21–30 of 57 posts
What 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)
One 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.
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...
That'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?
Apart from the obvious debt. The other Cons? loss of networking opportunities, $14k more expensive, small risk of inferiority to a normal degree. But I guess for some with deep pockets, if the University isn't ranked highly in the world or 'Ivy League' or 'Golden Triangle' then for that price? It is not even worth considering.
What 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)
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-scie...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An 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.
While 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.
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.
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.
One thing to note - if you're interested only in pedigree - nobody gives a sh*t about Coursera, Udacity, edX or similar "online" labeled stuff.
With this program, also Georgia Tech's MSCS program, you get the exact same classes, tests, and degree as students attending in person.
What 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)
It'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.
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).
What 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)