Posted on 08/30/2013 7:43:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Georgia Institute of Technology rocked the higher education world when it announced plans to offer a fully online master’s degree in computer science for roughly one-seventh the price of its on-campus equivalent – less than $7,000. The project is powered by a joint venture with Udacity, an online higher-education course provider that stands to earn 40 percent of the tuition revenues. The AT&T Corporation, which is providing two-thirds of the estimated ramp-up costs, expects to funnel existing employees through the program and recruit new ones at the back-end of it.
Reaction to the news has been mixed.
Online education advocates are excited about what they see as an opportunity for broad access to substantially more affordable higher learning.
Others worry that the wholesale democratization of higher education will lead to deteriorating outcomes and the diluted quality of advanced degrees—particularly as a larger number of students are attracted to the courses. There is also a fair amount of academic carping about the competition—how joint ventures such as this will hijack resources that might otherwise be used to develop and deliver the staff’s own groundbreaking programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
/johnny
If they know what the program states they will know at the conclusion of the course, great. If they can perform the work for which this should be preparing them then let us see more movement in this direction.
You mean, even more diluted than it is right now?
Those who hold a monopoly don't like company. Especially lower-priced company. ;-)
Where will all the Communist professors be able to find cushy jobs at Big Government indoctrination centers, which most universities have become? Obama will have to ban all on-line attempts to curb their plunder of our money and our children.
I think what will be really cool is when computer intelligence becomes competent enough to be conversant. You’d be able to interact with a computer program that can act as a teacher and you could be taught one-on-one until you get it.
I think it depends on the job. If you are not a professional then go get an easy on-line Master’s Degree. If you are looking for a good career then go to a traditional school and earn the Master’s degree “on campus”. I know a lot of employers can tell if you on-lined it or not. I went to George Washington for my MBA and although expensive it was very much worth it. I could not imagine doing it online. But I guess bottom line it depends on how successful you want to be.
Basically, and I KNOW, it is a struggle between traditional state and student (on-site) funded academia and what is called DLPE (Distance Learning and Professional Education).
Separate accounting and budgeting entities and often including other faculty participating (e.g., qualified researchers not from the tenured staff). The final difference being “just what ‘color’ is the money being received?” [and I don’t mean anything remotely racial about this].
It will be interesting to see who wins.
Colleges and Universities have been raising tuitions every year for decades simply because they can and will get it. If this online source doesn’t properly supply the education needed by tech firms for future employees, it will be rooted out.
If you're in the business of acting as a gatekeeper between a body of knowledge and the people who want that knowledge...
Just wait until Bankock U offers this degree for $999.00.
Your inside the box, outdated and pro bureaucratic pro big govenment status quo thinking NEVER ceases to amaze me. The corruption of Big Education, like so much, has just WHOOSHED right by you......simply astounding.
And when was the last time you were on a college campus? You think it resembles in any way, shape or form what you experienced. It doesn’t.
On a related subject, just another opportunity for me to say that public school is a 19th century paradigm that outlived its usefulness in the late 20th century. It should be abolished.
Those who want their kids to get an education can send them to private school or go to places like this and get a LOT better education than a typical public school: Khanacademy.org
Those who don’t really care enough can just not bother. In those cases, the kids can get the same quality of education that many kids in America are already getting in inner city and other schools - none. And their kids will suffer the consequences just as many kids are today. At least it is a lot less work than sending them to worthless schools.
Online education can be BETTER than brick and morter and it is substantially cheaper than brick and morter. It is the future. Period.
Bachelors degrees are equivalent to HS diplomas from the 50s and 60s.
So Masters degrees are equivalent to bachelors from the same era.
Strangely enough our best programmers did not go to school at all or graduated in a completely different field. I don't know how they find them.
Slate: Only bad people won’t sacrifice their children on altar of public education, or something
Kinda funny. An engineer friend of mine said that the only thing his engineering degree got him was in the door of the job. Everything he does now has nothing to do with what he learned in college.
I think he exagerates, but the point is valid. Some hard skills are necessary and must be taught. And they are also the easiest ones taught online.
Nothing wrong with doing it, but if it becomes common for everyone in that sector to get a degree I do think the payment for that degree will go down based on the numbers of people available to do the job in the field.
If there are two computer programmers available they may get 100k each. If there are 100 available they may find it hard to get paid 28k. FROM THE MARKET...
And when was the last time you were on a college campus? You think it resembles in any way, shape or form what you experienced. It doesn’t.
I received my MBA in 2000 after going at night after working full time. I am not saying what the experience is just what the results are. It does not matter that the school is big government or whatever....the result is do you want to be successful in life or not. If you feel that doing an on-line degree will find you success then why not just purchase one of those degrees online that you can pay for without doing any work? It is about the same as doing an online degree. You know why serious employers will NEVER hire an on-line degree holder? Because most of the time they don’t even do their own work. You know how many times I heard, “Oh my wife does most of my course work on line because she stays home all day”....a ton! I know 100 percent I would Never hire an on-line degree holder. They are folks who want an easy way to get a degree.
I expect that the real complaint is that they won’t be able to fill the heads-full-of-mush with Liberal propaganda at every turn.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.