

For-Profit University Sets $199-a-Month Tuition for Online Courses - ilamont
http://chronicle.com/article/No-Financial-Aid-No-Problem/131329/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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Wilduck
Another comment has noted that the fact that this program is nationally, as
opposed to regionally accredited "could affect whether or not credits acquired
here are recognized by other schools."

I would revise this to say "This will mean that your credits will almost
certainly not transfer to any regionally accredited school." Pretty much every
college worth going to is regionally accredited. To make this clear, regional
accreditation is harder to achieve than national accreditation, yet my local
community college and University of Phoenix are both regionally accredited.

On the other hand, you have schools like ITT Tech, which is nationally
accredited. This is a school which is notorious for hiding the fact that your
credits will likely not transfer to any regionally accredited school.

These are incredibly important things to be aware of before enrolling in any
sort of non-traditional school. If you have any desire to use what you've
accomplished to move on to, say, a public university, make sure that the
classes you're attending will transfer. If the classes you're taking are from
a nationally accredited institution, they likely won't.

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Tangurena
Under the Human Capital approach, learning via books or free/cheap online
courses has the same effect as learning at the most expensive school.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital>

Under the Signalling Theory approach, going to an expensive university is a
stronger "signal" to prospective employers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory>

These 2 show wildly different results when you consider the difference between
forgetting a subject and failing the subject. You may know just as much as
another person, but the one of you that passes some hurdle signals to
prospective employers that the hurdle passer is the better candidate. This is
because hiring a person is trying to predict future behavior/success with
limited information, and many people use signals as heuristics.
[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/the_career_cons....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/the_career_cons.html)

One dissertation that described some of these differences is called "Hiring
and inequality in elite professional service firms". An interesting read, and
it explains some of the "unfairness" of employers using signalling instead of
the human capital model.
[http://books.google.com/books/about/Hiring_and_inequality_in...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Hiring_and_inequality_in_elite_professio.html?id=OvRIQwAACAAJ)

~~~
carbocation
When I hire someone, I typically only get access to their resume. If I wanted
to try to reduce my own signal-based-bias and apply the Human Capital theory,
should I instead ask for their transcript, and perhaps have someone else
remove the name of the institution before I see the transcript?

~~~
Tangurena
My suspicion is that you may want to move away from trivia based questions (
_what is the 3rd parameter of the form.print dialog_ , or _how would you move
Mt Fuji_ ) to ones like _"describe a situation where you inspired others to
meet a common goal"_ or _"Describe a situation when the quality of work you
completed wasn't the highest quality it could have been. What were the
circumstances and what did you learn?"_.

Competency based interviewing is a bit harder, since you first have to figure
out what the actual job competencies _are_ and then base some questions around
them. The questions won't have "correct" answers, instead they help you - the
interviewer - determine how the interviewee thinks/makes decisions and you can
then decide how they'll fit into your organization.

In addition, you may want to look at their resume and tailor one or 2
questions based on what they did at companyX. The PDF linked below should give
you some idea of what sort of questions to ask.

One book that may be of interest: [http://www.amazon.com/Competency-Based-
Interviews-Master-Int...](http://www.amazon.com/Competency-Based-Interviews-
Master-Interview-Answers/dp/1564148696)

Some example questions:
[https://sharepoint.sandiego.edu/hr/Employment/CompetencyInte...](https://sharepoint.sandiego.edu/hr/Employment/CompetencyInterview.pdf)

Website with some explanation and examples:
<http://www.wikijob.co.uk/wiki/competency-based-interview>

Wikipedia articles:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_Task,_Action,_Result>

~~~
alextgordon
These questions are only suitable for interviewing politicians. That is, they
just test someone's ability to bullshit convincingly. Subjective questions
take a long time to think though: more time than is available in an interview.
Hence, no answers you will get will be useful in any way.

The example questions are also excessively wordy and written in euphemisms.

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mikk0j
The biggest challenge to the model mentioned in the article is "Will employers
value these degrees?" but that's already being solved. The academic system is
a great set of hurdles, and most of the time clearing those hurdles is enough
of a proof. But employers are already supplementing with other hurdles:
programming tests, for example, either homegrown in the recruiting process, or
off-the-shelf tests like Codility. The only thing that surprises me is that
the shift hasn't already happened.

~~~
excuse-me
No, employers don't value these degrees.

I'm looking for two things. Did they get accepted into MIT/Caltech/Stanford -
or Cambridge/Imperial in my world. OR have they done lots of interesting real
work, and possibly completed some of the free online courses from
MIT/Stanford/etc.

Having completed a degree from NoWheresVille U is like having 10years
experience at Acme corp. Unless you have something else special to offer - I
really don't care.

~~~
therandomguy
That is great. I hope you are a fortune 100 company. Otherwise the candidates
you desire typically don't even consider SomeRandom Corp.

~~~
excuse-me
If you are looking to be a CS graduate entry at a fortune 100 company you are
already FSCKED.

Unless you were in the right fraternity at Harvard Bis School you aren't going
to climb up the ranks anymore. If you are a non-specialist techie you are
going to be outsourced to India, replaced by an H1B, or wherever.

If you are a top school grad you will be snapped up by Google/MSFT/etc. The
interesting small companies and startups are looking for either top school
grads who don't want to be employee badge #100,000 at Google OR people who
have learnt the stuff themselves and done interesting work.

Neither fortune 100 nor startups want people clutching their new degree from
the sort of places mentioned in the article

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ldayley
This is a great development! Higher education has all of the marks of an
'industry' ripe for Napster-like disruption.

Related: If you are not taking advantage of the free Coursera and Udacity
courses then you should soon; they won't be free forever!

~~~
excuse-me
They will be free (or very very cheap) for ever - it's a great business model

There is no threat to MIT/Stanford/etc from running free courses. Even IF
somebody decided = I could afford to go there, I could get accepted, I'm not
planning to do a startup - but I have decided to only do the online courses
instead of attending - their place would immediately be taken by somebody
else.

The real impact of these courses is that they destroy the market for 3rd rate
universities. Why did you waste your time going to NoWheresVille U when you
could have done the MIT courses and something relevant to me as an employer?

A very similar thing happened 10years in the UK. All the community college
equivalents were allowed to call themselves universities. All the 'IVY league'
were promoting this as 'access for all'.

Of course what it meant was that employers weren't sure if somewhere they
hadn't heard of was a decent 2nd tier university or some degree mill - and so
to cover themselves began demanding IVY league degrees only.

~~~
padwiki
Since Udacity is not exactly forthcoming on exactly what their business model
will be, could you add some insight to exactly what the great business model
is? Right now, I see the MITx and Stanford programs being a small loss per
student compared to the normal amount universities spend on instruction, but a
small loss a hundred thousand times over doesn't exactly turn a profit.

If you are going the freemium route (free content, pay for
testing/credentialing) you have the classic freemium dilemma, what is your
conversion percentage from free to paid and what is your margin on the paid
version. If you anchor your product pricing at zero, you can't exactly charge
hundreds or thousands for testing. Plus, the vast majority of students in the
Stanford experiment were overseas which makes the paid option at a recognized
testing center much more difficult.

It's all a percentage game. Revenue = Total Students * percent who complete
the class * percent who can pay for testing * percent who do pay for testing *
margin on testing. We ran the numbers in a number of different number of
scenarios when we looked at going that exact same route and found time and
time again that even if you can break even at a small number of very popular
classes, the chances of being able to build out a broad curriculum of classes
with less mass appeal was not good.

To use some realistic numbers, let's take the Intro to Databases class and
make up some inputs:

Number of students: 90,000

Percent who completed the class: 7.2%

Percent who could take tests at approved centers: est 40%

Percent conversion from free to paid: Classic freemium less than 5%. Hugely
optimistic: 20%

Margin from a paid testing center: $10-$50 (est)

90,000 * .072 * .4 * .05/.2 = 130/520 estimated paid students

So, we have a probable range of $1,300 - $26,000 based on some real numbers
and some educated guesses. $26,000 may sound like a lot, but that amount can
easily be absorbed just in the professors time prepping and managing the
class. Now add on the rest of the overhead of high paid SV engineers, offices,
support, etc...

The end result, an enormous amount of things have to go just right in order to
cover your base costs. Even if those things go just right, you still have a
huge amount of pressure to create classes with the broadest possible appeal
with the highest possible number of students completing the course (in order
to have a chance of testing revenue). Those market pressures do not coexist
well with academic integrity and high standards. They also don't support
classes that might "only" have a few thousand students.

There other ways to get to free education for all (we're on that path
ourselves), but starting out as free without the backing of a large university
is a tough proposition.

~~~
excuse-me
The business model of Ivy league free courses is protect the market, destroy
competition, preserve monopoly.

At the moment Uni education is a pretty open market, there is Ivy league,
there are top state colleges, there are 3rd tier and then the Phoenix type
places - you pay your money and take your choice.

The real tough competition, at least in technical subjects, is between ivy
league and top state schools. The students can save a lot of money by going to
UCB over Stanford, learn exactly the same stuff and get exactly the same job -
why pay the extra $100k for a Stanford t-shirt?

What these free courses are saying to the students headed to state Uni outside
the top 10, and in fields that don't require a paper qualification (like
software) is: don't bother paying to go to UCLA, do a startup or do opensource
AND do our courses for free and you will get the same job. Gradually (at least
in CS) UCLA etc will disappear from the market and the employer radar who then
see MIT/Stanford vs self taught.

It's really no different from why Nike pay Tiger Woods a zillion $. The idea
is to put in the minds of the consumer (or CS student and employer) that there
is only Nike or nothing.

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doktrin
Note that new charter does not, unlike WGU, appear to be regionally
accredited. This could affect whether or not credits acquired here are
recognized by other schools (i.e. graduate programs at more prestigious
institutions).

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mbenjaminsmith
Does anyone know of anything comparable for CS? I have a BA in another field,
have been an entrepreneur since my mid-20s and am now a self-taught
programmer. I generally don't contract or work full time for other people. But
I would like to get a CS degree for personal growth. I can't really justify it
being too disruptive so it would have to be:

1) Flexible. 2) Not terribly expensive.

Currently "questionable" accreditation would be ok since I think people's
opinion of online schooling is likely to change dramatically over the next
decade.

What I'm looking for is an extended CS-related challenge with some manner of
official closure at the end. For my own personal satisfaction I would like to
say I finished a second degree as opposed to saying I finished some free MIT
courses online.

Anything worthwhile available out there?

~~~
padwiki
Not to be too self promotional, but we're probably the closest to what you are
describing. The biggest limitation is our course catalog is very small to
start (bootstrapping). Over the next 12-18 months we should have a much more
complete curriculum (Masters in CS/SE focused) as we prep for regional
accreditation.

Flexibility? All classes are truly self paced (start immediately, work through
the material as fast as you are capable) and include genuine interaction with
the professor and real human grading.

Expensive? Basically, $50/$100 per credit depending on whether you need the
credentialing and human grading portion. In your situation, our MSE program
would end up being less than $4,000 plus books.

We're also Silicon Valley based, and are building the program to exceed the
very high standards in the area.

Oh yeah, we're awesome.

www.turingcollege.org

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Thanks, definitely going to give it some thought. Like the name as well.

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itmag
I want an online university that teaches Psychology. Anyone know of one?

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rokhayakebe
The real point of school is apprenticeship, having someone next to you teach
you a subject, answer your questions, challenge you. Unfortunately today's
classroom is just an auditorium, a place to listen. Seldom do you meet
individuals who want to actually learn something. As M.J. Adler puts it,
students just want to learn how to pass the class, and in the process they
pass on an education. Online education is great because it does exactly what
schools currently do: assess your ability to remember what was said in class.

~~~
Drbble
Why are you conflating online education with lectures? Online education is as
interactive as the teacher and students choose, just like any other school
could be.

~~~
rokhayakebe
They are the same, and they both fail at their purpose.

