but even my most expensive semester of graduate school was only about $1750. Last I checked prices were still in the low $2000 range there. That's for 12+ credits (9+ credits in Graduate School), not a single 4 credit course.
These big schools and their even bigger price tags. What the flying fsck are they smoking?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
In most civilized countries education is free not a commodity to be bought and sold, the market spoke and this universities education got handed the real market price, zero.
Why would anyone pay for online courses for UC general reqs at the regular UC prices when most of California's community colleges offer online courses for a tenth of the price, all of which are transferable. Whoever thought this up needs to spend some time out of their ivory tower.
Precalculus is so easy it should be free.
Wonder if the same people were responsible as their attempt at a new logo.
I'm not sure how they justify the cost, when it probably costs them all of $20 to manage the average online student. I guess people realize this, and for that kind of money they want the *full* college experience with hazing and all that.
I'll just stick with Coursera - it's free and awesome, (As long as you just want the knowledge and don't care about credits.)
Jeez, why not sell your future children while you are at it?
$1,400 for a 4 credit class = $350 /credit. In the SUNY system here in New York, part time enrollment once you factor in fee runs ~$280 /credit in-state.
It isn't about the content of the courses, it is about WHERE the courses are! If you want low-cost tech labor (underground or 'legit'), you need bodies. Student bodies, not virtual student bodies.
What the hell? Full classroom price for an online course? Are they serious? Who do they think they are? The RIAA?
Also, as a non-UC student, this is wildly useless to me. Free courses are excellent because they can help me through my existing classwork, or I can participate just to enrich my own learning.
For-credit is useless unless that credit applies at my own university. It might, but it would be a hassle to figure it out, and I am ALREADY paying full tuition at my university. Why would I pay another $1,400 for another class AND have to figure out if it transfers?
Terrible idea at a terrible price point.
I'm all for giving the ever bloating ranks of professors and staff a giant pay cut in this civilized country.
They get paid a LOT less in those other civilized countries.
Especially for an online class. I've never comprehended why the hell schools believe they can get away with charging more for an online class (usually usual tuition plus a fee). Having an instructor sitting at home in their underwear has got to be cheaper than finding room on campus, etc.
But that's not the trend that bothers me most. The trend that drives me absolutely insane is that an increasing number of instructors are choosing to become little more than glorified proctors. They're not there to help their students, there is a study center or a tutoring center for that. They're not there to consider the student's circumstances, like a computer they stick to routine/policy blindly. They're not there to come up with exciting, cutting edge material based on recent developments, they'll use the same tired assignments, tests, etc. from half a decade ago.
Fuck them.
If you're poor and over 24; student aid in America is quite generous
Few problems with paid courses approach.
First, there are free alternatives out there, like Coursera, that offer the same thing.
Second, consumer sees value in credentials, not education. Kinds of people that tend to value knowledge are more than capable of gaining it on their own. Kinds of people that would pay for education are only interested in acquiring credentials.
If the numbers are anywhere near right then they should easly recoop their money. Even if they fall short and have only 5000 sudents instead of 7000 then at $1400 each then they will earn 7 million dollars.
What are you smoking?
Who did the marketing research and how much ganja were they smoking when they did it?
The loss on this reminds me of an ill-considered plans where I worked ages ago. Someone bought a $20,000 system and contract to move EDI packaged records between institutions around the state. I has it foisted upon me (make it work, you peon) and spent the next year chasing down contacts and attending seminars. After a year the person who "bought" the product angrily wanted to know how it was I hadn't made any headway - this because none of the other institutions ever went through on the project and it was effectively dead. Then I had the gall to ask, so how much work are we saving by doing this anyway, and found we would move about 4 records per quarter. 4. End of project. That person should have been sacked, but was promoted. Go figure.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
6K a year for all you finish credits online for govenours college compared with 1400 for 4 credits seems expensive.
I'm sure there are even more cheaper places not even counting the free courses.
If the appstores have taught us anything it's that you can make a lot of money off impulse buy pricing. If they dropped the fee to $14 / credit (so $56 for the course) they'd make it all back and more in 1-2 years.
I'm certain their fear is that those prices would eat into regular tuition as many would do online instead of in person. They'd have to run more numbers (maybe they have) to find the best market rate. Clearly they've priced themselves out of the market completely at their current rates though.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
No wonder California needed to pass prop 30 to keep UC funded.
1) $1,400/2,400 is quite a bit for a single 4credit hour class which excludes a large number of people (especially China) from taking advantage of this. If you can afford this, you probably be in a good university already.
2) Minor hassle of transferring credits
3) How many people outside the university actually know about this? I doubt many. $4.3 million spent on marketing seems to say they tried but I get the feeling they failed.
4) Do they offer enough classes online to get a degree? If not, this would only interest other college students to some degree. If so, the appeal is still limited due to costs.
Really, the whole plan was stupid. Spending most of the loan on advertising sounds like way too much of a gamble. Instead, a slower approach to the whole thing would have been much wiser I think. Try to naturally spread the word, send mail to potential college bound students, arrange some type of understanding/partnership with other colleges, etc. The idea that many Chinese would take classes at that price is a bit much really. The military aspect requires alot of communication and arrangement, something that probably can't be done quickly due to bureaucracy. Really, the idea isn't too bad but the execution is horrible.
Seriously? That is straight up ridiculous, $1400 pays for full-time enrollment (12cr) for an entire semester at my community college. Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH. One of the best CC's in the country.
FTFA (yeah, I know)
"UC leaders say they will focus online efforts mainly on students already enrolled at UC, in hopes that such classes will help them zip through school more quickly and cheaply. "
1. It's not cheap. I can go to a local community college and get an actual interactive course with an actual professor for a lot less than $350/credit. I can go to an actual local accredited 4 year university for a lot less than that too.
2. If you want outside students, you need to, you know, actually market to outside students instead of the students you already have.
--
BMO
Kahn Acadamy, you can learn calculus for free!
or buy and work through "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson for $16. If it's good enough for Richard Feynman, it's good enough for anyone.
Oh, and read Feynman's book "QED" as well, learn yourself some physics.
UOFP costs less then that and they offer more classes as well.
... they'll be fine, because at that rate, in year 7, they will have 16,384 enrollments, which is more than double the number they were hoping for.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I had no idea this existed.
The current course listing is as follows:
American Cybercultures: Principles of Internet Citizenship
Intro to Probability and Statistics for Business
General Psychology
Beauty and Joy of Computing
I guess it's not much of a loss, the only course I could have taken for credit was Psychology. A helpful suggestion would be for you guys to put the University wide requirements on here. The American History and Institution's requirement is generally unfulfilled by international students for instance.
Stanford basically extended their part-time Honors Cooperative Program (HCP) through the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD), which films and distributes their online courses. Remote students pay full tuition to "attend" these classes online, and its quite popular despite the cost. You can get a MS degree in several engineering fields from Stanford by attending entirely online.
SCPD Website
HCP Website
The Stanford EE Department's Description of this program.
Why would they get fired? They literally made THOUSANDS of dollars for the university. PLUS, they spent their budget for the year, so next year's advertising budget will of course need to be raised by 20%.
You're not thinking institutionally, and you know that one bucket is not connected to another bucket.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
1+4+16+64+256+1024+4096 = 16383/3 = 5461 and that's not that far away from 7000.
There is way to much put on getting a degree / a 4 year or more one.
I say more 2 years ones / more tech and trades schools with apprenticeships.
College costs to much and takes to long they has to be ways to cut time and costs.
Also not everyone is college material and a lot of people should not be there. There are people who are better in tech / trades schools.
The tech / trades schools are being held back and getting a bad rap from having to be part of the collgle system.
Look at tribeca flashpoint it's a real good school with lot's of real hands on work but it's only a 2 year place so in some cases it's will not get you past HR.
I saw a job posting for a master control job at a Major sports channel that wanted a 4 year communications degree so whats better some with 2 years of very hands on work in media working with hardware that you will see in master control or a 4 year communications degree that was a lot of theory and non tech communications parts to it.
Let me guess: the classes are restricted to non-UC students, making them mostly worthless.
But in 64 years, they will undergo gravitational collapse and turn into a neutron star.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
they also have more trades schools / apprenticeships as well. Not just one size fit's all college systems.
Yes, you need to market to students, but $4.9 million?? Are you kidding me?
We do a lot of marketing to students outside our university and bring in quite a few of them for our online programs (a lot more than these idiots did), and we've never spent that kind of money.
Student/professor ratios are increasing, student/staff ratios are declining.
https://chronicle.com/article/College-Costs-Too-Much-Because/133357/
Which would be an outstanding resource to study for the physics students.
...assuming they quadruple enrollment every year. By the 7th year, if my math is correct (and it likely isn't), over four *thousand* people will be enrolled, and even at $1400/class, that's over $5.5M. So they'll be able to pay back the loan no problem!
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Well, at least they can brag about small class-sizes and consequently the best teacher-student ratio among top-tier schools, worldwide.
I'm all for giving the ever bloating ranks of professors and staff a giant pay cut in this civilized country.
They get paid a LOT less in those other civilized countries.
Are you kidding???
Since this thread started about the UC system, let's use them for an example. In order to become a professor, first you need to get your doctorate. No simple task - think ten years higher education. Then you need to do at least one two year post-doctorate fellowship (At little to no pay.) By the time you are finally done with school, it's easy to have racked up 100k in student loans. Now, the average starting salary for a UC professor in the tenure tract is $65,000. (Try living near UCLA or UCSF on that salary.) Some make more (business schools) and some make less (public health and social sciences). Now, the average salary for someone with a Comp Sci PhD in the business world is $102,000 (http://cs.illinois.edu/csillinois/stats).
Oh, the other thing is - most professors at universities that teach are not on the tenure track. They get paid per class they teach, usually at a laughable rate. And at research institutions, take Johns Hopkins for example, professors are expected to bring in 80 to 100 percent of their salary through outside funding, like research grants.
Probably
- not economics,
- not business plan 101,
- not calculus,
- not linear optimisation,
- not common sense and
- not "let's google if these courses can be found for free" either.
Privacy is terrorism.
Where on earth did they spend that huge advertising budget? They could've bought a superbowl ad, hundreds of regular tv spots, thousands of radio spots, tens of thousands of online impressions. But nobody here has even heard about it, including current UC students.
Why pay so much when you can audit most courses for $10 - $200 at almost any university? Ivy League schools like Princeton charge a paltry $150. It is a tough sell getting someone to spend $1400 to audit a boring online course at a state school.
A high school diploma used to provide some confidence that the graduate could read and write. Now, it's little more than a gold star for attendance (and avoidance of criminal behavior.) That's why there's an emphasis on four year degrees. If you are lacking the basic skills of reading, writing, math, and science, you simply won't advance.
A tech program is fine for those people who aren't cut out for furthering their education. I'm not saying anything bad about them, as they serve a very useful purpose for a lot of people. But you should recognize they are producing people with only a subset of skills, that are trained only for a specific career, and someone with a plumbing certificate is not going to be expected or even permitted to do anything but plumbing. On the other hand, while a degree in English Literature isn't going to land you a job as an engineer, it shows a certain ability to communicate and to learn. Such a person could easily end up in marketing, business analysis, management, or technical writing.
Ironically, your post is filled with a number of spelling and grammatical errors that telegraph your lack of language skills. If I were hiring, and I read a cover letter from you that had that many mistakes, it'd be in the bin before I got to your signature. I need people who can communicate clearly, regardless of the job I'm hiring them for.
I would be quite surprised if you could land a job at a media company like a sports network. Their entire product is a professional looking stream of information, and a person with an unfinished education isn't going to add value. For example, you couldn't be trusted as an editor or producer, because you wouldn't recognize poor quality content. You might land a job as an electrician or a grip, but you would go no further.
Here's the bottom line: people with four year degrees (at least) are doing the hiring. Therefore they get to set the bar - not you.
A high school diploma used to provide some confidence that the graduate could read and write. Now, it's little more than a gold star for attendance (and avoidance of criminal behavior.) That's why there's an emphasis on four year degrees. If you are lacking the basic skills of reading, writing, math, and science, you simply won't advance.
A tech program is fine for those people who aren't cut out for furthering their education. I'm not saying anything bad about them, as they serve a very useful purpose for a lot of people. But you should recognize they are producing people with only a subset of skills, that are trained only for a specific career, and someone with a plumbing certificate is not going to be expected or even permitted to do anything but plumbing. On the other hand, while a degree in English Literature isn't going to land you a job as an engineer, it shows a certain ability to communicate and to learn. Such a person could easily end up in marketing, business analysis, management, or technical writing.
Ironically, your post is filled with a number of spelling and grammatical errors that telegraph your lack of language skills. If I were hiring, and I read a cover letter from you that had that many mistakes, it'd be in the bin before I got to your signature. I need people who can communicate clearly, regardless of the job I'm hiring them for.
I would be quite surprised if you could land a job at a media company like a sports network. Their entire product is a professional looking stream of information, and a person with an unfinished education isn't going to add value. For example, you couldn't be trusted as an editor or producer, because you wouldn't recognize poor quality content. You might land a job as an electrician or a grip, but you would go no further.
Here's the bottom line: people with four year degrees (at least) are doing the hiring. Therefore they get to set the bar - not you.
but a 4 years can easy be trimmed down to maybe 2-3 years by cutting a lot of the fluff and filler.
So you are saying that going to tribeca flashpoint an unfinished education?? They do real world work there and I say it better to have people who have done real work to be trusted as an editor or producer. Well someone with mostly theory based education wouldn't recognize poor quality content or they may say why X like that that if they went to tech school they would learn that that's the way it works.
what about 4 years+ in the amry? is not enough to do you the job you have been doing in army out side of it?? why do you have to go school for 4 years to get a piece of paper saying that I know what I know now!! I don't want to relearn I want to use my skills!
that's the other Northwestern college is not the the big ten one.
Having had ample experience as both a student and faculty member of the University of California, I think the smart money says that whoever proposed and implemented this idea will get a plaque and be promoted to Director or Chairpreson of something or other.
How is an online pre-calc course worth 1400? Solve.
I've worked in Master Control at a state broadcaster for 7 years or so and no college degree would be of help there. Electrical engineering perhaps (I've got no special degrees) but mostly a good technical knowledge will do fine. Today it is mostly computer skills that is needed.
Why don't you address it, instead of being an ass?
In Colorado, every B.S. (probably all undergrads) require the exact same 64 credit (2 year's worth of normal terms), so the legislature passed a law that anyone taking those courses -- being identical afterall -- have guaranteed transfer to any other institution that offers that same course. So I take my 2 years at my community college, and my last 2 years at my 4 year (like CU Boulder) and I save money, right? Wrong. The effect was every single community college increased tuition per credit hour or quality hour or whatever the fuck metric they're using now. Suddenly I'm paying only $50 less per Cr at my community college for a course I could take at the 4 year, but the education is not even close to the same quality.
If quality institutions made online per course enrollment an option, this could drastically change the financial landscape and put the students in power. Finally turn higher institutions into knowledge factories rather than scandalous money schemes they've become today. Also it would allow me to double up on credits, take summer credits, etc. This, of course, pending my degree contract, which states among other things no matter what transfer courses I bring in the last 64 credicts are to be taken on campus. ugh.
So they want 7000 students enrolled? ... Well, if they can continue their astounding record of quadrupling out-of-state enrollment every year, then they should have:
. ;>)
.
$ seq 8 | awk '{print $1"\t"$1-1"\t"4**($1-1)}'
1 0 1
2 1 4
3 2 16
4 3 64
5 4 256
6 5 1024
7 6 4096
8 7 16384
hit their mark of 7000 enrollees at year 6.5 (or 7.5 depending on if you start count at 0 or 1).
May I add that past performance is no indicator of future performance, and that these results may not be replicated.
Now if you compare the $1400/semester cost per course to the out-of-state tuition normally charged, then perhaps it is a bargain.
Not the schools. He was speaking of schools. Costs have to be decidedly less and I must agree. Think of all the building maintenance, power, security, etc. vs. a cheap $300 laptop, a little outsourced IT and easily recycled material.
Vast majority of women I met in college: ambitious, intelligent, open minded
Well above half of the women I've met outside college: depressed, foolish, narrow minded
Given that, would you really want to take classes online?
Someone without theory will never understand "why" it works.
Someone without hard answers will never truly understand theory.
To make any advancement you've got to understand the why. To understand the why, you've got to have something to relate it to.
It's called critical thinking.
His point is sound. Would you really argue that it costs a university more to host an online class than an offline class?
They don't need to have buildings; or heat those buildings; or power those buildings; or have equipment for those buildings; or have security for those buildings; or have parking/transportation for those buildings.
Instructors can reuse not just old assignments and tests like so many instructors in an offline class, but can also reuse entire posts, etc. if they're good with copy and paste. Lecturing becomes uploading an old set of notes or a video.
Consider how immensely UC can increase the students per instructor without actually increasing the workload. One instructor does the work of two, with extra grading taking the place of lecturing. Now UC needs only half the instructors it did before.
No, I don't have numbers, but use your noggin. Do you really believe offline is cheaper? What the hell would you base that on, where's your numbers?
.. worth of classes (credits)....
without the expense of a (for the lack of better terminology) brick-and-mortar campus, residences, dining facilities, technology labs, libraries, and everything else an on-campus student enjoys that an online student either doesn't or can't to the same extent (e.g. some library materials and services are available online -- but not much compared to actually going to a campus library)
they're doing it all wrong. online tuition should be significantly LOWER, not equivalent to, or higher than, on-campus rates. something closer to $100 per semester hour (roughly $12K for a 4 year degree) sounds much more reasonable and would have a higher chance of actually being a successful program. if someone wants to overpay for their online education, they can always do the phoenix.
The problem is that a four year degree is no longer a sign that the graduate can read and write. Most people graduate High School with about a 7th grade education. It is becoming increasingly common that many 4 year degrees are only an indication of an 8th grade education.
The only way I would have had my college education paid for through financial aid, without emerging with the shitload of debt I emerged with, is if I had aimed low. Had I stuck to the cheapest colleges I could find, stuck with work-friendly soft shit and never used anything but grants and scholarships.
Yeah, that would have been possible coupled with full-time work, but there's a canyon between possible and generous. Not to sound ungrateful, but generous to me is about choice.
Effectively all STEM students attending a meaningful school without mommy and daddy, whether with or without scholarships, must take on loans. It doesn't help that a lot of colleges want to charge more in tuition and fees for these classes than others. You can lessen the burden a bit if you're lucky as hell and find well paying part-time work, but you'll still need loans to stand any realistic chance of keeping your grades up.
Now look at the trend. States are cutting aid to schools and those schools are raising their tuition rates to compensate. Federal loans in turn aren't keeping up with these rate increases, essentially requiring students to take on more private loans. Those private loans have terrible interest rates.
Put simply, if financial aid was "generous" I sincerely doubt there would be more student loan debt than credit card debt in this consumer-oriented country, but that is where we are.
What the fuck is internet citizenship? Computing is beautiful and joyful to me, but I don't think a course is needed.
I'm not sure I agree with all of your post. I would put forth a different argument than either this argument or the grandparent argument-
There are a lot of completely worthless 2 year degrees for white collar positions, just as there are worthless 4 year degrees. Apprenticeships seem tough (I have never done one) but generally don't lead to poverty. The real problem is that laying out a career path for the rest of your life is probably beyond the abilities of most 18-year olds. I did a good job of it, picking an in-demand field with high pay where I can advance and not be bored, but a lot of my peers did not choose wisely. Quality career counseling at the 16-18 year age would pay off for society. Problem is, the very people it would help the most would not see the value in it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I've taken a look at the syllabus (http://www.uconline.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Math-1A-Syllabus-SAMPLE.pdf ) You see this in college ? (and 40 hours http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/lowerdivcourses/math1A ?) You don't have that kind of courses at 16-17 years in high school in the US ?
(to be fair, it was also part of the program at my European university, but in a more bigger analysis package, and that was seen in something like 10 hours in the start of the 80 or 90 hours course to be sure that everyone had the required level. But there was a math exam to pass to apply for the university. All that stuff was in the program of the exam)
Many "real" Universities think online courses don't take any effort... For only 4 courses available they have no honest-to-FSM Idea what they're doing. You'd think they'd do their homework better!
If the claims are true this is obvious fraud.
Someone set up a company in a cousins name and paid themselves millions to say they advertised.
California Democrat spending no wonder the state is in such trouble
tell that to HR / who put need X degree in the job posting.
Suppose 25 students (including me) hired a teacher directly, and paid him/her $100 per hour.
The teacher lectures four hours/week. We also pay the teacher for four hours lecture prep time. So we pay him/her $800/week for the lectures. This $800 is divided among the 25 students, so we each pay $32/week for the lectures.
Besides the lectures, we also each pay the teacher for a half hour of meeting with us individually, to
- grade our homework,
- answer our questions, and
- ask us questions, to see what we do and don't understand.
(The teacher spending time grading our homework is really important. I hate to hand in my answer to a programming question, and have the teacher just say, "Yea, that looks ok." I want the teacher to tell me what my mistakes are. I want him/her to tell me, "This method call is deprecated, and that algorithm works, but here's a more efficient way to do it.", etc.)
So each of us pays $32 for the lectures, and $50 for individual instruction, or $82/week. That's $820 for a 10-week class, which is less than UC's $1,400 cost. Plus this class would have only 25 students, and we'd each meet with the teacher for 1/2 hour each week.
The teacher gets $800/week for the lectures and lecture prep time, and $1,250/week for individual tutoring and homework correction. That's $2,050, which is pretty good for working 20.5 hours.
We'd have to rent a lecture hall, and rent a lab for science classes. But I think it would still cost less than UC. Also, it doesn't involve any UC bureaucracy or cost Calif. taxpayers anything. Also, if we didn't like our teacher, we could "fire" him/her, and hire another teacher for our next class.
We wouldn't get credit for the class directly. But maybe we could take a test in school, and get credit for passing the test. Or maybe skip the UC system completely, and take a non-UC test like the SCJP Java test.
It's ok, we passed prop 30, because not passing prop 30 would have resulted to funding of UC being reduced. Assuming it won't be cut anyway, they'll still have money for clowniness like this.
Oh, and when I say "we passed prop 30", I mean "we" as in people who were actually allowed to vote, which means not me. I just get to pay taxes.
Not that I'm opposed to subsidizing education. But it has to be possible to do better than burning through more than $5M to offer 5 classes and underperform your sales projection by 99.9%.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Basically, the Regents of the University of California decided to start a side business. They've started to take movies they've streamed for free from the internet, and recorded them onto these things called VHS cassettes. They have taken out a loan of several million dollars, expecting to sell thousands of these cassettes each year. The only trouble has been that people pretty much already knew they could download the movies FOR FREE or get them cheaper from other sources, before the Regents of the UC ever heard of them.
All analogy aside, I think the Regents overestimated the value of their cachet. They appear to have imagined that because they're (oooh, aaaah...) the University of California that kids who could not attend in person because whichever UC school they applied to wouldn't let them in, or because of distance, time constraints, or because they are still in high school, etc., would sign up in DROVES.
However, the cachet fallacy is that the Regents think that the customers would imagine that a CLASS TAKEN AT A UC school is worth as much as getting A DEGREE from a UC school. You see, when you transfer from one school to another, you may be able to bring certain classes already completed or in progress with you, but your DIPLOMA will have the name of the school granting the diploma.
I could get a 120 semester hour bachelors degree from BFE State College, after taking 84 of those hours at Harvard or Stanford or Yale or whatever, but the diploma will read "BFE State College hereby confers upon (me) the degree of Bachelor of Science...".
I could put on my resume and tell prospective employers I went to Yale or whatever, but my diploma will look less impressive. Furthermore, the fact that reciprocity agreements exist belies the fact that, despite what the more expensive schools would like you to think, the quality of education at a less prestigious and less well-known and less EXPENSIVE school is every bit as good as theirs.
Case in point: when I attended Irvine Valley College in the 90's, I was looking to transfer to the University of California at Irvine, (UCI). There were two programs at IVC at the time designed to facilitate this, the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum, (IGETC) and Zeroing in On Transfer (ZOT). The IGETC was common I think, to all regionally accredited California Institutes of Higher Learning, and was basically a general agreement that the breadth, as it used to be known, or General Education Requirements completed at any IGETC participating school could be substituted for the Core requirements at any other among UC and (IIRC) California State University (CSU) schools.
ZOT, on the other hand, was a GUARANTEED TRANSFER PROGRAM. IVC and UCI had a standing agreement that after completing IVC's basic requirement for ZOT, (I think it was one semester completed at IVC with a 2.5 or better GPA, or somesuch thing) they would let you meet with a transfer adviser from UCI. During that meeting you'd basically be applying to UCI. They would give you a list of courses you had to complete at IVC and a timeframe to complete them in.
If you fulfilled the terms of the agreement (basically a contract between you and UCI) they would grant you, upon successful completion of the required courses, maintaining the standards they imposed, (I think it was 2.75 transfer GPA and nothing below a C in any course attempted under the agreement,) they would admit you as a regular, full-time student of the University of California at Irvine, without regard and not withstanding any other admissions criteria, quotas, standards or considerations. You were, in a word, IN if you completed ZOT.
What this means of course, since the whole point of the exercise is that former IVC students could use ZOT to do an end-run around the normal UC system and UCI specific admission requirements, they could bring in something like 60 semester hours, and then attend classes at UCI, ultimately getting a degree, a diploma that just says "UCI" on it. This seems to me to
Let's see... for no college credit, my choices to learn Intro to Probability and Statistics are:
Dover book - $14
UC - $1400
In the Free Democratic People's Republic of Mexifornia the less money you make from such things the more heroically revolutionary and counter reactionary they are! If they need to cover their costs just make it more expensive for the running dog lackey plutocrats!
Then charge the UC students themselves even more for the course compared to the classroom version then cancel the classroom version - - like UNC Chapel Hill does.
I'll just stick with Coursera - it's free and awesome, (As long as you just want the knowledge and don't care about credits.)
Unfortunately that "not caring about credits" is what is going to eventually cripple the university system. The free MOOCs are widening education, but they're liable to draw a fair amount of custom out of the paid-for distance education sector, which means that the free stuff is going to increase the cost of accredited education in the medium term.
And even leaving aside the matter of credit points and certificates, a MOOC is not equivalent to a good paid-for online course, because the assessment is far more limited. No number of MOOCs are equivalent to a degree because you're missing the individually marked essay questions, the supervised practical projects etc.
MOOCs may just be killing the university... in a bad way.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
As someone who has been to both a real four year college and a tech school, I personally think the tech school was worth the money spent. It introduced me to all the types of technology in use at the time and what the future might bring, plus gave me the history about the technology. I should point out that I was in college at the beginning of the PC era, where new technologies were popping out every year.
The thing is, though, that I have spoken with people who are recently graduated from a number of different tech schools, and their learning is not at all like mine. They were much more heavily instructed in the software aspect and don't really know much more about the hardware other than a general overview. Tech schools must have a balance in what is taught instead of this heavy leaning towards specific vendor products. Otherwise, they are graduating educated idiots.
I would rather hire new people who have hands-on experience with computers in the wild than any of the tech school graduates I have met over the past ten years. Those tech grads did not have the skills to troubleshoot hardware or even know what to look for unless they used a software program.
As far as online courses, I have taken a few over the years on things that I had an interest in. Personally, I would prefer to be at a live class instead of online because there is more social interaction available and it is a richer learning environment. However, some of my interests are simply not taught at a college any where close so online is the only option. However, colleges offering online classes might want to use some of this wonderful technology to make it more like a virtual classroom instead of what is in use right now.
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Good point. Although that 4 year degree is no guarantee that a person can read or write.
I teach a GenEd class that involves a term paper and other strong writing components. It's sad how many upper division students cannot write intelligibly. *Many* have poor grammar and poor spelling. A considerable number aren't *that* good--it's a challenge to understand what they're trying to say.
To be fair, some write fairly well, but they're in the minority.
A significant number of our CompSci students come in sufficiently unprepared as to require remedial math and/or remedial english before they can take any of our classes. (The school offers these remedial courses, but they do *not* get college credit for them.) Of the students who require such remediation, less than 1 in 10 ever finish our program. There's a case to be made that those students really don't belong in college.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
"Nothing sharpens your mind as much as having to discuss/cooperate/compete with other very bright minds"
Thus we have Slashdot; I have learned so much from it over the past twelve or so years. :-)
BTW, Alfie Kohn on "Competition versus Excellence":
http://www.alfiekohn.org/miscellaneous/cve.htm
"In a comprehensive review of 245 classroom studies that found a significant achievement difference between cooperative and competitive environments, David Johnson and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota reported that 87 percent of the time the advantage went to the cooperative approach. That result concerns bottom-line learning and doesn't even include the enhanced ability to get along with other people. In visiting classrooms where cooperative learning is used, I like to ask students to describe the experience in their own words. One ten-year-old boy thought a moment and replied, "It's like you have four brains." By contrast, a competitor's single brain often shuts off when given no reason to learn except to triumph over his or her classmates."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
As a Chinese former student, current programmer at work, I can definitely tell you this price is much toooooooo expensive. Most Chinese students in mainland spend about 5k~6k per semester (half year) for tuition fee, 1k~2k for accommodation per year in college apartment, 1k~3k for daily cost per month. Without scholarship, most students cannot study abroad.
A tech program is fine for those people who aren't cut out for furthering their education.
Wait a minute; are you saying that getting a degree is the only way to further your education? Many people just don't do well with certain TYPES of education - such as those provided in a college/university - but it is completely possible for them to go into a tech program while furthering their education on their own.
Ironically, your post is filled with a number of spelling and grammatical errors that telegraph your lack of language skills. If I were hiring, and I read a cover letter from you that had that many mistakes, it'd be in the bin before I got to your signature. I need people who can communicate clearly, regardless of the job I'm hiring them for.
You're assuming that cover letter would be in English...
He may be unable to land a job at an American sports network, but the sports networks pretty much the only networks making a profit nowadays. Everything else is bleeding customers, and those customers are turning to internet entertainment. Few of the biggest money makers in internet entertainment have a 4 year degree. Many of them aren't even out of high school.
So if people can manage to not starve to death for 6 years or so, they're set?
I want to change careers and am considering getting a computer programming certificate from UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Extension. Some courses are in person, some online. I have a 4-year BA degree and am currently working as an office manager. I am also 50 years old. Is there any way I could get an entry level job with this certificate or am I just kidding myself?
Well, to be fair, I didn't actually PAY for my tuition, that was covered by my Research Assistantship... I got paid a lot less than $22k, though. Probably about a third of that. Lower cost of living and all that.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them