14 ms·

The $6,600 Master's Degree.

67 points by schlecht 13y ago

jfaucett 13y ago
this is huge. I've been saying (as well as probably most other coders), that education should go in this direction. It just seems obvious. I even did a Bachelors paper on this subject (in combination with FOSS) and studied the amount of savings it would lead to if implemented for high school education. Additionally, I graduated with a BA in 2011 and the entire process felt archaic to me, filled with wasted time, and more importantly costing lots of my hard-earned money. The only way I was able to get the degree was with help of family and by taking CLEP tests for over 70 hours. (rougly equivalent to 23 courses), the CLEP tests only costed in total around $500, and allowed me to skip 2 years of study. (so if anyone hasnt heard of CLEP and is low on funds and wants to get a degree I would highly recommend them :) I'm definately going to look into this in more detail though, getting a Masters would be nice and if all it costed was $6,600 for the 2 years (and study was remote) I think i'd be able to manage it as a full-time developer with a family.
spoon17 13y ago
home truth
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I'm in favor of furthering online education, moocs, educational content in general and even certification programs along these lines. But I also have to ask: If this degree costs 20% of a traditional Master's education, is it even worth 20% as much? The degree clearly states "Online Master". We might see a value developing here, but there is an equal chance that the early students get ripped off big time. They might learn a lot, but are they really getting their money's worth in additional skill marketability?
- marquis 13y ago
  While I agree, in that attending college is in part the social experience in interacting with peers, one-on-one time with lecturers/TAs and lab work, this is a step forward to allowing anyone who wants to learn have that opportunity, and use the technology we have to improve on that technology so future-learning just gets better and better. Tiny steps. An enterprising person may well setup a facilitator experience, where students gather to watch online lectures and do group labs, at a fraction of the cost (plus not having to pay board away from home) and having the best materials to work with.
  - zanny 13y ago
    This hits on what I think is key to breaking out of the borked education system. You need to put like minded learners together with bountiful educational texts and resources to solve the problems both independently and together. It is less about stuffing random facts in the brain than developing group oriented problem solving skills in a specialized discipline.
- oblique63 13y ago
  The fact that this: > They might learn a lot does not imply this: > "additional skill marketability" really troubles me, but in this case you're unfortunately right. I should note that I'm ignoring the instance of "might" here because I've encountered many 'traditional' masters students that haven't exactly "mastered" their material by the end of their studies either, so I'm assuming the differences in this aspect will be negligible. Either way, the traditional application process students have to go through is largely what bases the perceived weight of degree, so this course still keeping that 'metric' in-tact should help with its 'marketability'. However this program will still face an uphill battle regardless, simply because its biggest problem is it being 'non-traditional'; which is unfortunate.
- pnathan 13y ago
  I would personally not consider an "online" masters as worth more than a certification. Taking classes ain't the point of grad school.
jacques_chester 13y ago
As an Australian gazing across the pond, it's weird to see what the fuss is about. My alma mater (UWA) has a Master of Professional Engineering degree which I can complete for $15k AUD (and since they guarantee entry to their BCompSci grads, I'm considering it). Sydney Uni have a Master of Project Management that I costed at 20k AUD (edit: I was quite wrong, it's closer to 45k). And the FEE-HELP program means that, if I chose, I could do it without paying up front. Public higher education is a mess in many ways. But sometimes, boy, I really do live in the lucky country.
- insertdisktwo 13y ago
  You have to keep in mind that Georgia Tech is one of the best engineering schools in the U.S. (disclosure: I am not in any way related to this institution) and consequently worldwide. $15K AUD is very close to ~$14.5K USD. This is less than half of that.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I'm really comparing it to the 50, 100, 200k figures I see bandied about. The order of magnitude.
h1fra 13y ago
In Europe school actually cost this much (average), with campus and classroom. Maybe, the question is asked the wrong way in this article. Why does education cost student 50000$ a year in US?
- gambiting 13y ago
  I was going to say the same thing. I come from a country where Higher Education is free(yes yes I know - paid for by the taxpayer), but I have personally studied in the UK paying 3450 pounds a year (~5300 USD) in one of the best universities in that country. Yes I know it went up now to 9000 pounds(~13600 USD) but still, it's a lot less than what they charge for education in the US, which I don't understand.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    What is the total cost of education in your country? I.e., amount paid by student + amount paid by govt? I suspect the answer will be similar to the US, but scaled down a bit since high skill labor is much cheaper in Europe.
    - gambiting 13y ago
      In my country it's 0 cost for the student. Apparently the average cost the government pays per year per student is around ~3000 USD. Medical students cost our government ~7000 USD per year. And as far as I know, professors are still very well paid, so I still fail to see why would the education in the US cost so much money.
  - codeonfire 13y ago
    There are no answers to the difference in tuition prices that don't lead to uncomfortable social comparisons of two countries. It depends on if you believe education markets are efficient or not, meaning the true value will be reflected in the price. Two things that would make a degree worth less are limited access to education and limited social mobility for degree holders. Free also does not mean unlimited access.
don_draper 13y ago
I got my Master's education much cheaper from Oreilly U @ oreilly.com
waps 13y ago
Well in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757226 a lost of posters were arguing how brain work could never be replaced, nor could technology be used to lower the need for highly-educated creative professionals. Professor/teacher is pretty much the quintessential example of highly-educated brain work, isn't it ? > He estimated the school would have to hire one full-time teacher for every 100 online students as opposed to one full-time teacher for every 10 or 20 students who study on campus. Also from the article: > Looking back on it now, this experience had far more in common with the Middle Ages than the world of 2013. What's the difference between watching a lecture in an auditorium and watching HD-quality video in one's living room or beach cabana? This is the situation that was hit at the end of the Roman Empire, the beginning of what would later turn into the dark-ages. Plenty of highly educated people, ever more and more, and ... no reason to have them. No reason to have all that many farmers either. This was a result of using iron-age technology to it's fullest potential. You should see some Roman surgery tools, they're amazing. They're much more specialized than "our" surgery tools. Surgeons today have 10 kinds of knives, syringes, stitches, compresses, all very general tools. Roman surgeons had hundres of tools, each a weird metal thingamabob specifically built for one singular procedure. We use special tools today in some cases, but mostly very general tools like 5 sizes of the same gripper, tweezers, ... that sort of thing. They used iron to it's fullest potential, and we use computers, but the end result is the same : massive population numbers, yet the economy only justifies ~1% to maybe 5% of the population, with most of even that employed in either the government itself or the military. At some point, even slaves become a losing proposition (better to give those precious jobs to family, and keep in mind that Roman slaves had rights, and were more akin to someone holding a job. I'm not saying slaves in the Roman empire had rights comparable to Americans (they lacked voting, for example), but they certainly couldn't be killed randomly or on a whim). No goods shortages, quite the opposite : almost universal abundance (not for expensive goods, but things like food, clothing, furniture, cutlery, apartments, ... no shortages). Not that anyone was happy with just having what everyone else had, no matter how comfortable it actually was (it evolved - for the better, for almost a century). Unemployment numbers hit ridiculously high proportions and never went back down (like in the poor centers of Euro cities now, 80-90% unemployment in areas the size of towns), and ever more of the famed Roman armies were dedicated purely to keeping order in cities. Enemies, ideological ones and physical ones, which had no hope whatsoever of surviving a single confrontation with a single centuria (the unit a centurion commanded) became able to do large amounts of damage due to help from dissatisfied locals, and the situation just systematically kept getting worse. So realistically this is just another indication that the middle ages will come back. Expect atheism, or realism in general, to lose a lot of it's appeal, because it's only message to 99% of the population will be what it was just before the dark ages : The only useful thing you could realistically do for others is to die, right now.
tseabrooks 13y ago
Maybe this depends greatly on the particular discipline you're in. In the US it's not that difficult to get your Master's degree in C.S. for free + monthly stipend, at least in my experience. I know a number of people across the natural science disciplines who TA'd / RA'd their way through Grad School. I might be misunderstanding how common this is but it seems any discussion of Grad School cost should discuss the fact that natural science students will often get paid to go to Grad School in the US.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  My understanding is that this is only true if you are on the PhD track. Natural science departments subsidize the master's students with the expectation that most will labor for the professors for 3-5 years as part of their PhD research. The TAing does not actually cover the costs.
- insertdisktwo 13y ago
  Please let me know if this applies in the case outside of being a PhD student. The US educational system has a tradition of issuing a Masters as a consolation price to PhD dropouts who've done enough of the coursework/research. Bona-fide Masters programs with scholarships/stipends are very hard to find. If there's counterexamples I would like to know about them. From my experience, these are very rare.
  - tseabrooks 13y ago
    Thats a good point. Most of the folks I'm talking about were in my PhD cohort and we all decided the PhD wasn't for us (My PhD program left a very bad taste in my mouth towards higher ed). I've known a few Masters students who got stipends but the majority were PhD students.
  - josephhardin 13y ago
    My (Terminal at that institution) masters was paid for completely, as well as being paid a salary. In STEM fields I'm not sure I know anyone who didn't have their MS paid for. Sure, some professors will push you to get a Ph.D. but you always have the option of just writing your thesis and finishing.
timedoctor 13y ago
This is just the beginning. I can see a future where top ranked universities offer online degrees at a small fraction of the current prices. In fact I think the pricing will be separated out so that the lectures are 100% free and you pay for examinations or for tutoring or for small group mentoring with professors. The logical conclusion is mega-universities that teach to millions of people in multiple countries around the world and out-compete existing universities leading to a large percentage of current universities being shut down or used only for courses where in-person training is necessary (for example medicine, some engineering courses etc).
jval 13y ago
This is completely right. Most of the commenters here keep thinking about it from the perspective of people in countries that already have great access to education, but disruption begins with people who don't already have access to a product or are struggling to afford the existing alternatives. In the case of education, these people are most likely to reside in the developing world - there are billions of people in places like the BRIC nations for whom $6,600 is a really reasonable price to access education over the internet without having to leave their current homes, families and commitments. Not only that, they get to put Georgia Tech on their resume and apply for jobs domestically and overseas (especially in the US) where people will recognise their qualifications, even if they have an online masters and not a masters. The scale of something like this is difficult to fathom - we are talking many times the population of the US and Europe combined who could benefit from something like this. This is why we are witnessing something truly revolutionary.
- mtgx 13y ago
  I agree with your general theory, but I don't think $6,600 is "reasonable" for a college degree in BRIC nations. I think even in the more developed countries in Europe that's at the high-end of what it costs to get one. It only seems reasonable for an American, who usually pays what - $100,000-$200,000? $2,000 is what I'd call "reasonable", although if we're really thinking about truly revolutionizing education for the other 3+ billion people, it needs to go even cheaper than that. Everyone should get access to the same level of quality education, and their financial situation should not be a major impediment.
  - anonymouz 13y ago
    Speaking as someone living in a country with no to low tuition, when I read the the title of the submission my reaction was "$6,600, wow that's expensive", while probably the opposite was intended.
  - insertdisktwo 13y ago
    Keep in mind that it is $6,600 for a graduate (post-Bachelors) degree, not a college degree. In the U.S. a Bachelors degree lasts 8-9 semesters and equips you for work far better than the 3-year Bologna "equivalent." The Masters degree thus can focus almost exclusively on the graduate-level courses, with the exception of some refreshers. You have to compare the $6,600 to the cost of living in the United States. U.S. census Bureau's poverty threshold is $11,500/year income. In this income-level very little goes to taxes. So this program is roughly 7 months of minimum wage in the US. That is very affordable for an advanced degree.
Ihmahr 13y ago
I live in the netherlands and here you couldn't even pay more than $6.600 for a masters degree.
- insertdisktwo 13y ago
  If you look up the prices for non-EU citizens you will see some places are prohibitively expensive, even in Netherlands. In most places you have to have at least 10k EUR (13k USD) on your bank account for each year of the program, on top of the tuition fees.
pbw 13y ago
A rich modern society will spend most of its money on two things: education and health-care. The appetite for education will increase so quickly that in-person degree programs will continue to do okay as premium offerings even as online degrees flourish. Long term online will "win" but it will take decades. Look at how few 100% telecommute there really are. Yes the trend is there but the actual transition is slow, consider the rush hour traffic in any big city.
p4bl0 13y ago
As a French person my first reaction to the title was "that's awfully expensive!". Then I thought about the US education system and thought "Oh, the title must actually imply that it's cheap…". I still had to go read the article to make sure. And then I learned that it's actually an online master. So my (second) first reaction was that it's cool to be able to get a master's degree from a top university from almost anywhere in the world, but then I realized that the people who would benefit the most from this are in developing countries and $6,600 is already way, way, way too much there (and that's not taking into account the fact that these courses are video-driven and that available internet broadband might also be a problem). So I guess that's not really who it is intended for, which implies that it is a "second class" degree for US student. Not sure how I should feel about this.
- aethertap 13y ago
  It's not necessarily as bad a picture as it seems from outside - I have a Master's degree in Computer science that I'd estimate cost me about $8000 (just for the MS part, the BS before that was mostly free due to scholarships). I didn't go to a prestigious university, but I do think I ended up with a good education. At least in my case, the fact that my university is mostly unknown has proven pretty much irrelevant in terms of getting a job, so I don't feel that I was disadvantaged by not getting my degree from a place like MIT.
- insertdisktwo 13y ago
  re: Second-class degree Geogia Tech's engineering program ranks extremely high in the U.S. and the United States' academic institutions rank extremely high on various world-wide charts. Having spent a long time on the inside track of the Silicon Valley hiring processes, I can vouch that getting a degree from a prestigious institution really does fast-track your interview, at least when it comes to the screening or pre-screening phase. $6,600 will at the current engineering salaries be at most a month and a half of your future net salary in the USA, or about 4-5 months worth of rent in San Francisco, so it is overall a very small forward investment to make if you live in the US. I doubt the degree will be treated as "second class," this will occur only if the words get out that the program is somehow easier to finish and I strongly doubt that. If anything, without in-person TA-ing and live peer interaction, it will be harder to complete some of the courses. re: Cost of graduate-level education in the USA I understand that EU-citizens get free Masters' education. This is somewhat a side-effect of the EU-wide Bologna process, which promoted everyone's Bachelors degree into a Masters by adding a year's worth more of education and introducing a credit-system. If you are a non-EU citizen trying to get a degree in the EU, you will be paying much more than $6600 in many countries, including the socialist-leaning Scandinavia. Any US citizen can give FAFSA a try and (from memory) more than half of the undergraduate student body receives some form of financial aid from the government. There are reputable sources that say that paradoxically the generous FAFSA grants are partially responsible for a tuition inflation, but this debate is completely off-topic.
anxx 13y ago
With the internet, most education is free. When we pay education, we mainly pay for 1) exclusivity (there are not a million other people attending Harvard) and 2) standards (standard exams within an accredited curriculum, so the GPA and major will mean something). Increasing the amount of online education preserves the standards, but removes / broadens the exclusivity. I am not sure this is a great thing for people from Georgia Tech; they now have to compete with a lot more people for similar jobs. An online education with tough admissions would be better if one tries to preserve the brand (and thus provide insurance* to the program trainees). * by insurance, I refer to insurance of employability, like Peter Thiel described in his PandoMonthly interview.
alan_cx 13y ago
Has no one out side of the UK heard of The Open University? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University
- Surio 13y ago
  Ha ha, had to chuckle at that one. It's one of UK's "best kept" secrets, I suppose ;) . The course materials are bloody fantastic, and in terms of value of money, spot on :)
rhoua 13y ago
I live in a country where I know the language well to laugh with drunks in a bar, but not well enough to get a masters. If one could get a college education from a distance in a language I know well, that would be amazing.
ghshephard 13y ago
Just to put this in comparison - I recently took a two-week networking course (in the United States) for $7300. While this was in-person, with labs/instruction from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM every day, and the class was limited to twelve students, it does put things into perspective. The real cost, as always, in getting a degree is the students time. Someone capable of getting a Masters degree, can, without too much effort, make $100K/year pretty quickly (If income is what they are interested in). This is why education is normally inexpensive in other countries - students are having to forego all that income, so it's in the interest of the country, to encourage their populace to become educated - so they subsidize. I think part of the reason why Education is so expensive in the United States, is they have a fairly regressive tax system, with poor social systems (in comparison to other first world countries). Health Care is expensive, Education is expensive. It's a very difficult country to be poor in. I'd love it if the $6,600 Master Degree started a disruptive trend.
- johnbellone 13y ago
  I have been contemplating between getting an MBA or a PhD in software engineering (because I want to teach) for the past few years. For the latter it would be strictly because I want to create something, be innovative, and give back to my industry. The former - you're really paying for the connections - and possibly a few lessons on economics that have grown dry in your head. I am justifying the price tag on a two year (night) MBA because I feel like I am getting into that "club" that most of the bigwigs are in. Am I wrong?
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    The variables obviously are Where are you getting the MBA (Ivy League MBAs, even evening ones, have more value), what is the price tag - there is a big difference between a $50K MBA and $200K MBA, and what field you'll be going into. MBA has very little (some might almost say negative) value in Silicon Valley startup world, but obviously more value in mature companies, or companies that are transitioning from startup->mature (possible exception being the CEO, VP of BizDev/Marketing and possibly VP of Product Management). MBAs have close to zero value for people who wish to be simultaneously tactical and technical. I've never seen a network engineer, or firmware developer get any value out of their MBA. It's really for people who are either going to go into the business side of a company, and/or go into management. Also - it's important to note if you'll have to quit working while you are getting your MBA - that makes the credential doubly expensive.
glurgh 13y ago
Looking back on it now, this experience had far more in common with the Middle Ages than the world of 2013. What's the difference between watching a lecture in an auditorium and watching HD-quality video in one's living room or beach cabana? There's no difference at all but for any even mildly ambitious undergrad in a STEM field, physically attending a research university is an opportunity to get involved, however peripherally, in such research. For someone pursuing a graduate degree this seems more like a requirement rather than a serving suggestion. Georgia Tech is not a respected engineering school just because it does a decent job of fielding 500-person classes.
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  > There's no difference at all but for any even mildly ambitious undergrad in a STEM field, physically attending a research university is an opportunity to get involved, however peripherally, in such research. This is precisely the point. Our undergraduates go mostly up to Med School, and having a reaearch paper published is almost a requirement to get into any decent medical program. Also, in an online course the interaction between is of a wholly different kind that a traditional brick-and mortar university. The social network that you build while at uni is part of why you go there in the first place.
nicholassmith 13y ago
There's always going to be a place for University's to exist, there's certain amounts of skills that require a practical experience that they can provide, but for most courses shifting it online makes more sense. The costs are lower, it's easier to manage, it encourages more people to gain a formal education and hopefully strengthen their careers. It's going to be interesting seeing which ones will offer an actual bit of paper at the end that says 'I'm educated in X by Y' and how much it's going to cost. $7k for a degree from a prestigious school is going to be a popular option, so whilst they lose the high amount per student, they gain it back in larger student numbers.
inselkampf 13y ago
Before they wiped out college tuitions costs back in Ireland in 1996 the cost of doing a an excellent CS degree in UCC (http://ucc.ie http://ucc.ie) was about 2000 Irish pounds (about $2800 at the time) a year for 4 years. If you were wanted to do medicine it was a whopping $5000 or so a year over about 5 years. There were lesser hidden costs (200 for a registration fee kind of thing) but thats about it. We considered that outlandish at the time. The costs of the US education system baffle me on a daily basis. However I don't see online courses as the way to go. Most people don't complete them.
blazespin 13y ago
I think we need to have some A|B testing around this. While I am a huge believer in this, my little finger tells me that Online students will perform worse when it comes to exam time. There is an energy to synchronous group learning you can't duplicate via websites. I remember when I was in college and university, a bunch of us bonded a bit and got pretty competitive (in a friendly way) when it came to our grades and test results. If you developed a good relationship with your prof, they would often have high expectations of you and you didn't want to let them down. These emotional connections can be pretty inspiring to kids ages 18-22. If they want to be competitive with campus students, they need to either duplicate these emotions online (via virtual worlds?) or perhaps increase the workload and adjust the bell curve so students fail out quickly unless they take it very seriously.
- chasing 13y ago
  This. (Except for the virtual worlds stuff.) If what they're selling is online videos and someone to check your homework, $3,300/yr sounds kind of expensive.
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
I opted out of college. Sometimes it bums me out though, because I feel like by learning on the job, I reached the 10 thousand hour mark too early. And it's annoying, I have this savings account of thousands of dollars, and it's like, what am I supposed to do with it? If I had went to college, I'd have been in debt from the get go, so it would be more motivating to pay off like $100k of student loans. This $6,600 college course sounds like a scam. How are you going to be motivated to pay off loans, if there are none? At least it's better than getting paid to learn.
ck2 13y ago
Wouldn't a responsible government try to provide this to all high school graduates as a fallback minimum? If bought by the millions the cost should be a fraction? Would never fly in the US because we do not invest in the future anymore unless it's for corporate profit.
kozikow 13y ago
Does anyone know if this degree will count as masters in front of USA immigration department? The only reason I see for getting the masters degree is getting into the EB2 bracket for green card.
andrewljohnson 13y ago
The author doesn't mention a lot of journalists will be replaced by robots too. He thinks the Internet was a great tidal wave for the profession... Just wait for the next auto summarization breakthroughs.
chasing 13y ago
The first quote doesn't appear in the article Berman links to. And I can't find a reference to $6,600 anywhere else except in that non-existent quote. Am I missing something? Did Berman pull that number out of thin air? Where did he get it? --- Edit- Here [http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/faq/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/faq/] they write: "We’re not yet ready to announce a specific program cost, but the plan is to offer the Georgia Tech OMS CS for a total cost of under $7,000—a fraction of the cost of Georgia Tech’s on-campus program and even less than that of comparable private universities." That FAQ has a lot more meat than the LinkedIn article...

67 points by schlecht 13y ago

this is huge. I've been saying (as well as probably most other coders), that education should go in this direction. It just seems obvious. I even did a Bachelors paper on this subject (in combination with FOSS) and studied the amount of savings it would lead to if implemented for high school education. Additionally, I graduated with a BA in 2011 and the entire process felt archaic to me, filled with wasted time, and more importantly costing lots of my hard-earned money. The only way I was able to get the degree was with help of family and by taking CLEP tests for over 70 hours. (rougly equivalent to 23 courses), the CLEP tests only costed in total around $500, and allowed me to skip 2 years of study. (so if anyone hasnt heard of CLEP and is low on funds and wants to get a degree I would highly recommend them :) I'm definately going to look into this in more detail though, getting a Masters would be nice and if all it costed was $6,600 for the 2 years (and study was remote) I think i'd be able to manage it as a full-time developer with a family.

spoon17 13y ago

home truth

bayesianhorse 13y ago

I'm in favor of furthering online education, moocs, educational content in general and even certification programs along these lines. But I also have to ask: If this degree costs 20% of a traditional Master's education, is it even worth 20% as much? The degree clearly states "Online Master". We might see a value developing here, but there is an equal chance that the early students get ripped off big time. They might learn a lot, but are they really getting their money's worth in additional skill marketability?

marquis 13y ago
While I agree, in that attending college is in part the social experience in interacting with peers, one-on-one time with lecturers/TAs and lab work, this is a step forward to allowing anyone who wants to learn have that opportunity, and use the technology we have to improve on that technology so future-learning just gets better and better. Tiny steps. An enterprising person may well setup a facilitator experience, where students gather to watch online lectures and do group labs, at a fraction of the cost (plus not having to pay board away from home) and having the best materials to work with.
- zanny 13y ago
  This hits on what I think is key to breaking out of the borked education system. You need to put like minded learners together with bountiful educational texts and resources to solve the problems both independently and together. It is less about stuffing random facts in the brain than developing group oriented problem solving skills in a specialized discipline.
oblique63 13y ago
The fact that this: > They might learn a lot does not imply this: > "additional skill marketability" really troubles me, but in this case you're unfortunately right. I should note that I'm ignoring the instance of "might" here because I've encountered many 'traditional' masters students that haven't exactly "mastered" their material by the end of their studies either, so I'm assuming the differences in this aspect will be negligible. Either way, the traditional application process students have to go through is largely what bases the perceived weight of degree, so this course still keeping that 'metric' in-tact should help with its 'marketability'. However this program will still face an uphill battle regardless, simply because its biggest problem is it being 'non-traditional'; which is unfortunate.
pnathan 13y ago
I would personally not consider an "online" masters as worth more than a certification. Taking classes ain't the point of grad school.

jacques_chester 13y ago

As an Australian gazing across the pond, it's weird to see what the fuss is about. My alma mater (UWA) has a Master of Professional Engineering degree which I can complete for $15k AUD (and since they guarantee entry to their BCompSci grads, I'm considering it). Sydney Uni have a Master of Project Management that I costed at 20k AUD (edit: I was quite wrong, it's closer to 45k). And the FEE-HELP program means that, if I chose, I could do it without paying up front. Public higher education is a mess in many ways. But sometimes, boy, I really do live in the lucky country.

insertdisktwo 13y ago
You have to keep in mind that Georgia Tech is one of the best engineering schools in the U.S. (disclosure: I am not in any way related to this institution) and consequently worldwide. $15K AUD is very close to ~$14.5K USD. This is less than half of that.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I'm really comparing it to the 50, 100, 200k figures I see bandied about. The order of magnitude.

h1fra 13y ago

In Europe school actually cost this much (average), with campus and classroom. Maybe, the question is asked the wrong way in this article. Why does education cost student 50000$ a year in US?

gambiting 13y ago
I was going to say the same thing. I come from a country where Higher Education is free(yes yes I know - paid for by the taxpayer), but I have personally studied in the UK paying 3450 pounds a year (~5300 USD) in one of the best universities in that country. Yes I know it went up now to 9000 pounds(~13600 USD) but still, it's a lot less than what they charge for education in the US, which I don't understand.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  What is the total cost of education in your country? I.e., amount paid by student + amount paid by govt? I suspect the answer will be similar to the US, but scaled down a bit since high skill labor is much cheaper in Europe.
  - gambiting 13y ago
    In my country it's 0 cost for the student. Apparently the average cost the government pays per year per student is around ~3000 USD. Medical students cost our government ~7000 USD per year. And as far as I know, professors are still very well paid, so I still fail to see why would the education in the US cost so much money.
- codeonfire 13y ago
  There are no answers to the difference in tuition prices that don't lead to uncomfortable social comparisons of two countries. It depends on if you believe education markets are efficient or not, meaning the true value will be reflected in the price. Two things that would make a degree worth less are limited access to education and limited social mobility for degree holders. Free also does not mean unlimited access.

don_draper 13y ago

I got my Master's education much cheaper from Oreilly U @ oreilly.com

waps 13y ago

Well in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757226 a lost of posters were arguing how brain work could never be replaced, nor could technology be used to lower the need for highly-educated creative professionals. Professor/teacher is pretty much the quintessential example of highly-educated brain work, isn't it ? > He estimated the school would have to hire one full-time teacher for every 100 online students as opposed to one full-time teacher for every 10 or 20 students who study on campus. Also from the article: > Looking back on it now, this experience had far more in common with the Middle Ages than the world of 2013. What's the difference between watching a lecture in an auditorium and watching HD-quality video in one's living room or beach cabana? This is the situation that was hit at the end of the Roman Empire, the beginning of what would later turn into the dark-ages. Plenty of highly educated people, ever more and more, and ... no reason to have them. No reason to have all that many farmers either. This was a result of using iron-age technology to it's fullest potential. You should see some Roman surgery tools, they're amazing. They're much more specialized than "our" surgery tools. Surgeons today have 10 kinds of knives, syringes, stitches, compresses, all very general tools. Roman surgeons had hundres of tools, each a weird metal thingamabob specifically built for one singular procedure. We use special tools today in some cases, but mostly very general tools like 5 sizes of the same gripper, tweezers, ... that sort of thing. They used iron to it's fullest potential, and we use computers, but the end result is the same : massive population numbers, yet the economy only justifies ~1% to maybe 5% of the population, with most of even that employed in either the government itself or the military. At some point, even slaves become a losing proposition (better to give those precious jobs to family, and keep in mind that Roman slaves had rights, and were more akin to someone holding a job. I'm not saying slaves in the Roman empire had rights comparable to Americans (they lacked voting, for example), but they certainly couldn't be killed randomly or on a whim). No goods shortages, quite the opposite : almost universal abundance (not for expensive goods, but things like food, clothing, furniture, cutlery, apartments, ... no shortages). Not that anyone was happy with just having what everyone else had, no matter how comfortable it actually was (it evolved - for the better, for almost a century). Unemployment numbers hit ridiculously high proportions and never went back down (like in the poor centers of Euro cities now, 80-90% unemployment in areas the size of towns), and ever more of the famed Roman armies were dedicated purely to keeping order in cities. Enemies, ideological ones and physical ones, which had no hope whatsoever of surviving a single confrontation with a single centuria (the unit a centurion commanded) became able to do large amounts of damage due to help from dissatisfied locals, and the situation just systematically kept getting worse. So realistically this is just another indication that the middle ages will come back. Expect atheism, or realism in general, to lose a lot of it's appeal, because it's only message to 99% of the population will be what it was just before the dark ages : The only useful thing you could realistically do for others is to die, right now.

tseabrooks 13y ago

Maybe this depends greatly on the particular discipline you're in. In the US it's not that difficult to get your Master's degree in C.S. for free + monthly stipend, at least in my experience. I know a number of people across the natural science disciplines who TA'd / RA'd their way through Grad School. I might be misunderstanding how common this is but it seems any discussion of Grad School cost should discuss the fact that natural science students will often get paid to go to Grad School in the US.

jessriedel 13y ago
My understanding is that this is only true if you are on the PhD track. Natural science departments subsidize the master's students with the expectation that most will labor for the professors for 3-5 years as part of their PhD research. The TAing does not actually cover the costs.
insertdisktwo 13y ago
Please let me know if this applies in the case outside of being a PhD student. The US educational system has a tradition of issuing a Masters as a consolation price to PhD dropouts who've done enough of the coursework/research. Bona-fide Masters programs with scholarships/stipends are very hard to find. If there's counterexamples I would like to know about them. From my experience, these are very rare.
- tseabrooks 13y ago
  Thats a good point. Most of the folks I'm talking about were in my PhD cohort and we all decided the PhD wasn't for us (My PhD program left a very bad taste in my mouth towards higher ed). I've known a few Masters students who got stipends but the majority were PhD students.
- josephhardin 13y ago
  My (Terminal at that institution) masters was paid for completely, as well as being paid a salary. In STEM fields I'm not sure I know anyone who didn't have their MS paid for. Sure, some professors will push you to get a Ph.D. but you always have the option of just writing your thesis and finishing.

timedoctor 13y ago

This is just the beginning. I can see a future where top ranked universities offer online degrees at a small fraction of the current prices. In fact I think the pricing will be separated out so that the lectures are 100% free and you pay for examinations or for tutoring or for small group mentoring with professors. The logical conclusion is mega-universities that teach to millions of people in multiple countries around the world and out-compete existing universities leading to a large percentage of current universities being shut down or used only for courses where in-person training is necessary (for example medicine, some engineering courses etc).

jval 13y ago

This is completely right. Most of the commenters here keep thinking about it from the perspective of people in countries that already have great access to education, but disruption begins with people who don't already have access to a product or are struggling to afford the existing alternatives. In the case of education, these people are most likely to reside in the developing world - there are billions of people in places like the BRIC nations for whom $6,600 is a really reasonable price to access education over the internet without having to leave their current homes, families and commitments. Not only that, they get to put Georgia Tech on their resume and apply for jobs domestically and overseas (especially in the US) where people will recognise their qualifications, even if they have an online masters and not a masters. The scale of something like this is difficult to fathom - we are talking many times the population of the US and Europe combined who could benefit from something like this. This is why we are witnessing something truly revolutionary.

mtgx 13y ago
I agree with your general theory, but I don't think $6,600 is "reasonable" for a college degree in BRIC nations. I think even in the more developed countries in Europe that's at the high-end of what it costs to get one. It only seems reasonable for an American, who usually pays what - $100,000-$200,000? $2,000 is what I'd call "reasonable", although if we're really thinking about truly revolutionizing education for the other 3+ billion people, it needs to go even cheaper than that. Everyone should get access to the same level of quality education, and their financial situation should not be a major impediment.
- anonymouz 13y ago
  Speaking as someone living in a country with no to low tuition, when I read the the title of the submission my reaction was "$6,600, wow that's expensive", while probably the opposite was intended.
- insertdisktwo 13y ago
  Keep in mind that it is $6,600 for a graduate (post-Bachelors) degree, not a college degree. In the U.S. a Bachelors degree lasts 8-9 semesters and equips you for work far better than the 3-year Bologna "equivalent." The Masters degree thus can focus almost exclusively on the graduate-level courses, with the exception of some refreshers. You have to compare the $6,600 to the cost of living in the United States. U.S. census Bureau's poverty threshold is $11,500/year income. In this income-level very little goes to taxes. So this program is roughly 7 months of minimum wage in the US. That is very affordable for an advanced degree.

Ihmahr 13y ago

I live in the netherlands and here you couldn't even pay more than $6.600 for a masters degree.

insertdisktwo 13y ago
If you look up the prices for non-EU citizens you will see some places are prohibitively expensive, even in Netherlands. In most places you have to have at least 10k EUR (13k USD) on your bank account for each year of the program, on top of the tuition fees.

pbw 13y ago

A rich modern society will spend most of its money on two things: education and health-care. The appetite for education will increase so quickly that in-person degree programs will continue to do okay as premium offerings even as online degrees flourish. Long term online will "win" but it will take decades. Look at how few 100% telecommute there really are. Yes the trend is there but the actual transition is slow, consider the rush hour traffic in any big city.

p4bl0 13y ago

As a French person my first reaction to the title was "that's awfully expensive!". Then I thought about the US education system and thought "Oh, the title must actually imply that it's cheap…". I still had to go read the article to make sure. And then I learned that it's actually an online master. So my (second) first reaction was that it's cool to be able to get a master's degree from a top university from almost anywhere in the world, but then I realized that the people who would benefit the most from this are in developing countries and $6,600 is already way, way, way too much there (and that's not taking into account the fact that these courses are video-driven and that available internet broadband might also be a problem). So I guess that's not really who it is intended for, which implies that it is a "second class" degree for US student. Not sure how I should feel about this.

aethertap 13y ago
It's not necessarily as bad a picture as it seems from outside - I have a Master's degree in Computer science that I'd estimate cost me about $8000 (just for the MS part, the BS before that was mostly free due to scholarships). I didn't go to a prestigious university, but I do think I ended up with a good education. At least in my case, the fact that my university is mostly unknown has proven pretty much irrelevant in terms of getting a job, so I don't feel that I was disadvantaged by not getting my degree from a place like MIT.
insertdisktwo 13y ago
re: Second-class degree Geogia Tech's engineering program ranks extremely high in the U.S. and the United States' academic institutions rank extremely high on various world-wide charts. Having spent a long time on the inside track of the Silicon Valley hiring processes, I can vouch that getting a degree from a prestigious institution really does fast-track your interview, at least when it comes to the screening or pre-screening phase. $6,600 will at the current engineering salaries be at most a month and a half of your future net salary in the USA, or about 4-5 months worth of rent in San Francisco, so it is overall a very small forward investment to make if you live in the US. I doubt the degree will be treated as "second class," this will occur only if the words get out that the program is somehow easier to finish and I strongly doubt that. If anything, without in-person TA-ing and live peer interaction, it will be harder to complete some of the courses. re: Cost of graduate-level education in the USA I understand that EU-citizens get free Masters' education. This is somewhat a side-effect of the EU-wide Bologna process, which promoted everyone's Bachelors degree into a Masters by adding a year's worth more of education and introducing a credit-system. If you are a non-EU citizen trying to get a degree in the EU, you will be paying much more than $6600 in many countries, including the socialist-leaning Scandinavia. Any US citizen can give FAFSA a try and (from memory) more than half of the undergraduate student body receives some form of financial aid from the government. There are reputable sources that say that paradoxically the generous FAFSA grants are partially responsible for a tuition inflation, but this debate is completely off-topic.

anxx 13y ago

With the internet, most education is free. When we pay education, we mainly pay for 1) exclusivity (there are not a million other people attending Harvard) and 2) standards (standard exams within an accredited curriculum, so the GPA and major will mean something). Increasing the amount of online education preserves the standards, but removes / broadens the exclusivity. I am not sure this is a great thing for people from Georgia Tech; they now have to compete with a lot more people for similar jobs. An online education with tough admissions would be better if one tries to preserve the brand (and thus provide insurance* to the program trainees). * by insurance, I refer to insurance of employability, like Peter Thiel described in his PandoMonthly interview.

alan_cx 13y ago

Has no one out side of the UK heard of The Open University? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University

Surio 13y ago
Ha ha, had to chuckle at that one. It's one of UK's "best kept" secrets, I suppose ;) . The course materials are bloody fantastic, and in terms of value of money, spot on :)

rhoua 13y ago

I live in a country where I know the language well to laugh with drunks in a bar, but not well enough to get a masters. If one could get a college education from a distance in a language I know well, that would be amazing.

ghshephard 13y ago

Just to put this in comparison - I recently took a two-week networking course (in the United States) for $7300. While this was in-person, with labs/instruction from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM every day, and the class was limited to twelve students, it does put things into perspective. The real cost, as always, in getting a degree is the students time. Someone capable of getting a Masters degree, can, without too much effort, make $100K/year pretty quickly (If income is what they are interested in). This is why education is normally inexpensive in other countries - students are having to forego all that income, so it's in the interest of the country, to encourage their populace to become educated - so they subsidize. I think part of the reason why Education is so expensive in the United States, is they have a fairly regressive tax system, with poor social systems (in comparison to other first world countries). Health Care is expensive, Education is expensive. It's a very difficult country to be poor in. I'd love it if the $6,600 Master Degree started a disruptive trend.

johnbellone 13y ago
I have been contemplating between getting an MBA or a PhD in software engineering (because I want to teach) for the past few years. For the latter it would be strictly because I want to create something, be innovative, and give back to my industry. The former - you're really paying for the connections - and possibly a few lessons on economics that have grown dry in your head. I am justifying the price tag on a two year (night) MBA because I feel like I am getting into that "club" that most of the bigwigs are in. Am I wrong?
- ghshephard 13y ago
  The variables obviously are Where are you getting the MBA (Ivy League MBAs, even evening ones, have more value), what is the price tag - there is a big difference between a $50K MBA and $200K MBA, and what field you'll be going into. MBA has very little (some might almost say negative) value in Silicon Valley startup world, but obviously more value in mature companies, or companies that are transitioning from startup->mature (possible exception being the CEO, VP of BizDev/Marketing and possibly VP of Product Management). MBAs have close to zero value for people who wish to be simultaneously tactical and technical. I've never seen a network engineer, or firmware developer get any value out of their MBA. It's really for people who are either going to go into the business side of a company, and/or go into management. Also - it's important to note if you'll have to quit working while you are getting your MBA - that makes the credential doubly expensive.

glurgh 13y ago

Looking back on it now, this experience had far more in common with the Middle Ages than the world of 2013. What's the difference between watching a lecture in an auditorium and watching HD-quality video in one's living room or beach cabana? There's no difference at all but for any even mildly ambitious undergrad in a STEM field, physically attending a research university is an opportunity to get involved, however peripherally, in such research. For someone pursuing a graduate degree this seems more like a requirement rather than a serving suggestion. Georgia Tech is not a respected engineering school just because it does a decent job of fielding 500-person classes.

HarryHirsch 13y ago
> There's no difference at all but for any even mildly ambitious undergrad in a STEM field, physically attending a research university is an opportunity to get involved, however peripherally, in such research. This is precisely the point. Our undergraduates go mostly up to Med School, and having a reaearch paper published is almost a requirement to get into any decent medical program. Also, in an online course the interaction between is of a wholly different kind that a traditional brick-and mortar university. The social network that you build while at uni is part of why you go there in the first place.

nicholassmith 13y ago

There's always going to be a place for University's to exist, there's certain amounts of skills that require a practical experience that they can provide, but for most courses shifting it online makes more sense. The costs are lower, it's easier to manage, it encourages more people to gain a formal education and hopefully strengthen their careers. It's going to be interesting seeing which ones will offer an actual bit of paper at the end that says 'I'm educated in X by Y' and how much it's going to cost. $7k for a degree from a prestigious school is going to be a popular option, so whilst they lose the high amount per student, they gain it back in larger student numbers.

inselkampf 13y ago

Before they wiped out college tuitions costs back in Ireland in 1996 the cost of doing a an excellent CS degree in UCC (http://ucc.ie http://ucc.ie) was about 2000 Irish pounds (about $2800 at the time) a year for 4 years. If you were wanted to do medicine it was a whopping $5000 or so a year over about 5 years. There were lesser hidden costs (200 for a registration fee kind of thing) but thats about it. We considered that outlandish at the time. The costs of the US education system baffle me on a daily basis. However I don't see online courses as the way to go. Most people don't complete them.

blazespin 13y ago

I think we need to have some A|B testing around this. While I am a huge believer in this, my little finger tells me that Online students will perform worse when it comes to exam time. There is an energy to synchronous group learning you can't duplicate via websites. I remember when I was in college and university, a bunch of us bonded a bit and got pretty competitive (in a friendly way) when it came to our grades and test results. If you developed a good relationship with your prof, they would often have high expectations of you and you didn't want to let them down. These emotional connections can be pretty inspiring to kids ages 18-22. If they want to be competitive with campus students, they need to either duplicate these emotions online (via virtual worlds?) or perhaps increase the workload and adjust the bell curve so students fail out quickly unless they take it very seriously.

chasing 13y ago
This. (Except for the virtual worlds stuff.) If what they're selling is online videos and someone to check your homework, $3,300/yr sounds kind of expensive.

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

I opted out of college. Sometimes it bums me out though, because I feel like by learning on the job, I reached the 10 thousand hour mark too early. And it's annoying, I have this savings account of thousands of dollars, and it's like, what am I supposed to do with it? If I had went to college, I'd have been in debt from the get go, so it would be more motivating to pay off like $100k of student loans. This $6,600 college course sounds like a scam. How are you going to be motivated to pay off loans, if there are none? At least it's better than getting paid to learn.

ck2 13y ago

Wouldn't a responsible government try to provide this to all high school graduates as a fallback minimum? If bought by the millions the cost should be a fraction? Would never fly in the US because we do not invest in the future anymore unless it's for corporate profit.

kozikow 13y ago

Does anyone know if this degree will count as masters in front of USA immigration department? The only reason I see for getting the masters degree is getting into the EB2 bracket for green card.

andrewljohnson 13y ago

The author doesn't mention a lot of journalists will be replaced by robots too. He thinks the Internet was a great tidal wave for the profession... Just wait for the next auto summarization breakthroughs.

chasing 13y ago

The first quote doesn't appear in the article Berman links to. And I can't find a reference to $6,600 anywhere else except in that non-existent quote. Am I missing something? Did Berman pull that number out of thin air? Where did he get it? --- Edit- Here [http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/faq/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/faq/] they write: "We’re not yet ready to announce a specific program cost, but the plan is to offer the Georgia Tech OMS CS for a total cost of under $7,000—a fraction of the cost of Georgia Tech’s on-campus program and even less than that of comparable private universities." That FAQ has a lot more meat than the LinkedIn article...