(07-28-2019 03:55 PM)Chappy Wrote: (07-28-2019 01:43 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote: Interesting but I'm not sure how it turns the entire educational system on its head.
Because if it’s successful there will be copycats, and why spend $100 grand on an education you can get for 10?
Online education is already a highly competitive space.
The places that have a legit chance to be "category killers" are entities like edX and Coursera that are offering legit top tier masters degrees with prestigious institutions at a fraction of on-campus prices - edX with Georgia Tech (computer science and analytics) and MIT (supply chain management) and Coursera with Illinois (computer science and accounting), Michigan (public health) and now Penn (information technology) - an Ivy League school! Those degrees have the branding of top institutions with much less cost. I can't imagine why someone looking for an MS in computer science today would go anywhere other than the Georgia Tech or Illinois online programs where they're getting a top 5 masters degree at a bargain rate. The ROI on those online degrees would seem to be extremely high, especially when lower-ranked schools and for-profit institutions are actually much more expensive.
To be sure, the best online programs are in quantitative/objective subject areas such as engineering, computer science and accounting. The online platform really isn't well-suited to, say, an MBA where a lot of the value is in the connections that you make through your program (e.g. you can make a phone call years from now to your classmates at Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, etc.) as opposed to the content itself.
I also believe that any degree (whether online or on-campus) is only worth as much as what an employer believes that it's worth... or even more likely in today's world, what an employee recruiting software algorithm believes that it's worth. The hardest part of any interview process is usually to simply get your resume read by an actual person and, depending on where you're applying, that doesn't happen if you don't have a college degree overall or the right degree from the right schools. I've worked with multiple organizations that hire a critical mass of people out of school and they *all* definitely used type of degree and the quality of the degree-granting institution as a screening tool.
It's almost counter-intuitive, but as the relative value of a college degree goes down because there are now so many more college grads compared to prior generations, the relative value of institutional prestige actually goes up. For my parents, simply having a college degree with a relative rarity in their generation, so it didn't really matter where they attended school. It's a whole lot different now because it's much more competitive with many more college grads.
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I heard a rumor from a "source" about Amazon.
