In case you missed it, the Rambling Wrecks of Georgia Tech will next year begin offering an online masters degree in computer science for a total price of just under $7000 — about 80 percent less than the current in-state tuition for an equivalent campus-based program. The degree program, offered in cooperation with AT&T and courseware company Udacity, will cost the same no matter where the students live, though two thirds are expected to live and work outside the USA. Time to complete the degree will vary but Georgia Tech thinks most students will require about three years to finish. The program is inspired, we’re told, by the current hiring crisis for computer science grads — a crisis that anyone who reads this column knows does not exist.
Programmers in Bangalore will soon boast Georgia Tech degrees without even having a passport.
There are plenty of online courses available from prestigious universities like MIT and Harvard — most of them free. There are plenty of online degree programs, too — most of them not free and in fact not even discounted. So this Georgia Tech program, made possible by a $2 million grant from AT&T, is something else. It could be the future of technical education. It could be the beginning of the end for elite U.S university programs. Or it might well be both.
The online classes are all free, by the way, it’s just the degree that costs money.
This technical capability has been around for several years but no prestigious U.S. university has made the jump before now because it’s too scary. Georgia Tech is launching its program, I believe, to gain first-mover advantage in this new industry, which I suppose is education, maybe training, but more properly something more like brand sharing or status conferral.
I predict the program will be good for Georgia Tech but not especially good for the people of Georgia. I further predict it will be not very good for U.S. higher education and will hurt the U.S. technical job market. Still, I don’t blame Georgia Tech for this audacious move. Somebody was going to do it, why not them?
Here are some problems with the plan as I understand it. Georgia Tech will start with 300 students, many of them AT&T employees, but hopes to expand the program to as many as 10,000 students — about 40 times larger than the University’s current CS student population. This will require, according to their plan, eight additional university instructors to serve those 10,000 bodies.
Huh?
I’m all for efficiency and most universities are anything but, however these numbers boggle my old mind. To make them work, in fact, requires a complete rethinking of the graduate education experience.
Ironically, looking at some of the communication that went into making this program, I’d say Georgia Tech sees it about the same way I do: it’s all about the money and not much about the education.
Let me explain. Georgia Tech is a major research university. In big research universities research and publishing count for everything and teaching counts for close to nothing, which is why there are so many bad teachers with endowed professorships. But research universities also often have professional schools like those that teach law, medicine, or business. A key distinction between research programs and professional programs is that most graduate research students have fellowships or assistantships of some sort. In other words they go to school for free in exchange for their labor teaching or researching. Professional schools, on the other hand, expect their students to pay their own way. There may be a few scholarships for MBA students, for example, but most get by on loans they’ll be paying back for decades to come.
Research grad students are slave labor while professional grad students are cash cows for their institutions and matter mostly for the money they can pay.
Computer science is a research field but this new degree at Georgia Tech is specifically branded as being a professional degree. While that sounds extra-important what it really means is the students won’t matter at all to the University, which sees them strictly as cash flow — up to $18 million per year according to the business plan.
So the logical questions one might ask about such a program (How do you maintain quality? What’s the impact on research? How can you serve 40 times as many students with only eight extra teachers?) might produce surprising answers.
You don’t maintain quality, nor do you intend to because this is, after all, a program that requires no standardized entrance testing of its applicants. Garbage-in, garbage-out.
The impact on research will be nada zilch, zero, because the new online students won’t ever directly interact with research teachers or even research graduate students, nor will they ever get a chance to benefit from such interaction. Out of sight, out of mind.
You can only serve 40 times as many students with eight extra heads by not serving them. Any hand-holding will be pushed off on Udacity or — to a very limited extent — to the 4000 Pearson locations where proctored tests will be given for the degree.
So what kind of Georgia Tech degree is this, anyway?
A very crappy one.
Striving for first-mover advantage and $18 million, Georgia Tech will ultimately sacrifice its brand reputation.
Good luck with that.
This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of ways to get costs out of computer science education. I was in Paris two weeks ago, for example, and had lunch with Xavier Neil, France’s second-largest ISP and fourth-largest mobile carrier, both called Free. Xavier, a self-taught programmer, is starting this fall in France a programming school that costs nothing at all to attend. He says the school is his effort to save France’s technical industries and I believe him.
While $7000 is cheap for a CS degree, free is even better.
Who will step up to start a similar school in America?
Surely it’s the case that the brightest students will steer clear of crappy, low-status, poorly-taught courses. In addition, the top institutions may up their game if they feel encroached upon by low-budget enterprises. The best businesses have always wanted to hire the best graduates and will not take long to spot qualifications which aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
I disagree. As anyone who works in the IT industry knows, the best programmers often have little or no formal education in computer science or related fields. How is that possible? As with most every other field, you can teach yourself everything you need to know to excel in the computer science field. A professor manually grading your exercises is by no means required to learn the material and often an encumbrance. You can think of your own examples, but the non-degree computer scientists have dominated the degreed computer scientists over the history of the IT industry (Ellison, Gates, Zuck, Woz, Jonas, etc, etc). Computer science, probably more than any other field, has been completely unimpressed with educational credentials.
All of the education industry isn’t about education. It is about conveying prestige, or a “signal” if you prefer, in the form of a credential. This is true in hard sciences, such as CS, but even more true in the soft fields where there is often to discernible body of knowledge that is true in all cases. As long as GT produces the same exams with the same standards as the traditional MS in CS program and the MOOC students pass those exams, I don’t think anyone should be concerned that they didn’t move to Georgia or go into debt to learn the material.
Another comment. It is a fairly recent, and odd, notion that in order to learn subject matter you must be in a classroom for four plus years. It came about in the 50s as part of the industrialization of education… “follow this course sequence, get at least Cs, and you know the material.” Skills, prior to the last 50 years, had been learned through either self-study or formal classroom study, your choice, followed by an apprenticeship and admittance to a professional guild. Think Lincoln or Alexander Hamilton learning the law reading by themselves or how any of the trades (plumbing, electrician, etc) work today.
People, such as myself, that have gone through the 4-year undergraduate program and grad school almost universally agree that they could have learned the same material in a substantially shorter period of time with a substantially lower financial investment. When people try to defend the traditional educational system, it always devolves into a “well, yes, but the social experience was great… or the networking opportunities were great.” True, but you could have gone to well heeled bars/coffee shops for four years to get those experiences. Educational institutions as social mixers is maybe the worst argument on their behalf.
There is a genuine, and valid, concern that advanced research will break down if the educational system moves towards this GT MOOC model. Fair enough, but could there be a worse way to fund advanced research than forcing 20 something year olds to go deeply into debt? There are models which do not required young people to hock themselves in order to listen to TAs in lecture halls which then funds research. DARPA, all of the Fed think tanks, private think tanks, so forth. Much of the “advanced research” performed at universities is not necessary. CS and engineering research should be supported as it will benefit society as a whole, over time. What about the professor writing the 68th book on pastoral motifs in Tolstoy though? That is not valuable to anyone except that professor. Tolstoy himself wouldn’t even want to read it. Lest you think I am a philistine who wants to destroy the humanities, that is not what I am about at all. Having programs to support the next Tolstoy/great artist is incredibly important. Having research budgets, taken from undergrad tuition, to fund pedantic books or articles about some intentionally obscure topic in the humanities or social sciences which no one outside of six other professors in the field will read, not so important.
Not sure what you’re disagreeing with. David wrote only 3 sentences, all of which are true. You are also correct in that there are jobs available for those qualified but without degrees. Personally, I’d prefer to be qualified with a degree than without one but only if it’s affordable and the amount of debt required is zero or can be paid back quickly. The choice of a school should depend on its reputation in your field of study as well as its affordability. Keep in mind we are not talking about a Gates or Zuk here.
These are my specific disagreements:
“Surely it’s the case that the brightest students will steer clear of crappy, low-status, poorly-taught courses.”
I don’t think these courses, or any online courses, are necessarily crappy because you were not in a seat taking on debt for multiple years. I think the material can be learned in a variety of different ways, self-study, online, classroom, etc. I don’t think looking at a screen instead of being in the classroom makes one bit of difference, particularly in a CS classroom where you generally drive to campus, go to a lab, and look at a screen anyway. I don’t think GT is low status either. It is one of the best CS programs in the country. Clearly they are not doing this for the cash, $7,000 for the degree, and wouldn’t be doing this if they thought the delivery method was sub-par and was going to harm their reputation. It is just elitism mixed with nostalgia to think that some sort of magic happens when you physically walk into a classroom as opposed to log-in (the same sort of thinking that caused people to believe that people would never buy books online because of the smell of the book shop)… elitism which is becoming more difficult to justify as GT, CMU, Columbia, Stanford, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, etc have fully online masters programs.
“n addition, the top institutions may up their game if they feel encroached upon by low-budget enterprises.”
This is one of the best universities. Most of the best CS universities now offer fully online CS masters programs, because there is no difference whatsoever between logging-on or driving to a campus and logging-on.
“The best businesses have always wanted to hire the best graduates and will not take long to spot qualifications which aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”
I work for one of the preeminent IT companies in the world. I would not even think to ask, if I read that someone had a masters from GT or another top university, if they attended online or on-campus. Yes, if they can’t do the work, they will be spotted quickly… but that would be true even if they had a Ph.D. from Stanford and spent five years in Palo Alto. We have top CSs who do not have a college degree working along side those with a Ph.D. It really is all about content and ability.
“It really is all about content and ability.” Quite true. I agree with everything you say as well as everything David said. Bob’s article implied that online credentials aren’t as good as in-person. Whether or not that is true depends upon the requirements to obtain each type of degree. The fact the on-line degree is designated as such implies that even GT acknowledges there may be a difference even if the only difference is the cost.
There is much to be said for the value of self learning. However, with rare exception, there are also potential pitfalls/gaps in that learning that a university education can fill.
It is all too common for people to think they know ‘enough’ – when in fact they don’t have enough depth of knowledge to really arrive at that conclusion (it is counterintuitive, but without understanding the full breadth of knowledge (the canon, if you will) at least at a simple level, you won’t be able to know what you should know – without some outside guidance, unless you are the 1% of gifted people with perseverance to do the research/gain experience and intuition to understand how it all fits together, the school of hard knocks method; not the most efficient). Even traditionally trained (CS degree’d) IT people are not immune to this – as I also see people either not getting what they should from their own education (you get out of it what you put into it), or conversely the ‘computer science’ program they completed did not properly cover the bases.
As for me, I am both self taught, and later pursued a computer science degree – so I understand this from both sides. From my own experience – I am much better off having both experiences under my belt, than depending on one alone. I also see problems caused by not having the necessary depth on a daily basis in my line of work. Some I can fix, some I can’t fix. In either case, I wish they would either go back to school, or leave the career field altogether.
If you fall into the 1% that is self-taught and competent – then ignore my advise. Otherwise – do something about it for the sake of the people who have to work with/through you.
Yes, you’ll never find a use for what you don’t know.
I see that the apparent (one observation) to your new site being so slow is your accessing “maps.gstatic.com”.
It takes forever, and yet you show no maps.
Bob I agree with your comments on the GT degree, but can’t disagree more on the current shortage of IT workers. I have been a CIO for over 10 years in a major metro area. It is brutal to hire people right now. And I’m not one to only hire the bag of skills. I pay above market, keep people for along time, and work for a highly respected company.
You have my email and I’m happy to share more information.
Try looking at candidates over the age of 40.
My last hire was in his mid 50s. I know that is always the comeback, but not the case with me. My average age on my staff is over 40.
And no, HR doesn’t screen candidates away. Due to the lack of candidates, the hiring manager reviews every resume.
Glad to hear this. In Boise, there is such a huge oversupply of software engineers that it is very easy for employers to let their prejudices win.
That is your problem. You are in Boise. Not Seattle, not in DC, not in any respectable big city. The markets are different in different places. If you went into engineering or technology and were dumb enough to move to a flyover state that is your problem. Contrary to popular belief the market for technical staff is not good everywhere, it is very concentrated on the coasts, and Texas.
The same argument could be applied in reverse to employers in silicon valley, DC or wherever there is a perceived shortage of talent. They shouldn’t complain about a shortage of skilled tech workers if they stick themselves in a location where they have the most competition for the number of available bodies. Go to Boise, Memphis, Detroit or wherever and hire folks. Create a remote office, relocate them or let them telecommute.
H1B visas are at a national level and should only be increased if there is a national shortage of workers, not just regional. There are plenty of other reasons to move to “flyover” country – that’s why many tech companies ended up in Utah, Washington State and other areas, once someone paved the way.
I
Dave,
Not sure if you look for folks who can work remotely. It is one of the reasons I stay in my current job. Most places want you there in the office every day, which is fine if you are local and in a place with reasonable traffic, etc. but here around the greater Philadelphia corridor traffic is a nightmare and you end up spending 10 hours in the office + 1-2 hours commuting each way = no personal life.
Just a thought.
I agree with Johnny: look for people OTHER than new hires.
I know of major companies that are still shedding IT personnel, so there’s certainly no loss at finding people. The issue is whether you want to hire people who are 40+, know their field, but will command a higher salary. In my years in IT, I can tell you that a single high salaried, experienced IT person will outperform a score of new hires. They also have roots in the communities they live in, and will (likely) not jump for the first opportunity that comes along. Perhaps they may not have the latest programming language, but they can adapt.
See my previous response. For some reason you assumed I will not pay for experience. I do. I also provide training.
In my market, hiring a BI developer takes around 6 months and that is with networking, recruiting, etc. .NET developers are commanding strong salaries (and I do pay them)
I’m not exactly young myself and have been very loyal to my staff through generations of technologies. It’s sad that there is to much cynicism out there. But I get that large companies have damaged many careers.
The reason why I am cynical is that I’ve been in meetings at previous employers that we’ve had HR people say they will pay XXX dollars for this job, no more no less. And when managers complain that they have candidates laugh at them for that salary, they were told that “you are aiming too high. You should aim for young and cheap”.
Just like the outsourcing people who told us that “a resource is a resource, no matter where it is stationed.” Sounds great but experience does matter, and I’ve seen it time and again when going cheap meant going for the absolute minimum quality.
What amazes me is the number of incredibly expensive but inexperienced consultants that are out there, often H1Bs. (Not every H1B is like Asok in Dilbert.) I saw one situation where a group of consultants were being billed at $80/hour. They theoretically worked 40 hours a week for a state agency. But they were also billing an agency of another state for 30 hours a week for the same employees. In actuality, they were only working about two hours a day for either state, as evidenced by examination of keystroke logs on their PCs. And the work they did for those two hours a day was very substandard. Famous quote from one of the customers, “They told me that there was no way to compare strings in Java.”)
Eventually, this collection of H1Bs was canned, and the state attorney-general’s office finally concluded that there was not quite enough evidence to get criminal convictions for fraud, so it is being pursued as a civil matter.
Now the firm that billed $80/hour for their time is working on the federal food stamps program. Based on the quality of their code, I am expecting mass starvation to be the eventual result.
You are assuming that highly experienced workers are more expensive than more junior workers. I make, adjusted for inflation, what I made in 1980. But back then, I had about two years of experience.
I’ve read of many cases where IT cannot find good candidates because HR has screened out everyone who doesn’t have the current buzzwords in their resume, before passing them on to IT for consideration.
Where is this major metropolitan area?
I’ve stopped looking for a position. I have 35 years of experience: Java; SQL; C#; C; embedded development; excellent communication skills (how many software engineers do you know whose work is cited in U.S. Supreme Court decisions?). Employers here in Boise aren’t interested in anyone over 40, and lots of employers are really only looking to hire $40K a year H1Bs, because once hired, they can’t easy change jobs except by leaving the country.
There may be jobs in some big cities, but the current housing market means that you pretty much have to walk away from your house and let it go into foreclosure to move. Now, if there were employers prepared to consider telecommuting… But that’s right up there with employers willing to consider engineers over 40, or engineers who can write, speak, and understand English.
“EASILY change jobs,” that should be.
Dave, such a pity you do not link back to any site where you might be contacted. I would not be your candidate, though I have genuinely though, having run my own business for 18 years, that I would like to make use of my almost 30 years programming experience for a sabbatical year, not to refresh my skills so much as utilize my communication skills as apply to programming and sysop, in a company bigger that mine which diminished due to the sad and sudden loss of my co-founder. Locally, there is only one firm hiring above 40 consistently, they’re the #2 broker about these parts, and very successful in their hires from diverse professions, a buddy was on their recruiting team while back. Not many repeat prospects wanting to move on. Although I am rebuilding my business, I am more laying off accumulated IP assets to recapitalize. A year or two out would not harm. (my company is a life ambition, addressing a problem of equal longevity) Not saying I’d bite your hand off, but it’s a pity you are in the position you speak of, and even if a very long shot, I would have enjoyed a brief exchange if it was not time wasting for either party. Speaking up because I reckon there are many like me, carried pretty comfortably by the IT boom of the 90s who may have struck out, as I did, but feel very happy to do a “real” job again, simply because that means transferring experience more widely, provides perspective, and it’s good to do good work for larger businesses not sniping checks as a contractor or consultant. Off the cuff as this comment may be, I bet there are others reading this, my age, and with not dissimilar abilities, who feel they are being teased!
David may well be right, but a potential employer will just have to ignore a GA Tech degree assuming it to be junk and either look elsewhere, or probe and probe (which is a good idea anyway).
Odd that GT is considered so highly rated. They always seemed to me like more of a football school than one that was serious about engineering.
I see from your résumé that you have an advanced degree in computer science. What was your area of research?
Oh, it was an on line degree, and you just took a lot of programming courses.
That’s nice. Uh… we’ll give you a call next week. Thank you for stopping by.
Harvard sure hasn’t had that problem. Or any of the other MBA programs you can take on Saturday.
I think that they are having that problem too. The MBA is nowhere near the marketable degree it was a few years ago. Saturation with junk has that effect.
The person who has written this article is a pathetic nay sayer, and completely paranoid about the world taking over all the US jobs. Get over it will you. What is wrong with providing people outside the US an opportunity of getting a degree from Georgia Tech?!! And if it is cheaper for someone from Bangalore to enroll in this course, so it is for someone in the US – it’s not like taking away an opportunity from Americans, in fact it is gives those a chance that can’t afford the “regular” tuition and fees for college. Without having any experience with courses for that online degree, how have you determined that they are going to be “crappy”? Your rhetoric is one of pessimism and insecurity, I feel sorry for you.
You’re kidding, right?
There is no shortage of IT personnel in the U.S. Companies have been shedding IT people for well over a decade now, moving IT overseas, and it’s not like those IT people got snapped up by other corporations.
The difference is that corporations don’t want to pay the going rate for IT personnel. They want the Walmart rate, which they can get overseas. And really, the GT degree is only there so that some IT outsourcer can tell Corporate America that “Yes, we’ve even got personnel on staff with degrees from Georgia Tech!” $7000 is peanuts when you’ve got millions and billions of IT outsourcing dollars on the line.
The University of Phoenix and Strayer University don’t have the cachet that a GT or a Stanford degree has, but if GT or Stanford can sell that degree on the cheap it’s just like having seat licenses at your professional sports arena: it gives these universities a license to essentially print money.
They make Neiman Marcus claims, pay a Walmart rate, and don’t even get K-Mart quality.
And then the idiot managers who made these decisions get promoted because the costs of these decisions are almost never monitored (unless they result in 7 figure lawsuits/settlements).
Bob, you’re missing a search-friendly and #-worthy keyword – MOOC, Massive Open Online Course. Last month I attended the annual conference for Instructure/Canvas, the new entry in the Learning Management System (LMS) space for online course delivery. They’re making a move into the MOOC space to challenge Blackboard. Fully 10% of the conference sessions were devoted to using these large (if not quite “massive”) platforms for delivering all kinds of educationa/training content, from K-12 to nonprofits to municipal governments to corps. There’s a YouTube channel with all 110 of the conference sessions available to view, search for InstructureCon2013.
The MOOC-movement is less than two years old but within education (and the educational press) it’s almost tired old news. There’s a possibility that it may be a game-changer, or it may go the way of the pager. I think you touch on some of the key differences between what the technology may enable vs. the potential business models that may exploit it.
IMO (sigh), the problems of public education, including higher ed, aren’t related to the lack or availability of 21st-century technology.
Clarification … Instructure is challenging BlackBoard in the LMS space, not the MOOC platform space. Their MOOC platform, canvas.net, is open to anyone, individuals included.
I used to hope that edX would offer some sort of degree in the future. After reading this, I’m not so sure. An imaginary A.B. (i.e., take 32 classes from HarvardX purely for learning) is good enough for me.
If the classes are free and the degreee costs money, aren’t you just paying $7000 for them to count up your credits and confirm you’ve earned it?
Mark,
It appears that for the degree program you will take proctored tests at “the 4000 Pearson locations where proctored tests will be given for the degree.”
From another report: “Students who want the possibility of credit or a degree will have to apply for admission to the university and pay tuition, and those students will get access to teaching assistants and, in some cases, have their assignments graded by people.”
This validation, and their putting their (possibly tarnished?) name on the degree seem worth the price.
I am confused by the negative reaction to this program. We have a lot of one year campus based Masters degree programs in various disciplines. Some are high quality, others not so much. I think ‘we’ mostly agree that official credentials can be useful in tech, but that ultimately what you know and what you can do are more important.
So…will you learn something in your ‘Polyester Masters?’ I think so. (insert long essay defending moocs)
Q: what is the difference between a Georgia Tech online MSCS degree and a matchbook degree?
A: $7000 – $250 and SASE = $6749.58. oh, and possible loss of accreditation. oh, and no increased support for the Bulldog athletic program from alumni.
hey, statis for the Bulldogs? that’s pretty serious! I’m calling the Provost….
First, most places don’t care about where you get your degree from. Most companies can’t research every educational institution to see what kind of teaching they do.
Secondly, the kind of students that need a lot of hand holding during their education are not the kind of students I want. If a student can do a lot of independent learning and pass a truly practical exam, I have much more respect for them and will be more likely to hire them.
I think a cheaper school with independent students is a great idea, but the exams need to be practical and tough. That’s where I’d find my new IT employees!
Shane
Shane, you got it right!
I completely disagree with all these negative commentaries on MOOCs… Honestly, a university degree shouldn’t be what constitutes most of your knowledge in any field… If all you know is what you learned from a university, you’re probably a very poor to average software engineer… MOOCs are a great way for independent learners to learn fundamentals that will allow them to build projects of their own, acquire a degree and build good portfolios…
An employer will look at your github way before he looks at your degree anyway…
Very true. But Shane also said “but the exams need to be practical and tough”. That’s where a formal education is useful. You can learn a lot of stuff on your own but you only know it’s adequate when a tough school with tough exams and tough competition (other students) recognizes what you’ve done with a formal degree.
First of all I been reading your column for a long time and I do admire the posts that you write. But it does bother me when you blame the finger on Indians at every excuse.
Over and over again, i see you are gravely concerned about Indians getting a job or Indians getting a degree. I understand you are worried that your hard earned taxes are paying for someone making money or getting a degree 10000 miles away. We Indians are not pathetic people who just showed up to take your jobs. We worked hard to get a degree and found a way to work in this country.
For once i want you to write a column about how you could improve the technical education in America for Americans. I did my grad school in the states and i know how many americans were in these classes. The Few Americans that were in my class were freaking smart but unfortunately they were also a little socially awkward. Its an overall perception that unless you are a nerd you can’t get an engineering degree. You need to figure out a way motivate these kids by offering something to change the status quo, instead of just blaming that Indians – who ‘miraculously’ came and took your job away. Quick question, we studied for 8+ hours a day in school, how much time do you think an average american spends studying? In this country being good at sports means everything but for us studying and getting a college degree means everything.
I don’t blame Indians who come here to get jobs. I blame employers who, in their desire to pay as little as possible, and to get a largely captive workforce, violate U.S. immigration law. H1B visas, by law, are supposed to be for specialists who are not available in the U.S., and they are supposed to be paid competitive wages with U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
I have hired someone through an H1B visa many years ago because we could not find an American interested in the job — and it was a high paying engineering position. This was a long time ago, and there was a critical shortage at the time. Large corporations increasingly ignore that requirement, sometimes advertising very generic requirements such as “five years of object-oriented programming experience,” even though that clearly violates the H1B requirements.
Because H1B employees cannot easily change jobs, they are effectively indentured servants. They can quit, but only by leaving the U.S. Employers take advantage of H1B employees financially because they can’t quit. This is absurd, and makes H1B employees cheaper than a free market would pay, driving down wages for citizens and permanent residents.
I am sorry that you feel picked on as an Indian. You aren’t the problem. Employers who violate immigration law because they know that they will not be fined are the problem.
Clayton was whipping up the H-1B hate for years and I tried to offer a gentle pushback by mentioning that my first H-1B salary was $55k in 1997 dollars, adjusted to $75k at the end of 6 month probationary period. The company also kept the bargain to sponsor my Green Card. Maybe someone, somewhere was undercutting Americans, but not in my field. Frankly I came to see it all as rumor-mongering.
Same with Clayton bringing up “crappy code” by H-1Bs. Well, I’ve never seen Clayton’s own code, but my code is all on Github and kernel.org, feel free to grep. Report bugs if you find them.
The story about Boise “overflowing” with engineers is a little worrysome, because I thought about living there. But then again, my head office is 3100 miles away from my house. Moving to Boise would change nothing.
Pete – there are indeed people like yourself who were not part of one form or another of exploitation via the H1B program. But just look today where the top ten H1B employers are all off-shorers who use H1B to train people up in country and then send them home – clearly a use that is 100% in contradiction with the rhetoric about the official intent of the H1B visa program.
https://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134694/Whos-Hiring-H1-B-Visa-Workers-Its-Not-Who-You-Might-Think
I do agree with you that our society is not encouraging students to study. Partly this is because so many kids for a long time did not perceive that they would need to work hard to live a middle class life. I think that problem has just about been fixed by the last few years of economic misery. The bigger problem now is that so much of primary and secondary education has been stunted. I teach at a community college, and I sometimes find myself wondering what is happening in the thirteen years before they show up in my lecture hall.
Mr. Cramer: I greatly appreciated your book “My Brother Ron” and will regularly reference both the book and the facts stated in the book when discussing the factors behind homelessness with people. I wish the best for him and you both.
I keep mentioning India because it is by far the largest country involved in offshoring and outsourcing IT. I mention other countries from time to time but India is the leader and India sets the tone for this business. I have nothing against people from India. My partner in my upcoming series of eBooks, for example, is Parampreet Singh.
Sounds like there was no one from America available to partner with you. 🙂
Bob,
You should look up the English/UK system — it’s remarkably similar. Degrees are typically (though there are exceptions) not awarded by the teaching university — they’re awarded by Her Highness (aka the government) after taking a test (or tests). Granted, that’s at the Bachelor level …
Caveat Emptor.
The residents of the State of Georgia provide Georgia Tech $210,000,000 a year. In-state (resident) students must pay $36,000 for a masters degree. And they are offering a masters degree program for $7000 to people who are not residents, have not paid any state taxes, … If I were a resident of Georgia, I’d be furious….
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THIS IS IMPORTANT. I have no problem providing a quality education to anyone in the world who wants it. I have no problem with that education being used to improve the local economy and the quality of life in any nation in the world. I THINK THE DEVELOPED NATIONS SHOULD DO A LOT MORE TO HELP THOSE IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES. The problem and challenge is to do so without harming other nations and economies. If this program results in more USA IT workers losing their jobs then it should not be done, or it should be done in a way that protects BOTH societies.
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There are jobs that can be done remotely and jobs that require one to be physically present. Lets look at a few of them.
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Doctors and medical professionals — there is a clear need for better healthcare in the world. Why can’t we have $20,000 medical programs? Developed nations could provide the education (and funding). This program can be a huge benefit and would not hurt jobs or the economy of other nations.
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Engineering — developing nations need infrastructure, factories, etc. There are studies that show a single engineer can create jobs for scores (perhaps 100’s) of people. Developing nations need and can greatly benefit from access to a good engineering education. Engineering is however a profession that pull jobs away from established economies. Some types of engineering work can be done remotely. So some rules and boundaries are needed.
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Law — one of the big reasons some countries have strong economies and others do not is the rule of law. When everyone is treated fairly, everyone has equal opportunities, and the legal system protects this system — then the economy can flourish. Teaching the youth of the world how and why a good legal system and democracy works will have far reaching benefits. Further, for too many years developed nations have taken advantage of the resources of under developed nations. If the under developed nations had better business and legal representation the abuses could be reduced and more beneficial trade may result.
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Education is an incredible asset and should be made widely available. It must be done in a way that is a win-win for all parties.
John wrote: “The residents of the State of Georgia provide Georgia Tech $210,000,000 a year. In-state (resident) students must pay $36,000 for a masters degree. And they are offering a masters degree program for $7000 to people who are not residents, have not paid any state taxes, … If I were a resident of Georgia, I’d be furious….”
There seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around about Georgia Tech’s new online CS graduate degree. It is not intended to be considered equivalent to the usual much more expensive in-person CS graduate degree. The $7000 degree says “Online Master of Science in Computer Science.” It is its own thing, distinct from our “Masters of Science in Computer Science” degree.
I’m a resident of Georgia and I am very excited about GA Tech’s decision. I find it odd that so many here are assuming what we Georgians must be thinking. This degree after all is available to Georgia residents as well as everyone else. Georgia has been hit hard by the recession. Our education system is struggling. Yet, I see demand for knowledgeable programmers in our area everyday. If this opportunity gives some of my fellow residents a chance at one of those jobs I see that as bolster to our local economy. Additionally just having the material available online for others to learn is beneficial to anyone who decides to take advantage of it no matter where they live.
Yes, MOOC’s have the potential to change the face of formal education. But shouldn’t they? The internet is over 20 years old and yet much of it is full of kitten videos and pedantic rants. Shouldn’t we use it to help solve the worlds problems? For the first time in all of history we can communicate on a large platform to anyone in the world. What problems could be solved if we used such a platform to educate the world’s citizens and then asked those citizens to work together across national lines to make the world a better place?
I know it is going to shake up the economy and the order of things. But all great changes will by their nature have a ripple effect. If they did not they would not be revolutionary. The massive potential for worldwide communication and shared knowledge that the internet is should be revolutionary. If it is not then something is wrong.
“The internet is over 20 years old and yet much of it is full of kitten videos and pedantic rants. Shouldn’t we use it to help solve the worlds problems?” True, but you can’t blame people for being skeptical. Most websites are set up to solve the financial problems of those putting up the site. The last time I recall someone setting up a truly altruistic useful service was Napster. And look what happened to it when it was seen as a threat to the profits of old school businesses.
The educational system is an inefficient dinosaur that needs fixing. There is now over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. 80% of that has occurred in the last decade. Education like healthcare is a huge drain on the US economy. Think about when today’s graduates will be able to purchase a house, etc…. Probably at least a decade later than the current generation.
The world moves towards efficiencies and this is a good thing. If you are doing a job that someone else can do cheaper and/or better then that job will naturally move to them. CS degrees are one of those jobs that is portable as opposed to a trade like a plumber or an electrician.
Spreading better education throughout the world is a good thing. It enhances stability and productivity.
Looking back at my own undergraduate degree, it was largely sitting through lectures and taking tests. I would say the amount of work that couldn’t be easily taught through a computer was less than 10%. The part you lose through online training is the social aspect of school. That is perhaps the biggest part of school that is useful later in life. The degree is just the BS to get you the first job. After that your education has less value and your work experience takes precedence.
I am interested to see the educational landscape a decade from now… I am optimistic…
Jeff. You mentioned the social aspect of school. Since people are already so connected via digital social networks, I anticipate that in the not too distant future, lms’s / online education platforms will begin incorporating this into their programs. Think Google+ hangouts for classmates. This should adequately substitute for the “in person” social interaction. Sure people can do it now already, but if the feature was front and center I believe it would be much easier for people to break the “digital social ice” and start communicating with their new classmates just like they do with their friends now over the internet.
Also, at my school most classes in my CS program are taught in “dual mode” … meaning that nearly all classes have concurrent “seated” and “online” sections or are exclusively online. The net result of this is that the whole class is practically an online class. Compared to when I was in college many teachers have become just “class proctors/administrators.” In order to “handle” the online class the quality / quantity of instruction has plummeted in the last 10 years. The teachers even seem to resent being bothered when you really try to get “essential” help….it’s so easy to dodge people by avoiding emails and ignoring online discussion posts. So, essentially, even taking a “live-in person-seated” class is nothing more than proctored self-study. It’s a lazy teachers dream…and a students nightmare. The standards are high as a cat’s back…but I don’t feel I’m getting the support I’m paying for. I hope all involved with this sub-standard education will I do not feel that this disparity will continue. Nearly all the students I’ve talked with feel like this college is a pure joke…ALREADY…before the GT program has disrupted the whole educational paradigm.
I’m seriously contemplating dropping out, studying programming on my own, getting some focused tutoring from local whiz kids, going for it until I can build the beautiful apps that are in my head. BTW – where I live there is a CRISIS of iOS / Apple / Objective-C programmers. AND guess what ??? All the local college teaches is Java / C++ . I’m like Mark Cuban. I think Education is a bubble about to pop. This kind of crappy quality for ANY price is ridiculous. They are coasting on their laurels and I think they are going to get bit in the A** in the not too distant future.
Slow down there. Schools don’t teach apps or languages; they teach concepts required to use those languages effectively. Stuff like data structures, algorithms, operating systems, graphics, etc. If they don’t teach that sort of thing, then I’d be concerned.
Hey! I was thinking about getting one of those polyester degrees!
In all seriousness, the sad part is that, in the government/contracting sector, the amount of money they’ll offer you for a job is limited by your years of experience and your degree count. Nothing else. Certainly not your actual ability.
So my BS from a top tier school (and my overall high level of competence) will limit my pay compared to an incompetent with a BS and MS from a less competitive program.
If this presents a way to get a credentialed MS on my resume with less hassle than a traditional program, I might be all for it.
Because I really just want to write software, and I’m not too concerned with formal research.
Higher education is the next bubble to burst. Student loans amount in the hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions. Universities are being propped up and are expanding because of government student aid, which allows them to raise their tuitions. More and more people will realize that they are paying too much for not enough value.
Been saying that for years.
Higher education and moreover education in general has to go this way. Education costs too much. It is that simple. It is a cartel that has to be broken.
When it finally shakes out it will probably seep downward into elementary education. We’re currently holding everyone up to the rate of the slowest student. I can not imagine how bad that effect is in integrated schools that include unmotivated students with low aptitudes.
A problem that I see is that the degree is NOT $7000, it is much more than that and very likely double that cost. According the OMS CS Update: July 8, 2013, it says, “M.S. degree-seeking students first must pass (paying Georgia Tech tuition and fees) two OMS CS courses with a grade of B or better before petitioning for full admission to the program.” Linking to the Bursar’s Office PDF of fees, https://www.bursar.gatech.edu/student/tuition/Fall_2013/Fall13-all_fees.pdf
2 OMS CS classes of presumably 3 credit-hours a class would be for a out-state student $6,834 for 2 classes with a mandatory student fees of $1,196 for a grand total of $8,030 and that is before being able to petition for admission to the program. Perhaps my math is off, but the $7000 figure must be just for the Udacity portion since the Georgia Tech portion is more than the stated amount.
Georgia Tech seems to be still collecting their money regardless of the format. I don’t see this as much of a cost-saving for graduate education, some sure, but not the breakthrough being claimed.
Todd
Let’s see, 10,000 students spread amongst 8 new teachers. Good luck standing in line behind 1249 other students during office hours….
“Programmers in Bangalore will soon boast Georgia Tech degrees without even having a passport.”
What is wrong with that?
Looks like you have become toooo outdated to write anything good.
Maybe your best work “triumph of nerds” should be a crap.
Typo: it’s Xavier Niel not Neil.
Come to Scotland and we’ll give you a free university education! No tuition fees, and no examination fees. Just free!
Simply stay anywhere in Europe* for three months and you’ll be entitled to your free university education. Pick the degree you want and it’s yours free. No deposit, no payments. Free.
(Excludes England. Alex Salmond of the SNP doesn’t like the English.)
Seriously, you might think I’m making a joke but this is no joke. The people of Scotland are paying to educate European students, over $150 million spent already on this free offer. But not if you’re from England! England is the only country that we won’t give free education to.
So if you’re wanting to have a nice three month holiday in say, Paris, then start your free university program you now know where you need to go!
Dave, would you mind sharing your contact information with me? (Not looking for a job, just curious.) Thanks!
I pretty much disagree with everything in this article. I think that it’s time for the traditional education system to wake up and smell the roses. Traditional education is dramatically overpriced, and typically of very poor quality. Most people who have gone to state colleges and universities will agree that the vast majority of instructors and classes are mediocre to poor, and way too expensive. I applaud Udacity and Georgia Tech for their attempt to do something about both. I personally find MOOC classes to be as good or better than anything I took while in college. And it’s always important to remember that we’re still early in the education-revolution, so there are inevitably kinks to work out and optimizations to be made.
What I don’t understand is why you assume that just because they don’t require a standardized entrance test (I’ve taken them, they’re not work jack), are actually affordable, and online…they’ll be horrible. It just doesn’t follow. There’s absolutely no reason they can’t offer tremendous value, online, to a broad audience who otherwise would’ve been unable to afford to pursue further computer science education.
Education IS antiquated and ripe for revolution. Maybe MOOCS are the way to do that. If you read carefully you’ll note that I didn’t blame Georgia Tech for being the first top school to do this because in many ways it seems an obvious thing to do. Why I am against it is because it’s unfair to the Georgians already spending $36000 per year for what appears to be the same degree. I’d want my money back or perhaps I’d transfer over to the MOOC side of the school to save the money. It looks like a dandy class action lawsuit in the making to me. I’m against it because it will inevitably tarnish the reputation of a good school. I’m against it despite the fact that cynics here don’t think that matters.
Bob wrote: “Why I am against it is because it’s unfair to the Georgians already spending $36000 per year for what appears to be the same degree.”
They’re not really the same degree. Granted, the GaTech PR at every level is not always clear on this, and is sometimes downright contradictory. There is an underlying brand management issue, but it’s not as deep as you seem to think.
A $7,000 degree is a crappy degree but if it’s free it’s wonderful. Feel free to explain that Mr. Cringley.
Starting a free school is very different from turning an existing school into a diploma mill. New schools that are free can stand or fall on their own, but schools with long traditions and lots of alumni in the field ought to think about the shared value of their brand. Just on the basis of student-to-teacher ratio this degree program can’t be anywhere near as good as a traditional GT education. So if I’d done my time at GT, paid my money and got a good degree I’d be seriously pissed at my alma mater for so deliberately degrading the value of MY degree. Starting fresh makes sense, this does not. It’s just poor brand management.
The “tarnishing of a brand” is an interesting subject. It reminds me of the people who turned down knighthood after the Beatles were knighted. But ultimately knighthood survived when people came to realize that the Beatles’ economic contribution to England was at least as valuable as a demonstration of valor in battle. In the case of education, it’s true that the education OFFERED for the lower cost is not as good, but the education DEMONSTRATED by the students may be just as good. Time will tell.
What about a country where all degrees are free?
Does that affect the reputation of all the degrees from that country?
I got my degrees from Scotland where higher education is free and always has been. It used to be that students would get grants to attend university too (although that has been phased out now).
So if you want free and still want a quality certificate at the end then you really have to look to Scotland to do your studies. See the conditions I stated above to qualify (which is easy!).
Your degree might have been free, but you had to work for it. And you had to get into University as well. Here, you just pay your money and get right on in. This degree program at Georgia Tech reminds me of the old Open Admissions process at Ohio State: if you were breathing and from the state of Ohio, they had to accept you. Didn’t exactly help the reputation of the school very much.
Let’s not confuse being accepted with graduating. If all taxpayers are paying for the school, they should be allowed to attend so long as they meet minimum entry requirements, like graduating high school and taking remedial classes to make up for what was missing from their high school requirements. If they can’t do the work it will show up in their grades in freshmen year and they will be advised to go elsewhere.
I don’t understand the resistance to this. Its a great idea, and I hope its taken up by other universities.
As to the complaining up above re jobs, the harsh truth is, it IS hard to find good people. Its very easy to find average people. As a business owner, and investor/board member on a number of tech companies, I hear NON-STOP that its hard to find quality in new tech hires. You telling me 6 CEOs, in 3 different areas of the country, are lying to me? Interesting.
They may not be lying but those CEOs may well not know what they are talking about. How close are they to the hiring process? How close are they to their own technology? CEOs who know next to nothing being lied to by their IT department is an American business tradition.
Regardless of whether there are any Americans available to do programming or other computer-related jobs – and I think there must be – the Fortune 500 company I work for apparently won’t hire anybody here to do that job anymore. Instead it has a Global Services group in India and Costa Rica, and maybe in Eastern Europe as well by now. A few years ago our segment executive told us, “You guys are too expensive. Workers in India cost 1/3 as much.” I understand that he has to be concerned about the bottom line, and about competition in a global market. But we have to find a way to keep Americans employed without reducing most of us to Third World income levels and lifestyles.
I don’t understand why the GT MS has to be crap by definition. Are you suggesting they will not enforce any course work requirements or that the tests will not be meaningful? Why would any reputable institution risk their credibility and accreditation over $12M a year? That’s got to be a small fraction of their annual budget.
I don’t see why these degrees can’t be just as good as traditional ones.
Imagine Daimler-Benz decided to introduce a new E-class sedan that cost 20 percent as much as its predecessor. Maybe it’s made in an automated plant with, say, eight employees. At the same time they decided to keep selling their old E-class for five times as much. There’s a paradox here. If the new process is really so much cheaper and better why aren’t they applying it to all of their cars? Because it isn’t as good or they’d have canned the more expensive model. That’s what Georgia Tech is doing here. They are keeping both product lines and whether the newer/cheaper one is better or not having both makes no sense unless the new one is crap. If the new one is crap then doing it at all is a mistake. It’s this very real paradox that I decry because it can only damage both the school and its alumni.
Good point. But after word gets around that some schools offer both “online” and “on campus” degrees, employers will start asking how the degree was obtained. If an honest answer is required, then the brand of “on campus” would not be tarnished. It would just be understood that “online” degrees were easier to obtain and thus less valuable. The “brand tarnishing” would ultimately fall upon the students who saved money becoming less qualified rather than on the school that offered the cheaper alternative.
I know I’m repeating myself a lot here, but it’s important to emphasize that there’s a reason the new CS masters degree has “Online” *in the title of the degree.*
Apparently no one here realized that prior to your July 13th 6:59 pm post (CA time). Thanks for cluing us in.
Resumes are designed to make the creator look good. Likewise, an outsourcing company will design their literature to pump up themselves as much as possible. If that means saying “we have Georgia Tech graduates on staff” without specifying the degree type, they’ll do it. If someone writes in their resume “Masters Degree from Georgia Tech” without specifying the online degree, it is up to the hiring person to know the difference.
Most of the time, people see the magic words “Georgia Tech” or “Purdue” or “Rose-Hulman” and skip the other parts. This is just another way to think you’re getting steak at hamburger prices.
They’re going to be different kinds of MS degrees. You could think of the in-person degree as being the “research” path.
You can’t upgrade a brand, but you can definitely downgrade it.
I interview and hire many people for my company. I would have no issue hiring someone with an online degree if they impressed me in an interview. Combine an online degree with some impressive, self motivated independent projects and I would hire them in a heart beat. Filtering out the others would be no different from filtering out the large number of candidates that just coast through college or their subsequent careers.
I find it interesting that so many are fooled by the “fools gold” of the “brand”. The real kicker is the knowledge itself and knowing how to learn after you graduate. If you really learn something, do it well and are happy with
what you can do, you will not have to care about money or for that matter a “brand”.
After all both may not be “worth the paper they are printed on”.
That is if they are not just an entry in a computer somewhere that could have been hacked.
I have a BS in electrical engineering. I also have 30 years experience in software design including machine vision, embedded, and database.
But I am not considered capable of teaching a college class because I don’t have my Masters degree.
Maybe the Georgia Tech online degree will solve that problem.
So ask yourself if you want your next surgeon to possess an “online doctorate of medicine”
If I needed surgery, I’d rely on the medical institution to screen the doctor’s qualifications. If they hired him and took on the legal responsibility of a mistake, it wouldn’t mater to me if he had a degree, let alone whether it was on or offline. If it were a private practice, I’d rely on the guy’s reputation in the community.
Some years ago, I needed to take a few more accounting courses to be considered for promotion. I already had a traditional 4 year degree, so I took some correspondence courses from Indiana University and LSU. The courses work was submitted by mail….internet was a still a couple years in the future. The courses were well organized, and the course work was identical to classroom instruction. The exams were the same exams given on campus….local community college offered a proctoring service for a fee.
Speaking from my correspondence course experience, I believe that online courses will be a great complement to classroom instruction, but will not totally replace the classroom. For someone who’s never been on college campus, I don’t think a net education can be a viable substitute. That said, I believe a great portion of higher ed can be shifted over to the net. The biggest benefit will be reduced costs.
To sum up, the net can reduce the costs of someone trying to earn a 4 year degree. It’s also a great way for someone who’s already been through the traditional 4 year grind of earning additional certificates, or even a masters. Will it replace brick and mortar schools? No.
A lot of the skepticism directed at online education seems to come from conflating credentials with education. Education is what you have learned, credentials are just what someone else says you have learned. Claims that only the credentials matter make me sad.
Credentials are only useful for impressing someone else with what you supposedly have learned. Usually it is a prospective employer and mostly your first employer. Certainly of value but diminishing value as you gain work experience. Any employer interested in quality employees will have an interview process that will weed out people (with traditional credentials or not) that have exaggerated what they know. Those employers having trouble finding people will have the time and incentive to interview people who may not have been able to afford to park their butts in a traditional school for years, but have shown initiative to acquire the relevent education.
It is possible to learn a lot online and all the experimenting is exciting. I am eager to see the GT courses offered next year and will likely take some. I have taken several Udacity courses and been generally impressed. It may well be that this masters program will be of most value to employers wanting to upgrade their employees education and paying for it while still working (hence AT&T funding). Other people (like me) may take the free education because the credentials don’t matter to them. Available, affordable advanced education spread throughout the world. You have to dig hard to find things not to like about that.
All you say is true. But you didn’t discuss the subject of pay. Two equally qualified candidates with the same “education” (using your definition) may not receive the same pay. The one with credentials will usually receive more pay and a higher status job in the company. This is because employers don’t want to pay anyone more than they have to to keep him. The one with credentials has more freedom to leave and so requires more pay to stay.
Yes they may not receive the same pay especially initially and the candidate with the most respected credentials will have an easier time finding jobs. I like to believe that over time with a particular employer the job performance will be a bigger factor than school name, grades or degree.
This online masters will not replace the existing masters, Those with the time and money will weigh the value of a traditional experience and credentials and many will still go that route. That’s why I believe the school is not worried about it cannibalizing the existing program. They also still have the masses of undergraduates forking over cash. Rather, the online option is for those who for many reasons just couldn’t access or justify the traditional approach.
If I can make my own prediction I expect the free option will be veryt popular with the paid credentials mostly chosen not by individuals but by companies upgrading employees and wantng the extra assurance of proctored exams and TA help. Whether there is enough of that to make the paid option self-sustaining and offered long term remains to be seen.
Where’s the iBM eBook?
Is iCringely copyrighted? It would be a great name for a Apple product.
Hum, this was interesting and I wonder if in IT eventually degrees will fall into disfavor and maybe employers will get back to hiring people who know the subject, not credentials, at least in the Windows world. I blame this situation to a point on Microsoft and others in their camp. Microsoft at one point kind of preached programming as the way to build the business. They worked hard to create a ton of VB programmers at the time and were quite successful and a lot of work got done for companies it was a pretty common technology. But at some point the emphasis changed. Microsoft started preaching all you need is Windows servers, MS SQL servers, Office and you had the tools to run your company. Now mind you at the time they were also behind the scenes wanted to fill the void by HR managers because they were scared about hiring all these VB Programmers that sort of were a pig in a poke? So they created the Microsoft Certified System Developer, and that certification became the way to get a decent job as a Windows Programmer. But what also happened, trade schools opened all over pumping out young High School grads that had been taught to pass the tests in the MCSD, cheapening the certification to the point that last I looked it was basically gone replaced by a group of tests that prove you can at lest use the tools for writing .NET code.
Now there seems to be over and over if you are going to be a Windows Programmer, they want you to have at a minimum a Bachelor in Computer Programming, and say 2 years work experience. Now the funny thing about that is, at least in the state of California where I reside, there is no university in the state that teaches Windows Programming. Java is king here in schools! So what good is that Bachelors?
My feeling is if the cheapen the university degree enough maybe it will fall out of disfavor too, and the real artistry will come back to programming and we can start getting real inventive software again!
Fodder for the naysayers.
https://www.engadget.com/2013/07/19/san-jose-state-university-suspends-udacity-online-course-trials/
p.s. I took one of those classes (not for credit) and thought it was fine.
[…] True, Georgia Tech is offering an online masters in computer science beginning this year, under the innovative model where the courses are free but the awarding of a degree will set you back $7,000. It gives off the same vibe as the corporate MBA degree programs most business schools now offer, UNC included. A good way for someone with an established career to add to their skills, often on their company’s continuing education dime, but not something that replaces the current education model. And needless to say, people are skeptical about its worth. […]
Don’t really have much to comment about whether the “Education system” is broken anywhere in the world(I’m from India, studied in the States and am now back home, and also did the first course in udacity to learn python when it was first launched). It would help to ask the purpose of education – providing an opportunity for people to acquire skills to get a job, is what I would say- The Education System has never been about learning. If learning is the criteria, those who want to learn will learn from these online courses or find another way – a certificate is invariably required to get a job- for every college dropout like gates and jobs who made it big, there will probably be a million of those who never made anything worthwhile- In the end its about getting a degree(or some credentials) and getting a job(not starting a business)- if that changes then the education system will change…
But as far as branding of the educational institution goes these three links are very interesting…
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps_part_2.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/12/product_review_panasonic_pt_ax.html
Speaking of Georgia Tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mRpgGWzDA
This linked in article that popped up today is interesting, and relevant to this discussion:
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130905152238-5048055-disruptive-innovation-vs-harvard-who-will-win
One thing many seem to miss is that this degree will not be different from the traditional Masters. It will offer specializations and will carry the same name on the degree as the traditional program. Their goal is to provide motivated, self-starting students with an opportunity to earn a strong grad degree with little oversight.
Anyone who has been to a traditional school recently can tell you the quality of work varies. My BS was earned online but the MS I am seeking is on-campus. I was disgusted when I saw people earning their BS with me for the first time as many didn’t seem able to speak coherently but it was the only option available to me. Now in my traditional program I see the same people. People on their 2nd year of an MS who don’t understand the basics of object-oriented programming but did just enough to pass.
What it comes down to is how hard the students will work and how hard the university will grade. If the university has a 70% drop rate because the students couldn’t keep up in the online course, GA Tech will keep its prestige. Otherwise, traditional degrees from that university will lose their value as well. In the end the degree gets you in the door but you get what you put into it.
As for hiring, it depends where you are. I know MD, DC, VA and PA are hiring IT. Frederick county is offering $87,000 just to oversee the wireless networks in the county’s schools. The government also posts jobs to those with the connections, often GS or prior military. The pay isn’t always as good as private sector (our techs average $70,000) but the benefits are good.
I have decades of experience in IT and when I see this degree from Georgia Tech I think it’s about time.
First of all on any degree program, what can possibly justify paying 40K a year in tuition? That’s a ripoff right out of the box. College is at its most basic an instructor and a classroom. One benefit I can see right off is this will get colleges to lower their price for their brick and mortar programs because now they actually have to compete. No one has ever been able to explain to me where 40K goes – what is that paying for? Especially now with the infusion of adjunct professors – what the hell?
On to IT – my experience is if the person has talent, they can become easily proficient enough on the job in 6 months or less. This is either programming, project management, system administration, QA or any other specialty that interests them. If you don’t have the talent you will never learn it. Toward that end, almost all of the coursework at most any major university in the US is a total waste of time and most instructors including the general education ones are crummy. My own college experience was good based on about 8 classes the rest was a dead waste of time. That was many years ago, but from what I observe with students who work for me and my company now it’s worse if anything and that seems consistently true no matter what college they graduated from.
Unfortunately, most major companies won’t hire IT pros without the degree. Their loss if companies are smart enough to get and train talent outside of that.
Gosh – 40K for getting TAs and uninterested doctorate researchers as professors. What a deal.
Granted for this MS, it’s 7K instead of free but there’s a Master’s attached to it which is what makes it valuable. I have no doubt the amount of individual attention won’t be worse than what you’d get at the brick and mortar school anyway and the online format is awesome for interaction between students which ought to make this valuable.
So first you bash Georgia Tech over the course of several paragraphs in an almost believably yet-sensationalist manner… Until you brought up the French example of the guy who taught himself how to program. Where’s the quality control in that?
Your predictions are absurd. They only try to hold on to the past. This is the future. Be prepared. I’ll send you a postcard when I finish my online degree.
Schools are, simply, charging ABSURD prices for educations. All the while these institutions waste more money than government institutions…… All the best programmers are always self taught, self-learners.
This affordable degree provides a great opportunity for many motivated professionals.
I just started taking my first course at the GTech online master of science program.
From what I can tell, the program is as hard as the on-campus program.
You have to get a very high GPA to get in, and have to pass 2 core courses with B to stay in the program.
I don’t worry that the academic rigor will be suffering much in that aspect.
What worries me more is that the amount of drop outs and failures will make it not economically feasible for them to continue. (Simply because MSc in CS at GA Tech or any other top 10 graduate CS program in US is hard and not for everyone)
The courses themselves are very high quality, and we get great support from the TAs and Udacity.
p.s. I live in Georgia, and from what I saw a vast majority of the students in the program are from the US.
Just graduated from a local state college in NJ (or at least I will in 3 days) and trying to afford a Masters Degree program is rough. Also not your typical 20 something student. I went back to school after 30 years and finished my ASCS in 27 months. Went on to finish my BSCS also in 27 months all while working full time and putting 2 kids through high dollar degree programs (one at Drexel & one at Embry Riddle). And I can’t say I was taught information that I couldn’t have taught myself online. I don’t see how much different GT offering an MSCS online could be any different then taking the courses locally when most of the state college programs are “Hybrid” courses anyway (you pay the higher costs and sit at home in front of your own computer and besides most of the tests are online anyway). I don’t have a problem with GT offering this and think as long as it is accredited (which I believe it is) I don’t see what the big deal is.
Eran, I should have skipped down to the bottom to start with. I’ll take your word for it and hope to communicate with you online at GT. I think I’m going to go for it. Who say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…
“You don’t maintain quality, nor do you intend to because this is, after all, a program that requires no standardized entrance testing of its applicants. Garbage-in, garbage-out.”
So the author has not been enrolled in this program but he thinks that it’s crap because it only requires 8 additional instructors. Well, the instruction and grading is provided by an interactive web application as you can see it on Udacity. Yes, it can be automated – it’s good that this blog is about technology and not about culinary arts (by the way I do not know nothing about the quality of the program, neither does the author).
Yes there are things that you can’t learn from Manning. All you have to do is apply to a programming job at Amazon, Apple, or Google, and you will have a nice surprise – they will not be asking questions about Spring and Hibernate. Good luck picking up robotics and perception “on the job”.
I have enrolled in an online master’s CS program after having worked as a software developer for 14 years. I was not bored… I learnt 10 times more than what I picked up at work although I had been an open minded programmer with pet projects at home so that I keep up with the pace. The problem with the CS industry are those people who think there is nothing more to be learned.
Peter
I thought an online course would be second rate compared to in-the-classroom type environment. The reason is because I am biased based on my experience. Most everything I have learned….that is the way I learned it, But I have learned many things in forums alone concerning one matter of electronics in which you modify devices to do different things. That was just from a forum that wasn’t through an educational facility but rather a forum environment where you could just read and write posts and pictures. I successfully learned something that was truly technical. I was still biased when I took my first online course going into my Masters of Secondary Education Math.
The class I took was a Master’s level Educational Psychology class. Very interesting. It was different and I had to get use to the different method of instruction, but I can tell you from taking that one class. I don’t knock online courses anymore. I knock institutions. You get out what you put in. Sure one could have skated through the course I took and did little and got a little grade; however, at the Masters level I think it is perfect. At the Master’s level one should be fairly competent at having ways of “finding the answer” if you don’t know it. The class was a lot of research and writing papers, responding to classmates responses (critiquing). It was by FAR the BEST Education class I have taken in all my studies. I learned so much because I had to dig. It wasn’t recycled teacher centered instruction. It was student centered instruction and anyone here knows that has actually been proven to be the best method of teaching. A teacher is there just to answer questions where confusion comes in. The learning is up to the student. The teacher asks questions which guide the student to the correct outcome.
So having taken educational psychology (the psychology of how we learn) and metacognition, then one surely knows that an online course delivered correctly to a student that WANTS to learn can be equally if not more effective as an in-class course. To say taking a course online automatically dumbs down the material/degree is a statement that is not coming from a master instructor but rather an ignorant statement stated by someone who is speaking out of their limited knowledge of how a person learns. I assure you GA Tech would NOT sacrifice their name by allowing a substandard program. They are #3 in the nation in engineering/technology for a reason. This is 2014 and they got rid of blackboards long ago….don’t fall into thinking that blackboards are the only way of learning. Just look at the success of Khan Academy. A student must WANT it…..I have to go do the work. I actually wrote a paper on this stigma of online learning awhile back. All you have to do is look at the numbers and research. Online education works. I would challenge you to research things before stating negative opinions about things you know little about. I don’t suppose you have to do the research. One could hold on to the old ideas and many do. I see teachers still using same methods they used when they came into the field. Everyone has a right to be uneducated, but but you will certainly be left behind in this world of technology. Flip over to Khan Academy and just look around. Perhaps you will see something you are interested in and learn something if you are wiling to be open-minded. http://www.khanacademy.com
Also, If you are trying to do something and you don’t know how…..perhaps trying YouTube. That is what everyone else does. They have a video for everything I believe. Again, times change and what we know about the way people learn has changed. No longer is there a teacher with a stick walking by students in a line and hitting them if they don’t recite the correct answer. Reciting has been found to be the least effective way of learning. I am signing up for the GA Tech program. There are certain things you can’t do without putting your hands on it. Like it would be hard to teach welding online because of obvious reasons. But we are talking about a Computer Information Course……Using a computer to learn about computers. It seems to me this would be the best method. It is surely a hands-on approach. May God bless you and keep you safe. I meant no evil when I said ignorant statement earlier….but meant it as it is defined. One that doesn’t know due to lack of knowledge. I am not calling anyone stupid. Again, I was in the same category not long ago. I have taken a course online that was horrible. It isn’t that I didn’t learn but rather the delivery by the teacher was not conducive to learning. She never moved the class by asking questions to get you to really think/introspect. I am hoping I will have a good experience with the GA Tech course work. I am expecting it to be HARD which is what students that have taken some of the classes are saying…..as expected. It is at the Master’s level. Hope I can keep up!!! The suggestion was to stay ahead and if I am not mistaken GA Tech only allows 2 classes per semester. I may have read that wrong but I have been researching the course work. Again…..God bless you my friend and wish me luck. It is GA Tech and I surely don’t expect it to be easy. I want to learn. I expect to do a lot of reading and coding. I am excited..