It seems very expensive for 2-yrs of part-time, online work. I did a MSc in Canada part time and it took me almost three years of year-round effort, completing the course requirements 2 or 3 per semester (which is more than 1/2 time). Because I was P/T I paid full tuition but it was still less than $5K/yr. F/T grad students were almost all on scholarship or covered tuition via RA pr TA duties.
IMO, if you want more than the credentials on your resume this would be an expensive and disappointing grad school experience and of limited value.
Our lecturers said we were far more social than the campus students, who just went to lectures, the library, or home. Probably because we were all sitting on our own in front of a computer, so actively tried to counteract the loneliness of it...
> Will my diploma state that I was in an online programme?
> No, your diploma will not state that this is an online degree.
Personally, I find this practice quite questionable and deceptive.
With this program, also Georgia Tech's MSCS program, you get the exact same classes, tests, and degree as students attending in person.
I know Imperial College is a well-regarded and selective institution, but I think the point still stands.
This is different from audacity etc where the courses are essentially from udacity.
I only learned this bc my gf worked for Coursera: I don’t know if that’s because they have some deliberate marketing strategy or just because I didn’t pay attention. As she doesn’t work there any more, I can say it makes me uncomfortable. But to be honest: in the long run why should the online experience inherently be worse?
It could be just chauvinism on my part but I feel my university education could not have been as good had it not been F2F
I did an MSc in Computer Science at Imperial (long before online courses existed) and it was by far the hardest academic thing I have ever done. Imperial is academically excellent, and likely the best university for science subjects in the UK and perhaps top 5 in the world. Having said that I'm sure much of the value is from being there with other students and teachers, and I don't know how much of that you're getting from an online course.
However, for £ 28k, Europeans can study at Imperial in-person and live (albeit on a budget) in London.
What you get:
Imperial College branded online MSc degree.
What you need:
At least a GPA of 3.9 and £28k+.
(This is £14k more expensive than a normal masters degree at Imperial)
On the safe side, I intentionally said '3.9' GPA / high 1st because it totally beats their requirement of a 2:1 which the competition will try to match. If anyone is seriously considering this university, they should instead get a 3.9 GPA, not a 3 or 2:1.
University of Colorado has an interesting approach to this for Data Science MSc. A series of placement tests rather than GPA.
https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie...
EDIT: just saw is £28k over two years, the absolute most expensive courses in the UK are £28k over ONE year. This is crazy (Imperial is known for this kind of money grubbing).
That's wrong.
In 2000 the fees that the UK student had to pay was £1000 a year (£1700 in today's currency), and the government paid about £3000 - a total of £4000, or £6800 in today's money.
Students had to pay this upfront to study. In 2006 these upfront fees were dropped.
Technically they're wrong but it's a very minor change to their point
https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-...
We want to delude ourselves that everybody has the capability to be a doctor, programmer, engineer, successful business owner etc. We ban employees from using IQ tests, when SAT scores correlate strongly with IQ. Then the best companies hire from the best universities where the best students with the highest SAT go i.e. they just hire the highest IQ people in each year slot.
To fund this delusion we would then have to make university available to everybody, as if a degree is in a vacuum a token of value and not the fact that a degree is relatively scarce. A degree when everybody has one isn't worth as much as when only 50% of people have one.
And of course the law of supply/demand makes degrees more expensive when everybody has one, but makes the degrees less useful economically when everybody has one. Double-dipped.
Only from the point of view of employment market, and only when job skills and university material are widely disparate. (But universities do have a role beyond the employment market.)
> To fund this delusion we would then have to make university available to everybody,
Do you mean university admission or university degrees? In many European countries admission is unlimited. For example several German computer science programs are open to anyone for free, with no SAT-like test requirement to get admitted. Whether you'll pass your exams is a different question.
And arguably if it's all about IQ testing, it should be for free, so you filter for high IQ instead of for kids of wealthy parents.
Added to that, your final grade indicates ability x effort. This is significantly more useful than a narrow measure of ability alone.
Sadly there aren't a lot of those. Most degrees teach regurgitating what a textbook says in a fancy way that means you pass the "I understood it" test.
Apart from the obvious debt. The other Cons? loss of networking opportunities, $14k more expensive, small risk of inferiority to a normal degree. But I guess for some with deep pockets, if the University isn't ranked highly in the world or 'Ivy League' or 'Golden Triangle' then for that price? It is not even worth considering.
It's still one of the reasons why I'm dreaming of starting up a coding school at Dutch prices and market it to US citizens.
If anyone is interested in starting this with me, let me know! I'm Dutch, if you're American and know the market, we might make an interesting team. I taught at the New York Code + Design Academy as a bootcamp instructor in Amsterdam before (some US citizens came here because it was cheaper).
Maybe this reflects that most employers really have no idea what they are doing and how to evaluate whether a degree from somewhere else is worth the same (afaik, Imperial just teach the same stuff as everyone else).
I'd assume that's who it's aimed at - GCN/SEA. All of the prestige for all of the cost, with zero the movement.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign also offers an Online Master of Computer Science. This one costs $21,440. [2]
I haven't gone through either program so I can't personally vouch for quality. However, as an outside observer, GA Tech in particular seems to be high relative to the dollar cost.
If you wish to earn an online degree in computer science for credentialing purposes, the 'prestige' conferred by Imperial seems to be much more expensive, relatively, than that earned from GATech or UIUC. [3]
[1] http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/
[2] https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-...
[3] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/co...
Re: #3: The order of these rankings seems incorrect to me but they should provide directional guidance. TL;DR: GATech #17, Imperial #36, UIUC #57.
USA rankings are: UIUC #5, GATech #8 -- see here: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch....