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MIT Begins Offering For-Pay MOOC In Big Data

Posted by samzenpus on from the price-of-a-good-education dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MIT announced today that it will begin offering for-profit courses on the edX platform, beginning with a course in Big Data. This is the first for-pay course offered on any of the major MOOC platforms. It is run through MIT Professional Education, the arm of MIT that provides professional education and training for science, engineering and technology professionals worldwide. MIT announced that it will be the first of a new line of professional programs called Online X Programs, to be delivered globally using the MIT and Harvard founded open-sourced online education platform, edX."

12 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Blockbuster 2.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For the tidy sum of $495, you can rent their videos for 4 weeks.

    1. Re:Blockbuster 2.0 by mysidia · · Score: 2

      For the tidy sum of $495, you can rent their videos for 4 weeks.

      Yeah... how generous of them 30 day access to the archived course (includes videos, discussion boards, content, and Wiki)

      Many of the free Moocs only allow you access to archived course material, like.... practically forever :)

  2. Well Then by TemperedAlchemist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have wanted to go to MIT for a long time. They made their content open and seemed quite progressive in actually caring about education.

    After all is said is done they've learned nothing from Aaron Swartz? This is a disgrace. I now want nothing to do with him.

    Education is not a business.

    1. Re:Well Then by BringsApples · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Education is a business, it's actually big business. Why do you think it's so damn expensive?

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    2. Re:Well Then by TemperedAlchemist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Prestige, mostly. I don't deny it. It's the only reason to go there, really. That and research opportunities. A degree from MIT is worth more than the same degree from my state university. I could know the exact same things, have done the exact same research, and published the exact same papers. All things being equal it still comes out that way.

      Cost has nothing to do with it (although going to school for free is a sweet deal). If I truly wish to accomplish something I'll find a way, regardless of cost.

    3. Re:Well Then by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why do you think it's so damn expensive?

      Artificial Scarcity of Information. Over valuation of accreditation certificates: You still have final exams instead of entrance exams for jobs -- So your brightest self-learning minds are disadvantaged, and your boss is a dummy from a degree mill who doesn't know what your job actually entails.

      The dawning of your Information Age has come. Information markets are post-scarcity economics now. This is the first generation to grow up in such a society, of course there will be growing pains as your markets adjust. You had better learn this lesson now from your economic mistakes in the artificial information scarcity bogosity, because physical things will become post-scarcity as well. Market what's scarce -- labor -- not infinitely reproducible copies. This is how mechanics, builders, and the FLOSS model operate. Most human homes have information duplication devices, soon they'll have object copiers too. Same as all the other sentient species.

      You would laugh at a business plan to sell ice to Eskimos, but imagine what that would entail: Look at your copyright and patent law. You teach art with books that have blank boxes -- a URL placeholder, to leverage more artificial scarcity and forced obsolescence. You have infinite monopoly over your work before you create it, you don't need one afterward. Why are you still charging so much for that which is cheapest to (re)produce? Your professors could do so much more if they were not tied up giving the same lectures over and over, like a looped magnetic film.

      Why do you humans even watch television if you refuse to learn the messages embedded therein for you? How can any advanced race visit your planet with your world's economy in such a ridiculous state? The others have "prior art" for everything you will invent for the foreseeable future. Those among you granted access to such advancements would hinder the progress of others, not share.

      Your knowledge is so expensive because you are a pathetic primitive race -- A case study in how not to advance as an interstellar species. Quarantine is the only option.

    4. Re:Well Then by BringsApples · · Score: 2

      I agree. That's why I quit my job working for this ridiculous system, and started my own business.
      My business model: Make enough to pay my bills.

      I call this my "cash crop job", and don't take it very seriously. What I do take very seriously is the personal education that I give my children, which consists of my own carefully lived life experiences, (which has very little to do with today's economics), and growing my own food. Perhaps it's simply teaching my kids how to be happy. But the foremost concept that I teach my kids, and any other kids that'll listen, is that today the adults have it mostly wrong, and that just because people are older (aka adults) doesn't mean that they know how to be happy. To know the difference between having a lot of things, and securing the ability to be happy, despite what's going on outside yourself, in my opinion, is the only real education possible. And when that education is available, it's always free.

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
  3. After I read this article... by BringsApples · · Score: 2

    ...I felt like I just got done talking to a loud, drunken aristocrat. A course on 'big data' and its growing importance in business, to anyone in the world, all for $495.00. wtf just happened?

    --
    Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
  4. Before and after by namgge · · Score: 2

    So roughly speaking they're moving from a 'free' model with an enrolment of say 300,000 a pass rate of 0.1%, and cost of $100K to a fee-paying model that will have an enrolment 300 a pass rate 100% and a profit of $1M.

  5. $500 buys a lot of Dover books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just saying you could buy a lot of Dover books on statistics, stochastic analysis, linear programming, and so on for $500 and learn a LOT about Big Data. You'd have enough money left over to get O'Reilly's Hadoop book.

  6. Not the first by KFW · · Score: 2

    Udacity announced in November for-pay MOOC classes: http://blog.udacity.com/2013/11/udacity-innovation-is-in-our-dna.html /K

  7. Re:Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) by neurovish · · Score: 2

    MOOC = Massive Open Online Course

    Is it really too much to ask for people to define their acronyms? I'm a little tired of having to Google an acronym in every story. This one *only* appears in the summary.

    I'm sure an editor will be on that ASAP (As Soon As Possible).