Comments on: How would you like a graduate degree for $100?

By: Samantha Atkins

Samantha Atkins — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:10:28 +0000

I always thought the purpose was to explore really cool knowledge and its application and that some of those applications or entire areas of knowledge were interesting enough to form businesses around or specialize in for a living. It really never occurred to me to think of it as prep for a job as such. This may have been a weakness but there it is.

By: Prahab Gunjati

Prahab Gunjati — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:57:50 +0000

My view is that most of us, especially when young think school (univ) will lead us to great jobs – as 99% of the world knows (later in life) that is rarely the case. Therefore if Co.s could be open about this form of educ. and focus on knowledge and ability things would really move for this industry.

By: Prahab Gunjati

Prahab Gunjati — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:54:05 +0000

powerful comments – very interesting

By: joeatiyah

joeatiyah — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 15:49:33 +0000

The OU isn’t freee – in fact its quite expensive (tho not by today’s tuition fee standards) – enough to put me off taking a few extra courses post grad. This is a quite different era and development.

By: Peter Simmons

Peter Simmons — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:31:39 +0000

Already been done in the UK, it’s called the Open University. Typical of Americans to claim they invented it decades later!

By: gaoptimize

gaoptimize — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:32:28 +0000

When do the undergraduate programs start? Of course, the brick-and-mortar academic cartel, maintained by their accreditation enforcers will fight this to the death. I call upon all soon-to-be student debt slaves, major corporations, and Governments at all levels to endorse a lobby for legal acceptance of on-line degrees.

By: MikeB

MikeB — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 22:26:50 +0000

Read the article … I think Dr. Thrun’s basic premise about the current awarding and reasoning behind degrees is flawed. I was never given to understand that my bachelor’s degree was my ‘education for the rest of my career’. It was presented as ‘a start’. With that misgiving, the rest of the article distills to a thinly veiled pitch for a “University of Thrun”; a profit making venture fueled by an ego. The content for all the offered courses (Dr. Thun’s, Stanford, etc.) is already available online for free for those who care to put in even a modest effort to find it. Dr. Thrun’s initial venture attracted a lot of interest because it seemed to be affiliated with Stanford, but since it is not, it is hard to see what the attraction will be … perhaps as a study program for those preparing to go to a real university?

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 22:12:40 +0000

One of the big problems with institutional learning, is that everyone has to jump over the same hurdles at the same time and rate. If you fall behind, your playing catchup and can quickly lose critical skills or knowledge. On line is at your pace, tailored to your strenghths and weaknesses.

By: Brett Guillory

Brett Guillory — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:33:07 +0000

I’ve gone through the Python programming class at Udacity.com and I have to say it was not only educational, but I had a good time doing it. The coursework is structured in a logical way where later coursework builds on previous ones. Also, the idea of not just learning random programming snippets here or there but working towards a useful goal (programming a web search engine) puts things into context. Highly recommend! :)

By: eldras

eldras — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:46:03 +0000

Great fun and I’ve started on another of their courses. I dunno that a model for web crawlers can still be based on hypertext links?
There seems diminished point in inserting links into a web page when people can right mouse and find a list of the highlighted text, with Wiki as the first port of call?
An exception is where the author has unusual reference to pages other than wiki links.
There is also the issue that we dont have adequate means of librarying web pages so that when they go down or close as some do, a system like wayback machine will be holding them.
I’m playing with a different form of web page that assembles knowledge, ie auto-makes-up a web page on the spot when you type is a search, comprising the knowledge you are likely to need. That’s a lot easier than it seems and could be based on popularity.