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CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

academy.cs.cmu.edu

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Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#21

Post by peyton »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates. In the public's mind one goes to…

The education at CMU is quite good FWIW. The faculty care a lot. Would not call it a gated access club.

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#22

Post by [deleted] »

exogeny wrote: post #2

For only $10 more, they'll send you three pounds of fries served in a greasy paper bag, a Terrible Towel, and a Donnie Iris cassette single of "Ah! Leah!". It's the best deal in academia. All jokes aside, if you'll allow me a tangential but relevant aside, a lot of people have heard of Carnegie Mellon, but very few have heard of Richard Caliguiri or David Lawrence. They were both mayors of Pittsburgh, and both led th…

[deleted]

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#24

Post by csa »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates. In the public's mind one goes to…

> In the public's mind one goes to an elite institution for access to elite education

This is one area in which the public’s mind is (for the most part) very, very wrong.

While there are certainly some excellent courses at elite schools, the general quality of instruction is quite low. Professors are not rewarded for good instruction and are not punished for relatively poor instruction. Class-oriented work takes time away from research work, and that’s the stuff that counts.

For students, elite schools offer the following (imho):

- incredible access to research resources

- access to top tier work and research opportunities during school and after graduating

- access to nationally and internationally powerful social networks

- a highly motivated peer group who often (re)define how high the high bar can be set

Note that some (perhaps many or most) students don’t avail themselves of any of these unique offerings, but some certainly do.

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#25

Post by AlchemistCamp »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates. In the public's mind one goes to…

This isn’t CMU’s curriculum. It’s a much simpler one made by CMU students and targeted at middle and high school students.

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#26

Post by alexgartrell »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates. In the public's mind one goes to…

I think people dramatically overestimate the value of CMU social connections. The value of a CMU Comp Sci degree is that you've proven (to yourself and everyone else) that you can get one. The program is essentially one "weeder" course after another to identify the people who don't belong (21-127 Concepts of Mathematics, 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science, 15-213 Introduction to Compute Systems, 15-410 Operating Systems, 15-451 Design and Analysis of Algorithms). Every course is the "hard" version of ever other course (e.g. "Welcome to Operating Systems, you'll be writing a kernel that runs on an X86_64 processor. Your hint is 'pusha/popa.' Go."). While it was horrifying the whole way through, I think that it built a resiliency in me that wouldn't exist otherwise. It's incredibly hard to replicate that through online classes.

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#27

Post by gpuhacker »

I always find it disappointing when people equate CS to programming. In my view, programming is a at most a means to an end in CS. A tool that we use to show that something is possible, to implement a proof of concept. By looking at the code we can understand in a formally defined language how certain systems work. It is definitely an important tool in CS, and a practical skill that CS students can use in their professional life after graduation. But I become rather sad when I see three Python programming courses being put together and people call it a CS curriculum.

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#28

Post by password11 »

rz2k wrote: post #17
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates. In the public's mind one goes to…

That seemed like the future ten years ago, but my impression is that the trend has gone the other way. There were a lot of really buzzy courses back then, but the communities don't seem motivated in the same way any more, with a large portion of the students now in pursuit of a certificate rather than intellectually curious. I also think that the reason that many of the popular early courses disappeared, wasn't just…

> but that university administrations began to worry that they were giving too much away.

Personally: in industry, in various software companies I've met about 10-15 grads from Harvard, MIT, and CMU. From meeting them, I assure you that they're just average people, just as dumb as you or I, and that the administration has no great secrets to give away.

At least, not to give away to the average student. Maybe I only met the rejects...

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#29

Post by lost_tourist »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #19
philonoist wrote: post #13

I hope they don't take it down like how Berkeley CS videos were taken down.

Those were taken down because of some complicated lawsuit about use of public funds to make available content that wasn't accessible to people with disabilities. It was too expensive to make the recorded lectures work with tools used by people with disabilities, so the university took down the content instead instead of spending even more resources making it compatible with screen readers, adding captioning, etc. CMU…

no good deed goes unpunished

Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon

#30

Post by swighton »

lispisok wrote: post #4

How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?

I have both MechE and CS degrees. The big difference I see is that MechE is one course that builds on top of another on and on. Quite a rigorous progression that is hardcore on math and physics. To self teach MechE you have to work yourself through that progression which is a huge commitment.

OTOH what most people consider “CS” is more like “the ability to program”. You can get competent enough to be dangerous with a few classes and side projects.

Note that isn’t actually being competent at CS - that is quite a lot more work which just isn’t needed in practice for a lot of work that needs done.

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