Jeff here - one of the creators of the classes. The great thing we like about this is that you can take the classes for free if you want. You only have to pay if you want the specialization. More info here:
Jeff, I'm signed up for the entire set at the moment. It's just a matter of deciding if I want to pay for it and focus on it or take other classes (MIT is doing a data course as well this spring over with edx). If I can get my employer to pay that'd be better, not because it's expensive but because I perceive that it would be better material to add to my resume if I can say it was work sponsored.
I'd like to know your thoughts on the value of the final capstone project respective to career development?
I can vouch for the value of the material. I took yours last year and it definitely helped with both work as well as my personal projects. In particular the components on functional knowledge are things that other courses tend to ignore.
Open source lecture material
"These are the course materials for the Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization on Coursera"
https://github.com/DataScienceSpecialization/courses