All-You-Can-Eat College For $99-a-Month

theodp writes "Writing in Washington Monthly, Kevin Carey has seen the future of college education. It costs $99-a-month, and there's no limit on the number of courses you can take. Tiny online education firm StraighterLine is out to challenge the seeming permanency of traditional colleges and universities. How? Like Craigslist, StraighterLine threatens the most profitable piece of its competitors' business: freshman lectures, higher education's equivalent of the classified section. It's no surprise, then, that as StraighterLine tried to buck the system, the system began to push back, challenging deals the company struck with accredited traditional and for-profit institutions to allow StraighterLine courses to be transferred for credit. But even if StraighterLine doesn't succeed in bringing extremely cheap college courses to the masses, it's likely that another player eventually will."

Maybe so...

[Idiomatick]

This may be credits for cheap. You may be learning (nearly) as much as a regular university and you may even do it faster. BUT I didn't think that was the purpose of university. I thought the whole point was to get a high paying job. And I'm unconvinced that this can provide.

If you just wanted to go to school to learn sure. But I don't think that has been the main focus for many years now.

If all you want to do is learn

[TheLink]

If all you want to do is learn for free, you can always watch lectures online.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/stanforduniversity [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley [youtube.com]

You can even get lectures from Australia or India:
http://www.youtube.com/user/unsw [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/nptelhrd [youtube.com]

And if you want to learn stuff like how to solder and splice try http://www.tpub.com/neets/ [tpub.com]

Or watch someone make vacuum tubes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl-QMuUQhVM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S5OwqOXen8 [youtube.com]

Sure you might not be able to afford all that equipment to actually do everything. But at least you have a better idea of what you might like and what's worth it before forking out lots of money (or going in debt) in fees.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[armanox]

Lucky you. I did one semester at a local Comunity College. $1200 for tuition and fees, and then another $500 for books.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[TheRaven64]

What, just because it's on the internet, it's a new concept?

No, actually, that still doesn't make it a new concept [openuniversity.ac.uk].

Re:Community college, anyone?

[anexkahn]

$20/unit for in state tuition at a community college in California (Where I live). Out of state tuition is currently about $185/unit or $200/unit depending on if you are doing summer classes or other.

Books should average about $250/semester

http://www.cos.edu/view_page.asp?nodeid=2822&parentid=2864&moduleid=1 [cos.edu]

This information is according to the College of the Siskiyous website (Where I went to community college 8 years ago).

Assuming you take 15 units/semester which is what you need to graduate with an associates in 2 years or a bachelors in 4 years that comes out to (approximately):

($20 per unit x 15 units) + $250 books = $550/semester or $1100/year + misc expenses for in state students (subsidized by the state of California)
or
($185 per unit x 15 units) + $250 books =3025 $/semester or $6050/year + misc expenses for out of state students (un-subsidized by the state of California)

This comes out to $275/month for in state students or $756/month for out of state students (8 month school year)

Re:Community college, anyone?

[chaoticgeek]

Ya 10 years ago is pretty dated for college courses now. My local community college charges 131/credit hour. 3 hour course costs you 393 plus your books and any fees you might have to pay. And well books are a entirely different monster to deal with. My world religions class I'm taking has two books, one for 98 and the other was 70 and I could not find them online used.

Eleven courses

[honestmonkey]

As near as I could see from their web site, they offer 11 courses, one or two of which were "pending". Might be a deal if you need some of those 11, but you aren't getting a degree that way.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

My (well known public institute of technology) charges something like $160-200 per credit hour, dependent on if you have the 4 year fixed tuition.

If you take 3 hours of classes, it's only $300 in mandatory fees (Technology, transportation, mandatory fee to cover budget shortages). 4+ hr results in the full amount of fees, $600

Once you take at least 12 hours of classes, your rate caps out.

Add in books, which is normally $100-$150 per class, unless you can bum it off a friend, download it, or buy it online. Once I was able to buy a book online for less than the school store buyback rate. I made $3 on that textbook ^^

and 4(!) partner colleges

[bigsexyjoe]

After you take to your up to eleven courses, you can get credit for them at a total of four accredited institutions. I didn't look closely, but at least one of them is a junior college. So this "revolution" that Slashdot is reporting on, only is only relevant to a very small percent of the population.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[AmigaMMC]

I took 18 credits per semester and graduated in 3.5 years with 3.7 GPA and honors in a private university. I also had 3 jobs. School is really not that hard in the States. Of course the downside is that it cost me a crapload of money which I'm still paying and forever will.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[sconeu]

Going this semester for some professional development.

6 unit + student fees + parking -- $126
Books: $145 at amazon

Re:You get what you pay for

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

My freshman writing class at Carnegie Mellon University taught me that white people are bad, straight people are bad, and men are bad. I paid $5000 to learn that as a white, straight, male I'm the worst thing ever. Apparently, I'm an oppression machine! : O Straight white women mostly get a pass because they have to put up with white straight men who are the worst thing ever. White lesbians are pretty much golden because their femaleness and gayness more than offsets their whiteness. I tried to work out equations but I could never get it completely figured out... Grades in my class were proportional to each student's acceptance of the premises. Those who believed (or pretended to believe) and could also produce grammatically correct English sentences received A's. Those who argued or intelligently debated received lower grades. I received an A. I'm good at making people think that I agree with them when I don't.

Re:Community college, anyone?

[jopsen]

Lucky you. I did one semester at a local Comunity College. $1200 for tuition and fees, and then another $500 for books.

In my country education is free...
And on-top of that we get educational support, which is just about a 1000USD per month... I have to buy my own books, do my own cooking, laundry and have a place to sleep, but student housing programs and government housing support (on-top of the educational support) makes my education virtually free...
But if you want to go out once in a while... Buy a new laptop, tv, stuff like that it's good to have a little savings, or take a student loan (which the government offers at a favorable price).
By the way I live in Denmark, Europe... :)