
World's First Massive Online Degree Program Starts Today - ibsathish
http://blog.udacity.com/2014/01/sebastian-thrun-worlds-first-massive.html?m=1
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RafiqM
Since when is a 375 person class massive?

I'm all for what Udacity, Coursera, and others are trying to do, but there
have been proper online universities such as the Open University doing this
for years with hundreds of types of degrees, and with bigger classes.

Let's put the "massive" back in "MooC".

Also, $7k? I can get a on-campus CS masters in a world top 100 university here
in Ireland for that price. I guess education in the US must be ultra
expensive.

~~~
navyrain
Education, like most things in the US, is supported by debt. Tuition for a
single semester at Georgia Tech, for an out of state student like myself,
would run $14,861:
[http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spr...](http://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Spring_2014/Spring14-all_fees.pdf)

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whichdan
For anyone skimming over this post, $14,861/semester adds up to $118,888 over
four years.

~~~
ajtaylor
And that doesn't include a place to live or food to eat. The hidden costs can
be quite substantial as well.

~~~
ef47d35620c1
Or books either. Probably $1,000 in books per year. Maybe more.

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noelwelsh
Most interesting to me was this: "88% of the applicants are US-based as
compared to 10% for the on-campus degree." My guess is that the $7K price that
seems revolutionary in the US is just too expensive in a worldwide context. At
lot of international students do come to the US, but that's for traditional
on-campus education. If you're not going all-in in that manner, might as well
attend a local institution for a fraction of the cost. This kinda puts paid to
some of the MOOC rhetoric of opening education to the masses.

On the other hand, I'm really happy to see Udacity developing a viable
business model. Coursera has received a lot more publicity, with their wider
range of courses, but haven't seem to put as much emphasis on developed a
sustainable income stream. I like what both of these companies do and would
like to see them stick around.

~~~
atlantic
That would be correct. In Portugal, university fees are around €1000 per
annum. A private university costs around €5000. So by our standards, this is
expensive.

A second disadvantage is that American degrees are not automatically
recognized here - you have to ask for an equivalence; and very likely an
online degree would not be recognized, because it does not follow a
traditional format in terms of course attendance and examinations.

The only advantage of this degree is the fact that you can take it online, and
that is not very compelling, as you can find most of this material for free.

~~~
afshin

      and very likely an online degree would not be recognized
    

The actual degree that will be granted for this particular program is simply
"MS in Computer Science" from Georgia Tech. So it is not going to
differentiated from the on-campus degree.

~~~
mrfusion
Yeah, but what happens when a job interviewer asks you about his favorite
pizza place at Georgia Tech and you have to admit you have never been there
:-(

~~~
ctdonath
Indeed. Giving a blank/puzzled reaction to a reference to "The Varsity" will
raise lots of red flags.

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someguy235
I'm one of the students that was admitted to this first round of classes. I've
been taking MOOC's since the first round of Stanford courses in 2011, so I was
excited to see this program develop just as I was applying to other graduate
schools.

Admission for the first round was very limited to keep it manageable while
they address any issues that come up early in the new program (and there have
been a few, though nothing major). I think the original idea was to offer 6
classes and allow 100 students per class - 600 total. But only 5 classes ended
up being offered, and the total acceptance was lowered further as students
will take more than one class at a time. Within a few semesters they intend to
accept anyone who meets the qualifications, with no regard to class size.

Regarding the cost, it is in fact revolutionary for US residents. My bill for
the one class I'm taking was $700 ($400 in flat fees and $100 per credit
hour). My next choice of school was NC State which would have cost several
times that even though I'm an NC resident. A good out of state school, even a
public one, would have likely been unaffordable to me. At this rate my
employer's limited education reimbursement program will cover the entire cost
of my degree with GaTech.

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Omnipresent
I am very interested in this program and will be applying for the Summer 2014.
I've also been taking online courses off and on at Coursera, Udacity, and
Stanford. Currently, I'm writing my statement of purpose and background essay.
Do you think your history of taking online classes was significant to your
admission? I'd also appreciate any pointers for SoP...

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dmunoz
A few thoughts:

2,360 people applied, each paying a $50 admission fee [0]. That's a cool 118k
for admissions triaging. Also on that page, we can see they originally said up
to 600 people would be admitted for the pilot program. They admitted 375, with
some deferring admission. Maybe the entire 225 other people deferred, but if
not I wonder why they scaled back the pilot program.

The average age is 35 for the pilot program vs. 24 for on-campus masters.
Interesting, but not very surprising. I'm not far past the on-campus age, but
I'm keeping my eyes on such programs for the future.

The specialities they plan to offer is also in [0]. When I first read that
page, I was saddened not to see any options related to programming languages.
My only other major speciality interest was operating systems, but I burnt out
on that a little. The software development process material sounds
interesting. I bet there will be a lot of interest in the AI/Robots and
machine learning specialities through this program.

I wonder when the courses will be made available for free? An early post about
the program promised that "the bare content will be available free of charge."
[1] I was hoping to get an idea of what the courses would be like early this
year. I don't see anything on Udacity about the courses at the moment.

All that said, I'm excited about this program by Udacity and Georgia Tech,
even given the apparent failure of MOOCs we have been hearing about. I say
apparent, as I think measuring percent-to-complete is misguided, as I know I
have gained plenty of knowledge from courses being offered without completing
them. The movement to corporate sponsored project courses is interesting, but
I'm not a big fan of the idea to pay to "commit to your success" [2]. The
extra guidance will be a boon for some people, though.

[0] [https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech](https://www.udacity.com/GeorgiaTech)

[1] [http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-
announcing-o...](http://blog.udacity.com/2013/05/sebastian-thrun-announcing-
online.html)

[2] [https://www.udacity.com/success](https://www.udacity.com/success)

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kriro
Some dreaming on my part...

I'm rooting for this to work out. If you can do it alongside a job they could
very well "compete with nonconsumption" of sorts. This already exists on
somewhat large scale in some countries. The biggest (by enrolment) university
in Germany is a "Fernuniversität"

Ultimately I hope these take off, prices go down (they become essentially free
with payments for taking tests i.e. universities become more certification
agencies). Hope the brand name of universities will be measured by the quality
of the free education they provide in the future. 7k$ is not a price point
that excites me.

And of course I hope this leads to the non-online classes getting better and
better as they have to provide truely great value.

[especially for CS I could also see companies tapping in and offering some
sort of mentoring/intern programs]

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GFischer
I had to look up "Fernuniversität" (Google Translate says it's "distance
university")

I guess you're referring to:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernUniversit%C3%A4t_Hagen)

"a public research university focused on distance teaching"

~~~
kriro
Yes, sorry for leaving that untranslated. It's distance learning/teaching and
that's the university I was referring to.

There are also a couple of more focused distance learning offers, usually
started by some professor and then spun out as a not for profit (usually
focused on a MA in a single field) which can be pricey (5-10k Euro for a MA).

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eonil
Does U.S.(or any other country) government recognize this degree for working
visa or immigration? (H-1B / green card)

~~~
repsilat
You can't get a visa to study this degree inside the US, but Georgia Tech has
said that the actual degree given at the end will be the same as that given to
on-campus students. It is a "Masters in Computer Science" \-- the "Online" bit
is only for marketing and internal administrative purposes (or so I've been
led to believe.)

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dragonwriter
It's a not particularly massive online degree program using similar mechanisms
to those used in MOOCs for classes—but it's not the _first_ such program by
any stretch of the imagination. Such programs are actually _older_ than free
MOOCs, and a number of instutions have had them for years; Kaplan has several,
including a JD program.

This seems to be the first to try to leverage the attention to MOOCs in te
marketing, and might be the first non-professional graduate program of the
type.

~~~
James_Duval
I have to admit I don't see the difference between what Udacity are doing in
this particular course and what Open University has been doing for years.

~~~
philosophus
Less Silicon Valley investment in OU would be my guess.

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busoni
For more information on the cross section of those admitted, see this article:
[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-
tech-a...](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/13/georgia-tech-admits-
first-cohort-ahead-online-masters-degree-program-launch)

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freigeist
I like Udacity's new focus on courses designed by companies.

Traditional education is far too detached from what is required in industry,
and has trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation.

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nightski
Funny, as I have found most of the newer courses seriously lacking any
tangible depth or usefulness (Intro to Hadoop/MapReduce took a few hours and
barely covered the basics). The old Artificial Intelligence or Parallel
Programming are probably some of the best on the site.

~~~
dferlemann
That's my general impression as well. That's why I didn't get a master in CS
rather a MBA which is kind of relaxing and fun (my company offered for my
master degree, otherwise I'd never go... ). Pretty much all CS master courses
not that much in depth in comparison to an engineering master degree. And all
these tech degree are quite "generic", which greatly reduce their usefulness
in real life.

I feel like graduate school are for people who do not know what they want or
interested in at the moment. Once they do, you already locked up in that
degree plan, and have no time to go ahead implement the idea.

I much prefer to take classes from edX-like course education sites which I'm
not obligated to anything. Once I feel I got a hang of this new field, I can
just go and do my stuff.

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marsay
Why would anyone pay for a degree, let alone online degree, is still a mystery
for me. You don't need a degree if you are really interested in computer
science.

~~~
th0114nd
(Enough of) Education has been free since at least 2010 in my experience.
Employability is not.

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xerophtye
wait, the admissions are closed?!?! What gives :(

Btw it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs.
Lower the drop-out rate by introducing an entry barrier. And also restict the
class size to reach a manageable amount for actual class-like experience.
Also, offer an ACTUAL degree, thus providing incentive to students to carry on
with the program.

~~~
polymatter
"it seems they found a solution to some of the problems faced by MOOCs ... "

So its exactly the same as a traditional distance course then?

In what way does this solve any of the problems of MOOCs? (And I question
whether MOOCs should even look at drop-out rates as a failure, but thats
another rant)

Its not "massive" by any stretches of the imagination. It just happens to be
an online course. I welcome the age of online degrees and I hope the trend
continues and that they can scale it to become 'massive' in the future without
damaging the prestige of the degree. But they have a way to go yet.

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sarojt
This is the beginning of a revolution for affordable,accessible education.

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Eleutheria
Make it free and you'll have a million applicants.

That's disruptive.

