I got rejected too, for some reason I really believed I was going to make it.
It was the kind of things where you discover the existence 4 days before the deadline and you think : there has to be a reason why I discover it now.
Indeed, I think there was a reason, but this reason was not getting into YC as I thought. It helped me realize that there is no better time for me to launch my startup and that I am more than ready for that.
It was my first application and I don't think I'm ever going to apply to YC or this kind of big incubator again. God only knows, but that's clearly not my mindset today. It distracted me a lot from working on my product, so I imagine what it would have been if I had planned it for months and applied at several places. I'll focus my efforts on developping my product, and I'll work with local investors one step at a time.
Nice experience anyway, and congratulations to those that have been invited ! I hope we'll meet down the path of success - I'm not saying you'll be there first ; )
> I just meant that they are actively involved; they are certainly still teachers.
Sure I got you, I was pointing that in such conditions it's unlikely that they can play they teaching role fully. They become more like participants in forums who will sometimes get involved in a thread, sometimes not.
> The data so far indicates...
Very interesting, but I think it's a consequence of the pricing and not the cause. People go online when they can't go on-campus for one reason or an other (job, family, live in another country, etc...). It is the purpose of the pricing.
Yea I got you. For the OMS CS at Georgia Tech, I would never enroll in such conditions to be honest, not for a Graduate program and especially not if I'll be paying thousands of dollars, whether it is on-campus or online.
I don't doubt this model is viable, I'm not even saying it's bad quality. Certainly you'll find many people who'll tell you that they learned a lot and that they've blosomed. However I doubt this is an optimal solution, there is clearly room to improve quality a lot by decreasing the class sizes - thus increasing the individual support.
"The instructor is an active participant" means a lot. He becomes a "participant" instead of being an instructor. The reason is simple, there's no way to accomodate 200 people. Do you think he'll have the time to have something as small as a 10 minutes discussion with every student every week ?
When I was at college, I was regularly talking with my instructors for 30 minutes, sometimes hours in their office. To me it's crucial at every stage of education and not enough emphasized in the current system. But I think it is critical to have this direct, easy and unrestricted access to the instructor at graduate school.
At some college, I've seen a graduate school instructor complaning about the fact that he had to accept 23 students for a term instead of 15-18 because the demand was too high.
Concerning your main point, here are my thoughts :
- If they set the online programs at a lower price, then it will "mean" that it is lower quality than the on-campus program.
- If they set it at the same price, potential on-campus students will choose to enroll online to avoid having to attend lectures, thus taking the best of both worlds.
- Therefore the best option for them is to price online programs higher so people who are able to be on-campus will go on-campus and the rest will go online. I wouldn't be surprised if they also take into account the cost of housing to avoid making the online option too attractive.
Tuitions are not the only source of revenue for colleges, so they have to be careful and make sure students keep coming on-campus.
"I don't understand how it costs $300-500 per credit hour for the undergrad programs, except to avoid devaluing the resident offerings."
In MOOCs thousands of people are enrolled at the same time, and support is provided by the community of students. It's incredible how this phrasing sounds positive - even to me - while it basically means that support by a qualified instructor cannot be guaranteed and is unlikely to be provided.
In (good) accredited online programs - BSc or MSc - there are 10 to 20 students enrolled per course and you have direct access to the instructor who will adapt his lectures based on the audience feedbacks and specifics. This costs money and therefore has to come at a price.
If the program doesn't offer the above, or if you are a passive student who don't ask questions frequently and interact with others, then I'm with you, "why paying this price ?".
By the way, I am not saying that MOOCs are useless. Personally I see it under this perspective : the Educational System is so broken that in many cases streaming a video to thousands of people without providing them dedicated support is equivalent to the experience they get in physical classrooms.
I think you missed the point of the article because the author states that he had very good scores at tests, so at least "working harder at school" wouldn't have helped with what he is complaning about whatever it is.
However I agree that this article sounds whiny, especially when it comes to the phrase you quoted. But if we look at the bigger picture the author is drawing, we can acknowledge that Education is not only about college students, it's also about students in primary and secondary school and even high school. At these levels students won't have the critical-thinking and I-will-do attitude you are talking about, they need guidance from the system. They need that the system teach them how to respect themselves by example by respecting them in the first place.
"We review preliminary demographic and outcome data for participants who pay to “ID-verify” their certificates. They are slightly older, more educated, more domestic, and less often female than non-verifying participants in the same course."
Moreover since they are "more educated" and the paper also mentions that students are in general graduates in a "disproportionate manner", I assume that these people are very likely to be graduates.
It was the kind of things where you discover the existence 4 days before the deadline and you think : there has to be a reason why I discover it now.
Indeed, I think there was a reason, but this reason was not getting into YC as I thought. It helped me realize that there is no better time for me to launch my startup and that I am more than ready for that.
It was my first application and I don't think I'm ever going to apply to YC or this kind of big incubator again. God only knows, but that's clearly not my mindset today. It distracted me a lot from working on my product, so I imagine what it would have been if I had planned it for months and applied at several places. I'll focus my efforts on developping my product, and I'll work with local investors one step at a time.
Nice experience anyway, and congratulations to those that have been invited ! I hope we'll meet down the path of success - I'm not saying you'll be there first ; )
Cheers