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Imperial College London charge £28,000 for their online MSc degree on Coursera
- jppope 7y agoBritish people are funny.
- azinman2 7y agoGuess they want you to take this seriously!
- theriddlr 7y agoMy INTERNATIONAL FEES for my MSc in Bristol was in 2013 only cost £ 17k. This includes lots of face-to-face contact with lecturers who are research leaders in the field. With living expenses the total would only be £ 30k. Inflation makes the total closer to £ 40k today. However, for £ 28k, Europeans can study at Imperial in-person and live (albeit on a budget) in London.
- rvz 7y agoWhat you get: Imperial College branded online MSc degree. What you need: At least a GPA of 3.9 and £28k+. So, One year for a online masters at £28k also requiring a three year BSc degree at £25k of debt sounds like your really getting your money's worth. /s (This is £14k more expensive than a normal masters degree at Imperial)
- sweezyjeezy 7y agoIt's 14k more expensive for a normal degree for UK and EU students. It's cheaper for overseas students (normal price £33k), which presumably who this is aimed at.
- hogFeast 7y agoYou can do this MSc elsewhere for way less than £14k. Is that place Imperial? No. Is that a name brand uni that someone from HR will know? No. But there are lots of good engineering-focused schools in the UK that are known within industry and that charge closer to £7k (and you don't have to live in London). 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).
- sweezyjeezy 7y agoI'm not sure I understand - why is 28k over two years worse than over one year? That's cheaper per year.
- hogFeast 7y agoYep, the point as said in the original comment is that this kind of degree is usually 7k/year. 28k is the absolute max.
- mythrwy 7y ago3.9 GPA sounds pretty restrictive as well for online program. 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-science-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie...
- arcturus17 7y agoWhere does it say GPA of 3.9? All I've found is 2:1 for UK universities and anywhere between 3-3.5 for US. Also they say it won't say it's online.
- rvz 7y agoThey don't need to say it, but because they said the 'minimum' is a 2:1 / 3 GPA it doesn't mean that you will be considered for an interview. If too many people basically applied with the minimum at Imperial, they will just select those with the higher results. 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.
- blakesterz 7y agoThat's about $36,000 US. Honest question... is that crazy expensive? How does it compare to other online and on campus programs? I'm guessing it's HIGH?
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoNova Southeastern University has an online Masters in Cybersecurity and Info Assurance for $27,500 ($2,700 x 10 classes). They consider one class = 10 hours a week. It's the one I'm doing now.
- theriddlr 7y agoThat's the same as international student fees. UK/EU fees are about half that. Salaries in Europe are lower too. £ 28k is around the median household income in the UK or graduate-level salary outside of London. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2019provisional https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
- soneil 7y ago> That's the same as international student fees. 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.
- mettamage 7y agoIn The Netherlands fees are about $12k, so yea. You can do the same thing in Amsterdam, and live here. 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).
- skrebbel 7y ago
- siliconunit 7y agorip off Britain... nothing new
- zerr 7y agoOne thing to note - if you're interested only in pedigree - nobody gives a sh*t about Coursera, Udacity, edX or similar "online" labeled stuff.
- bonoboTP 7y agoAn important quote from the FAQ: > 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.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoWhile I also find it questional, perhaps it will lessen the effect of a degree. In the end, you shouldn't need a degree if you have the skills. Nowadays, it can be hard for self-taught developers to get in the industry, just because they don't have a paper from a famous university.
- bonoboTP 7y ago> In the end, you shouldn't need a degree if you have the skills. A university degree has multiple purposes. As a student, you want to learn stuff and network with fellow students and get a paper. As an employer, you see that the applicant has work ethic, knows the cultural norms, can obey orders, can interact with people in the field etc. And also that they have a fundamental knowledge of the field. However, a university degree in computer science is not and should not be expected to be a developer training course. It's very feasible to become a developer in a self-taught way and work productively in industry, building websites, CRUD apps, mobile apps etc. No need for a degree here. It's much less feasible to self-teach computer science and math and so on. A university program will force you to do it even when it's not pleasurable. But it won't teach you practical web design skills etc. because that isn't its purpose. What we have today is definitely a bad arrangement. Many students study a field they are ultimately aren't interested in and won't use, just to fulfill employers' requirements.
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- faizshah 7y agoOne of the important parts of learning at a university is meeting fellow students, exchanging ideas, and building relationships. It seems for 36k USD you’re really overpaying for losing this face to face time with other students, imo video calls just aren’t the same.
- MattPalmer1086 7y agoI did an MSc online distance learning back in 2003 from Royal Holloway. I built a lot of useful relationships and had great conversations with my fellow online students. 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...
- ticmasta 7y agoAlso of note - this appears to be the UK-style of master's vs. the typical path a lot of us may be more familiar with, in the sense of very strong undergrads complete a 4th year and earn a Master's vs. finish an undergrad and then spend 2+ years (1 year classes, 1 year lab/thesis) as an in-betweener before Doctoral programs. 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.
- spzb 7y agoUniversity education in the UK has become increasingly commercialised and increasingly expensive. Undergraduate tuition fees are over £9k a year (it was zero when I went to university 20 years ago). Those fees are capped by government but universities are free to charge what they like to overseas students so they are rather treated as cash cows.
- iso1824 7y ago> Undergraduate tuition fees are over £9k a year (it was zero when I went to university 20 years ago). 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.
- shawabawa3 7y agoStudent fees were introduced september 1998, or just over 21 years ago Technically they're wrong but it's a very minor change to their point
- iso1824 7y agoNot really, they were still £4000, its just that the government paid the full amount rather than 75% (20 years ago)
- spzb 7y agoOK, I was rounding. It was closer to 25 years ago but I try not to think about how old I am.
- RomanBob 7y agoUniversity is just an overpriced IQ test anyway. 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.
- gmac 7y agoYou're effectively claiming that university teaches nothing, but good degrees teach independence, critical thinking (analysis, synthesis), research skills, writing, teamworking, presentation skills, and much more. Added to that, your final grade indicates ability x effort. This is significantly more useful than a narrow measure of ability alone.
- nicoburns 7y ago> good degrees teach independence, critical thinking (analysis, synthesis), research skills, writing, teamworking, presentation skills, and much more. 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.
- learc83 7y agoMy middle of the road state school CS program was nothing like that. I can remember exactly 1 CS class where memorizing the text book was remotely useful.
- rchaud 7y agoI was an Econ major in college, which is one of the most popular majors across all schools in the US. I don't remember even having a textbook beyond the first couple of statistics courses. We were only ever graded on problem sets or term papers with some kind of statistical analysis component. That said, my American Economic History course was easily one of the most eye-opening learning experiences, and absolutely one of those courses where "I understood the reading" was necessary. It greatly expanded by ability to understand why the economic story played out the way it did, and how much of it was based on the societal and political context of the times, and not on the findings of bean counters doing stat analyses.
- rwmj 7y agoThe "offline" course prices are here. It seems like the roughly equivalent MSc degree offline would be £15.5K for home and EU students and £33,250 for overseas students. You would have to add to that living expenses which are considerable in London (perhaps another £20K) https://www.imperial.ac.uk/students/fees-and-funding/tuition-fees/postgraduate-tuition-fees/2020-21/taught-postgraduate-programmes/faculty-of-engineering/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/students/fees-and-funding/tuition... 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.
- jdkee 7y agoShamefully the Univ. of Illinois charges $21k for an online master of CompSci. https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-program/online-master-computer-science https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-...
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