MIT Begins Offering For-Pay MOOC In Big Data 51
An anonymous reader writes "MIT announced today that it will begin offering for-profit courses on the edX platform, beginning with a course in Big Data. This is the first for-pay course offered on any of the major MOOC platforms. It is run through MIT Professional Education, the arm of MIT that provides professional education and training for science, engineering and technology professionals worldwide. MIT announced that it will be the first of a new line of professional programs called Online X Programs, to be delivered globally using the MIT and Harvard founded open-sourced online education platform, edX."
Blockbuster 2.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
For the tidy sum of $495, you can rent their videos for 4 weeks.
Re: (Score:2)
For the tidy sum of $495, you can rent their videos for 4 weeks.
How long before they end up on BitTorrent?
Re: (Score:3)
For the tidy sum of $495, you can rent their videos for 4 weeks.
Yeah... how generous of them 30 day access to the archived course (includes videos, discussion boards, content, and Wiki)
Many of the free Moocs only allow you access to archived course material, like.... practically forever :)
Well Then (Score:4, Insightful)
I have wanted to go to MIT for a long time. They made their content open and seemed quite progressive in actually caring about education.
After all is said is done they've learned nothing from Aaron Swartz? This is a disgrace. I now want nothing to do with him.
Education is not a business.
Re:Well Then (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well Then (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you think it's so damn expensive?
Artificial Scarcity of Information. Over valuation of accreditation certificates: You still have final exams instead of entrance exams for jobs -- So your brightest self-learning minds are disadvantaged, and your boss is a dummy from a degree mill who doesn't know what your job actually entails.
The dawning of your Information Age has come. Information markets are post-scarcity economics now. This is the first generation to grow up in such a society, of course there will be growing pains as your markets adjust. You had better learn this lesson now from your economic mistakes in the artificial information scarcity bogosity, because physical things will become post-scarcity as well. Market what's scarce -- labor -- not infinitely reproducible copies. This is how mechanics, builders, and the FLOSS model operate. Most human homes have information duplication devices, soon they'll have object copiers too. Same as all the other sentient species.
You would laugh at a business plan to sell ice to Eskimos, but imagine what that would entail: Look at your copyright and patent law. You teach art with books that have blank boxes -- a URL placeholder, to leverage more artificial scarcity and forced obsolescence. You have infinite monopoly over your work before you create it, you don't need one afterward. Why are you still charging so much for that which is cheapest to (re)produce? Your professors could do so much more if they were not tied up giving the same lectures over and over, like a looped magnetic film.
Why do you humans even watch television if you refuse to learn the messages embedded therein for you? How can any advanced race visit your planet with your world's economy in such a ridiculous state? The others have "prior art" for everything you will invent for the foreseeable future. Those among you granted access to such advancements would hinder the progress of others, not share.
Your knowledge is so expensive because you are a pathetic primitive race -- A case study in how not to advance as an interstellar species. Quarantine is the only option.
Re: (Score:3)
My business model: Make enough to pay my bills.
I call this my "cash crop job", and don't take it very seriously. What I do take very seriously is the personal education that I give my children, which consists of my own carefully lived life experiences, (which has very little to do with today's economics), and growing my own food. Perhaps it's simply teaching my kids how to be happy. But the foremost con
Re:Well Then (Score:4, Insightful)
Prestige, mostly. I don't deny it. It's the only reason to go there, really. That and research opportunities. A degree from MIT is worth more than the same degree from my state university. I could know the exact same things, have done the exact same research, and published the exact same papers. All things being equal it still comes out that way.
Cost has nothing to do with it (although going to school for free is a sweet deal). If I truly wish to accomplish something I'll find a way, regardless of cost.
Re: (Score:2)
$495 for a certificate of accomplishment?
Come now... I'm not going to pay $500 to read a textbook and get a piece of paper that means nothing.
Re: (Score:1)
What a whiner...
Education should be open to all!!
Well, you can pay to take the course, which is still a fraction of what it costs to attend as any other student.
Money is not an object, I'll go to any lengths, but I want to be associated with the exclusive name of MIT!
Well, sign up here then, registration is open!
Ah, fuck, who would want to do that?
(facepalm)
I can see why you haven't made it into MIT.
Re: (Score:2)
Judging by your reasoning, I'd say you graduated from... what, Yale?
It doesn't matter that you're only paying a "fraction of what it costs to attend as any other student" -- which is also false, unless current MIT students aren't allowed to take the course. Otherwise it costs exactly the same. -- since current students get things like... well, course credit is the big one. GP was looking at the return for the cost which, honestly, I agree is a bit steep for a 1-off.
Re: (Score:2)
Judging by your reasoning, I'd say you graduated from... what, Yale?
It doesn't matter that you're only paying a "fraction of what it costs to attend as any other student" -- which is also false, unless current MIT students aren't allowed to take the course. Otherwise it costs exactly the same. -- since current students get things like... well, course credit is the big one. GP was looking at the return for the cost which, honestly, I agree is a bit steep for a 1-off.
$499 for a class that ends in a certification backed by a reputable organization is definitely not steep. Many certifications cost about that much for just the exam itself, while training material is usually in the thousands even for online classes.
Re: (Score:1)
Prestige, mostly. I don't deny it. It's the only reason to go there, really.
As someone who went to MIT as an undergrad, I don't mean any offense -- but I'm not sure you know what you're talking about if you haven't been there. I don't know what it's like these days, but I can tell you about my experience about 15 years ago.
I came from a crappy semi-rural public high school and made it into MIT. I had no idea what I was getting into, and I just accepted the tasks that were given to me when I arrived. It was only really when I came home for summer break after freshman year and s
Re: (Score:2)
After all is said is done they've learned nothing from Aaron Swartz?
I realized now that I had completely forgotten about Aaron Swartz already.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me be clear on my position.
Open courses which require a tuition to cover costs is acceptable. Professors and faculty have to be paid and so do we have to pay for the server hosting and etc.
Open courses which are created for profit is unacceptable. This is doubly true when all you receive from the course is a piece of paper that's worthless (oh and knowledge that you learned mostly on your own from reading a book!). It's a dirty scheme.
People who think hospitals, schools, etc. should be run like a bus
Correction: thousands of courses (Score:2)
MIT OpenCourseWare [mit.edu] is up to around 2200 courses... let alone the 20+ they've done through MITx [edx.org]. MIT has spent tens of millions of dollars giving free education material to the world.
Disclaimer: I work for MIT OpenCourseWare and still get annoyed that we have a ton of people who don't know about us cranking away at free course materials for the world for more than a decade! (MIT OpenCourseWare was announced in 2001.)
After I read this article... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The English is strong in this one.
i got all excited when I first read it, I misread it as "MIT Begins Offering Fore-Play MOOC"!
Before and after (Score:3)
Books (Score:2)
Any suggestions for books on Big Data?
Especially on topics like machine learning.
$500 buys a lot of Dover books (Score:2, Interesting)
Just saying you could buy a lot of Dover books on statistics, stochastic analysis, linear programming, and so on for $500 and learn a LOT about Big Data. You'd have enough money left over to get O'Reilly's Hadoop book.
Re: (Score:2)
Just saying you could buy a lot of Dover books on statistics, stochastic analysis, linear programming, and so on for $500 and learn a LOT about Big Data. You'd have enough money left over to get O'Reilly's Hadoop book.
Then you can spend $1000 and have all of the books plus some more guided instruction. I learned far more from reading books than I did from either my bachelors or masters degrees, but that doesn't make them a waste of money. I still know more today because I did all three (well, the bachelors was pretty much a waste, but it allowed me to go to graduate school).
ROW MOOC vs US:twice the education, 1/3 the price (Score:2)
Not the first (Score:3)
Udacity announced in November for-pay MOOC classes: http://blog.udacity.com/2013/11/udacity-innovation-is-in-our-dna.html [udacity.com] /K
Coursera as well (Score:2)
But wait, there's more... (Score:1)
After you finish the course, you'll be able to purchase the big data generated by THE COURSE!!
Big data, giving snake oil a run for its money.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (Score:2)
MOOC = Massive Open Online Course
Is it really too much to ask for people to define their acronyms? I'm a little tired of having to Google an acronym in every story. This one *only* appears in the summary.
Re: (Score:3)
MOOC = Massive Open Online Course
Is it really too much to ask for people to define their acronyms? I'm a little tired of having to Google an acronym in every story. This one *only* appears in the summary.
I'm sure an editor will be on that ASAP (As Soon As Possible).
Re: (Score:1)