Sebastian Thrun Pivots Udacity Toward Vocational Education

lpress writes "Udacity CEO and MOOC super star Sebastian Thrun has decided to scale back his original ambition of providing a free college education for everyone and focus on (lifelong) vocational education. A pilot test of Udacity material in for-credit courses at San Jose State University was discouraging, so Udacity is developing an AT&T-sponsored masters degree at Georgia Tech and training material for developers. If employers like this emphasis, it might be a bigger threat to the academic status quo than offering traditional college courses."

Comments

I think that's a wasted opportunity

[Dr. Spork]

I looked through the links now and I'm getting this subtext that Thun is sick of dealing with the bullshit that comes from trying to work within the framework of established universities and their entrenched faculties. The idea of moving into vocational education and forgetting the whole "get college credit" model really might be more dangerous to the educational establishment, and Thun really does seem to be hoping for their demise. (I'm guessing he sat through some rather ugly meetings with department heads and university administrators.) But I'm disappointed by this. If the way that university education dies is by vocational courses cutting off their air (=money) supply, something of great value will be lost, something that could have been transitioned without too much violence into a MOOC-style model. Because let's face it, vocational courses can help you in your job, but they don't exactly fill you with wonder and culture and insight, the way that well-crafted university courses can. Well, probably, "proper" college courses are bound to become MOOCs anyway, even if Thun won't be the one to do it. And if this is done right, the wonder, culture and insight that these courses can bestow will reach far more people than they reach now. But I don't think that there is any guarantee that this will be done right. It can also turn out canned, contrived, shallow, proprietary and generic. Insofar as I thought that Thun was trying to do it right, I consider this a victory for the bastards.

Re:I think that's a wasted opportunity

[artor3]

I looked through the links now and I'm getting this subtext that Thun is sick of dealing with the bullshit that comes from trying to work within the framework of established universities and their entrenched faculties

That's not what the article says at all. The schools did a pilot program, and of the students taking the course on Udacity, only 50% passed, compared to ~75% of the classroom students.

I'd love for Udacity to succeed too, but you've got to accept reality. As of right now, Udacity isn't as effective as a traditional classroom. Now, it's not useless -- 50% passing is still a lot of people getting an education.

Perhaps this just comes down to people learning in different ways: for some people, face-to-face interaction with teacher and classmates is essential to their progress. For others, they learn best from individual study. The second group can excel with MOOCs. But traditional classrooms will remain for the first group. Both groups end up winning -- the second because they have cheap and easy access to education, and the first because the reduced demand for classroom seats will drive down prices.

Re:I think that's a wasted opportunity

[qbzzt]

I think (I was never in one) that the first tier universities allow even undergrads to interact with the world experts and do research under their direction (see http://web.mit.edu/urop/). This is a non-scalable function, which MOOCs can't do.

This is the reason MITx is such a good idea for MIT - it doesn't eat into their customer base, but that of lesser universities.

Thanks for giving up on poor students

[Jonah Hex]

and shifting your efforts towards people who can complete courses, those who can do well in traditional college courses.

What’s got the academic Internet’s frayed mom jeans in a bunch, however, is that Thrun’s alleged mea culpa is actually a you-a culpa. For Udacity’s catastrophic failure to teach remedial mathematics at San Jose State University, Thrun blames neither the corporatization of the university nor the MOOC’s use of unqualified “student mentors” in assessment. Instead, he blames the students themselves for being so damn poor.

The way Fast Company has it, Thrun chucks those San Jose State students under the self-driving Google car faster than he chugs up a hill on his custom-made road bike, leaving a panting Max Chafkin in the dust to ponder the following Thrunism: “These were students from difficult neighborhoods, without good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in their lives. It's a group for which this medium is not a good fit.”

Apparently students fail MOOCs because those students have the gall to be poor.

The problem, of course, is that those students represent the precise group MOOCs are meant to serve. “MOOCs were supposed to be the device that would bring higher education to the masses,” Jonathan Rees noted. “However, the masses at San Jose State don’t appear to be ready for the commodified, impersonal higher education that MOOCs offer.” Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education.

LOL

[dcollins]

"If employers like this emphasis, it might be a bigger threat to the academic status quo than offering traditional college courses."

Please. Here is a list of technologies that did NOT result in the demise of college education:

- Books mass-produced on the printing press.
- Correspondence courses in the early 1900's, engaged by millions of hopeful learners at the time.
- Radio or television programming.
- Software-based learning from the 1960's onward.
- Online courses from the 1990's onward.
- MOOC in the 2010's onward.

I really don't understand the Slashdot mass delusion that this or any technology could mean the death of colleges in any short- to medium time frame.

Not at all true

[SuperKendall]

There is a fact a high demand for actually skilled labor. There's a high demand for skilled developers, for example; I have seen that first hand.

I also know from others there is high demand for really skilled heavy machinery workers, skilled plumbers, skilled electricians, etc.

What there is a lack of is people willing to put time and especially effort into learning a real skill rather than a degree. You can find guys willing to sling code or a hammer as just a job, but very few that can (or want to) operate at a higher level.