http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Jose-State-suspends-o...
As a bonus the money taken from groups that don't complete the course could be distributed to the groups that did so you could actually make money from taking courses.
Anyone interested in working on this??
* There would be exceptions for illness, etc.
I've taken many online courses, and I've always felt as if I could have just researched things on my own and bought a book or two. I have yet to take an online course that I felt was worth my money. All of them consisted of: Buy these books, read this material, answer these questions. Well I can do that on my own for free thank you.
Note: GREAT employers won't care whether you learned material on your own, or in an accredited degree program. Merely Good employers can be forgiven for thinking there's a difference. HR personnel who often get to screen resumes simply cannot be expected to understand that someone with a Masters is not inherently any more qualified than someone without a Masters.
So, the question becomes, does an Online Masters add $6,000 or more to your lifetime earning potential?
This sort of thing, if it produces quality people, lowers the education bar and that's never a bad thing.
This is cheap enough that I could easy see tech companies offering to subsidize this degree as a perk for their employees, assuming the employee gets accepted to the program.
There's quite a barrier to a student with an existing undergraduate degree wanting to expand into a masters in a different field, particularly technical fields like engineering or computer science.
mooc's like Georgia Tech's offer a middle-of-the-road option between a tradition masters w/ placement testing (or a whole second bachelor for some) and professionally 'doing without' any accredited education and relying solely on chops and applied experience. I think there is a clear hole in the educational market for these 'transitional' services, and online courses seem to fill it well.
The real questions (VikingCoder stated above) are: to what degree does that $6600 certificate raise your earning potential?
AND
how effective, in contrast to traditional degrees or self-directed studies, are these online courses at educating people to professionally acceptable standards?
I don't see MOOCs as offering anything in particular that would make it easier to lift that kind of requiement. Large courses (whether in person or online) rely on incoming students coming from a standardized background, to allow the courses to assume a lot of things and minimize tailoring to individual students' varying needs. And MOOCs by their structure rely on instruction in (very) large courses.
You are allowed to take the California bar with an on-line law degree, but that's unusual.
Obviously, the law schools have a huge incentive to prevent this from happening, and they hold an ace card that traditional MS degrees don't have - it is flat out illegal (illegal as in you can be put in prison) to practice law unless you do the education exactly as specified by the law schools.
Computer Science departments may confer a useful degree and body of knowledge, but there's no professional association that can deny (under threat of fines and imprisonment) people without an MS in CS from writing code.
I think the focus on legal education should not be getting online right now, but to change the JD to a 2 year degree, or start offering LLM's or something equivalent without the need for a JD and allow people to practice with those degrees. I've heard many law professors talk about how the final year of law school is pointless. Unfortunately, making a JD take 3 years is like Alka-seltzer coming up with the ad where they put in 2 tablets instead of one -- they're making money off it because people think it's needed.
Law schools are over priced, but they're also producing more than enough lawyers, so I don't really see accessbility as a bottleneck that needs to be solved, which is what most of the MOOCs are solving. Price is an issue that needs to be solved, but given the self perpetuating old boys network that is the legal profession any changes need to come through slow reforms, not major disruption.
Finally, firms & government agencies aren't going to hire people with online degrees even if they are admitted. School's name recognition carries more weight than it should (in my opinion) in this profession. It will be extremely hard for grads to gain the skills and prove themselves when they're not able to plug into existing networks after taking an online degree.
I read an interesting article about on-line law schools a while back.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3078930/ns/technology_and_science-...
I'm not as concerned about the employability for a few reasons: 1) many of these students appear to be "non-traditional students who bring extremely interesting and rare skills, and 2) online degrees, taken while working full time, will leave students with relatively low debt levels, 3) many of these students are enhancing existing skill sets rather than trying to break into law as a zero-experience associate.
I do agree that people with online law degrees would be at a very severe disadvantage in the job market if they're just the standard "history major with law degree" looking for a job with a firm or other entry level law job. If that's the case, I'd agree that they might want to avoid an online degree (honestly, you might want to consider avoiding law school altogether from what I've read lately).
But think about some of these students here... one case is particularly interesting - an earthquake engineer who (according to the article) "will take over as in-house counsel at his engineering firm, and he figures he will be among the first to understand both the mathematics and the law surrounding earthquakes." This guy has nothing to do with "entry level" law jobs. He's very unique, and it sounds like he almost certainly would never have gotten this legal training without an on-line option. Does it really make sense to deny someone like this entry to the bar, because we already have "enough" 24 year old history majors with no work experience who have decided to go $150K+ in debt to get a traditional law degree?
Self-taught computer scientists should also note:
Formal admission into the OMS CS program will require a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from an accredited institution, or a related Bachelor of Science degree with a possible need to take and pass remedial courses
Just wanted to chime with a few other interesting online degree programs, particular helpful for :
1. Post-Bac Computer Science B.S. Program from Oregon State. Takes 1-3 years to complete: http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate/...
$450/credit x 60 credits = $27K
2. Stony Brook University Electrical Engineering Online: http://beeol.ee.sunysb.edu/index.shtml
If Pre-reqs met, ($245/credit in-state / $742/credit out-of-state) x 41 credits = $10-30K
My story: 31, attending a decent PA state school getting a 2nd (and maybe 3rd) BS in Physics and CS, in-state full tuition < $9k/year. Went to a more expensive school in Philadelphia for my first Bachelors in Information Systems. Moved back to PA from Bay Area, had Data Analyst-type skills, applied to Startup School and got denied (naturally), but didn't have strong programming experience to get in a startup. Hope to return to the Bay, only prepared this time.
Yeah, I could've spent years self-teaching everything I needed to know, but found it helpful to go through a formal academic program to save time. However, I'm also supplementing my learning through Codecademy and MIT OCW.
But we definitely need more rigorous and legitimate online programs because so many people want to go back to school but can't because of family/work obligations, and the popularized online degree programs are degree mills at best.
Subjects such as CS and EE can be taught well online, but to teach Lab Sciences online would be impossible, unless simulations would be considered a substitute for actual Lab work. Medical School's another impossibility.
But if I knew about these online programs beforehand, I would've strongly considered it before quitting my job and being a full-time student.
Today, the biggest threat to Higher-ed is the movement towards open courseware, largely spearheaded by MIT (see here: http://bit.ly/9GawDQ). However, open courseware cannot be a threat to large institutions as long as hiring is based on a paper degree rather than the amount of acquired knowledge and specialized skill one has attained.
I believe these online degrees are a rather expensive way to solve this problem.
