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Accenture to Acquire Udacity

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Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#21

I paid over $1,000 for one of their “nanodegree” programs. After it ended, they had the nerve to lock all the content, including all my notes and submissions as well as course content like videos and such. I highly recommend anyone avoid them.

Yep, I'm done paying for DRM locked content.

For courses, Udemy is hit or miss unfortunately. I wish there was an explicit way to tell before buying the course whether it allowed downloading the material (including the videos).

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#22
post #6

This is unfortunate to see. I remember when these alt-Ed startups were all the rage and there was a genuine belief that we were on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how we learned. Would love to hear some success stories if anyone has any!

Learning has changed dramatically. There are incredible YouTube channels on every subject. Open courses are offered by top Universities for free. What hasn't changed is credentialism. Because knowledge is free, everyone can claim to have it. So the value of a credential has gone up. An actual MIT degree vs classes taken at MIT OpenCourseware is orders of magnitude more significant. You can learn anything for free now…

There was sort of a naive belief that both credentialism and motivation could be solved if the material were out there. And, by and large, that wasn't true especially among the people who needed them the most.

There's a huge amount of material out there for people who want it. But it's most applicable to people who already have credentials in some form.

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#24
post #6

This is unfortunate to see. I remember when these alt-Ed startups were all the rage and there was a genuine belief that we were on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how we learned. Would love to hear some success stories if anyone has any!

Peter Norvig’s udacity class was probably the thing that made me employable when I was just getting started. Udacity in general was an amazing resource around 2012-14(+?) because it was very high quality and free. They had courses that would get you through an interview but also a decent amount that went deeper. I will always have good memories of them.

Same here!

I liked Steve Huffman’s web dev 101 class and was also a code reviewer at Udacity shortly after

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#25
post #13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be good resources but the energy in the air during that time was that they could challenge universities. It is clear with passed time that they didn't, and will not.

Yeah, challenging university system was there. But it turned out really very very few people were motivated enough to finish the whole course to level of completing certificate which were quite cheap. Most people enrolled to audit tons of courses, caught a few lectures, got bored and moved on. As with anything that is now present in abundance due to internet curation becomes the key and that is either not cheap or no…

I seriously "took" a few mostly not too challenging MOOCs early on. But, once the novelty wore off, I take a few things on LinkedIn through my company from time to time and go to a few conferences but I find it's hard without a concrete objective of some sort to really go deep on a topic.

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#26
post #2

This definitely wasn't in my 2024 bingo card. What does Accenture (or for that matter Udacity) have to gain from this acquisition?

> What does Accenture (or for that matter Udacity) have to gain from this acquisition?

Accenture's core competency is getting governments (and large companies) to hand over large sums of money. Seems like a good fit.

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#29
post #6

This is unfortunate to see. I remember when these alt-Ed startups were all the rage and there was a genuine belief that we were on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how we learned. Would love to hear some success stories if anyone has any!

I actually got my break in tech through a program Accenture ran called the Veteran Technology Training Program. It was essentially a partnership with Udacity where they sponsored veterans through a 12 week Java course. At the conclusion of the training, they ran me through a series of interviews and extended a job offer. I ended up doing systems analysis work for them, which was a nice introduction to the field, especially considering my military occupation was infantry--not exactly tech-adjacent. After a few years of programming in my spare time and building up a portfolio, I got an opportunity at another company to do web dev, which I've been doing since.

I think it's pretty cool to see this acquisition happen. I can't speak for what Udacity has become since 2015 (when I went through the course), but it definitely benefited me.

Re: Accenture to Acquire Udacity

#30
post #2

This definitely wasn't in my 2024 bingo card. What does Accenture (or for that matter Udacity) have to gain from this acquisition?

Accenture also performs weird menial tasks under guise of efficiency for large corps apparently unable to do it themselves. I would venture they will also roll out platform to enable corps to run their banal trainings on it (compliance etc)
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