Udacity Will Offer Masters Degrees in CS From Georgia Tech

If your start-up costs were small, your fixed costs largely accounted for elsewhere, your advertising needs were little to none, and your marginal costs--made up mainly of delivering canned instruction (hopefully electronically without humans teaching)--are small, why not?

The author worried about "democratization." By what discriminator? Ability? Costs? As long as the outputs are maintained at the expected quality level, what's the harm? One thing DETC-accredited schools have demonstrated--better than the RAs--is an ability to deliver canned instruction for low costs. I would hope a school like Georgia Tech could outdo DETC-accredited schools in this game. Especially since so many of their fixed costs are already amortized elsewhere.

 

Sounds like a great idea for both the students and the schools. This type of common sense business practice will hopefully counter the trend of the cost of education outpacing inflation by double digits (which is unsustainable).

 

I got the e-mail from the program today, and it contained this:

"Please spend 5 minutes filling out this suvey."

Please go here for additional information:

Program Information - OMSCS

Yes, that "suvey" was in the original e-mail text.

 

The program is great, but "ONLINE" in the title raise more red flag to the prospective employers. If you put it as Master of Computer Science from Georgia Tech; then it is integrity problem. However, 30% cost of the real program on campus; I assume it is what you're paying for.

 

I seriously doubt it will raise any red flags. Georgia Tech is an elite technical institution. I would not even bat an eye. For the most part IT professionals are hardly judged by the program of study for their degree, in reality they are usually not even judged by their major. They just need to have a "degree".

 

That online in the title is intentional. It's what keeps them from losing students in their brick-and-mortar program.

 

Steve:

Good point.

I just re-checked the document, and their exact concern was about protecting their brand, and having a clear differentiation between the on-campus degree and the online degree. Also, they seem to allow one to get a normal degree, as long as at least 18 credits are gained on-campus.

 

Amazing. So they're acknowledging the award of what they consider to be an inferior degree by making those distinctions.

 

Georgia Tech has stated explicitly that they don't expect the online master's degrees to match the on-campus degrees in all respects:

For example, the on-campus students will be working closely with the faculty (and with each other) on projects or theses, which would be impossible for thousands (tens of thousands?) of MOOC students. And that's a huge plus for anyone who plans to go on for a PhD. Another point not mentioned is that the on-campus program has historically had high admissions standards, while the online program will have relatively open admissions. These are real differences, and it is not "amazing" that GT acknowledges them.

Will the online degree be perceived as "inferior" to the on-campus degree? Yes, probably so.

If that's the case, does this mean that the online degree will be worthless? No. It just won't be as valuable as the on-campus version.

Could a less-valuable online degree still be a great deal at $7,000 ? Yes.

 

The OMS admission policy may not as stringent but the admission standards are not open. The initial cohort group's admission requirement give precedence to graduates of mathematics, computer science and engineering backgrounds; students which are likely to matriculate fully into the program. The admission standards are not a Columbia or Stanford grade but fairly standard for a graduate computer science program.

Also, the OMS CSCI represents a high risk venture for GA-Tech, AT&T and Udacity; its doubtful that initial admissions will be open to less qualified candidates. There are many cynics of MOOCs that would love for this venture to flop.

 

Source: Frequently Asked Questions - OMSCS