I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

http://blog.alyxandria.org/post/89703880248/i-cant-afford-a-bachelors-degree-so-im-making-my

by Michael-XCIX • 12 years ago

250 139 12 years ago

blog.alyxandria.org

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

This strikes me as potentially much more disruptive than MOOCs and much closer to the original concept of the university.

harmegido• 12 years ago

I agree, awesome name too.

ofir_geller• 12 years ago

do you have an estimate of the cost for a full first degree? even one that's very broad will help me understand your idea better.

Michael-XCIX2• 12 years ago

I sure do. As things stand right now, the cost of a bachelor's degree from start to finish will be capped at around $20,000 (hopefully less) if a student were to pay to take complete courses with a professor in a live-web conference, 1-1 tutoring, or in-person setting.

Professors charging less than the maximum amount allowed, plus the opportunity to take competency exams administered by a professor (which have a much lower cap on how much professors can charge) could reduce that cost pretty significantly.

bcguy390• 12 years ago

How much would you say the cap for a professor to teach would be. Also why would they want to do this instead of teach a real course at their university

javert• 12 years ago

I'm not going to have any sympathy for argument that starts out with the demand that a person be able to get their education locally. A great many people have to go somewhere else and move around for school. That is the norm in a great many places. Also to pursue work, many people have to move.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

Does your lack of sympathy to that point matter terribly?

zemvpferreira• 12 years ago

Not at all, especially when the click-through link asking for Professors says: "Work from anywhere. Online or in person - the choice is yours."

This seems like the beginnings of something great. I'm very curious to see how it shapes up.

jdreaver• 12 years ago

The whole point of this is to disrupt the current education model, and your criticism is that it doesn't follow an aspect of the current education model.

Yes, a lot of people travel away from home for school. I'm sure it can be a great experience. Should that be a requirement for an excellent education? Of course not.

chasing3• 12 years ago

So. Instead of paying a bunch of money and spending a lot of time on something that didn't feel right, you struck out on your own and self-educated yourself.

Own that decision! Having a fake Bachelor's degree from some fake accreditation system you invented will just make you seem like you're defensive about it or trying to pull one over on people or something. It just feels weird.

sirdogealot• 12 years ago

What's so fake about it?

Completing a list of criteria and scoring well on standardized tests is pretty much all that qualifies somebody for a "degree" from any one of our current post secondary insitutions.

When you wrote "fake Bachelor's degree from some fake accreditation system" I assumed you were talking about the Universities and Colleges of the world.

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

What's so fake about buying 100,000 followers on twitter? It means you're famous, right?

dmak2• 12 years ago

I don't think there is a need to be condescending here. I actually like this persons idea and I want to see how it pans out.

JasonFruit• 12 years ago

I don't read it as condescending. I read it as representative of the response of the average educated person to a degree whose accreditation is supported mostly by the opinion of recipients of the degree. If you educated yourself, say so, and provide evidence of your own knowledge. That way, you'll be one more person who shows the validity of self-education, and you'll make it easier for the next one.

WildUtah• 12 years ago

Opening an accrediting agency is the wrong first move. There's lots of space to work within the system that's already being opened up to you easily and cheaply.

Try these two accredited schools that will award degrees entirely by examination, remote classes, independent study, project-based learning, and other proven study that matches a rigorous college program:

http://www.wgu.edu

http://www.excelsior.edu

Excelsior is a traditional remote-degree program with lots of help to find you the right courses and get credit for them. Western Governors is new, online, and more experimental. Either one can both help you find ways to learn and get you the sheepskin bureaucrats need to hire you.

And they'll both handle all the accrediting for you.

jelloPuddin• 12 years ago

Just looking briefly at excelsior, they don't even have a true CS degree. It looks like mostly IT, network admin, and technician kind of stuff. I don't think this really fulfills the need he was discussing.

pdxandi• 12 years ago

I just filled out the tuition estimator, and for an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering Tech (not sure what "Tech" means), it costs almost $67k for four years. I haven't looked into online education before, but that just seems outrageous. I graduated 10 years ago from a public university with an EE degree and it cost me $17k for four years. I realize college tuition has skyrocketed, but I see no rational reason a similar degree should cost anymore today than what I paid 10 years ago, inflation adjusted. I'm really just shocked and saddened at the current state of secondary education.

hawkharris• 12 years ago

I love this concept and give the author credit for articulating it so well. My only suggestion would be to add a social component to the program.

Meeting people is the most important part of college. The vast majority of graduates find jobs through their personal networks. If finding a job isn't your top priority, students who expand their circles grow intellectually as they exchange ideas with people who have different perspectives.

Having said that, I've thought about putting together a do-it-yourself comp-sci degree that involves attending local Meetup events. One of the great things about this field is that, in most cities, there are active communities surrounding what it is you want to learn. So it's possible to capture the personal networking experience of college without the tuition.

nostrademons2• 12 years ago

I would love to see the social and academic components of college decoupled.

One of the things that always struck me as stupid about college when I attended is that I knew I was paying mostly for the privilege of going to school with a bunch of other grads who were silly enough to drop 40 grand on an elite education, and yet would end up in powerful positions afterwards on the strength of the name alone. The academics I could (and did) get elsewhere, more efficiently, but the degree and the network can't be replicated. However, the degree (fundamentally) is just a piece of paper, and the network (fundamentally) was just hanging out with a bunch of people who also got that piece of paper. I've found both to be quite valuable post-college, but there are many, many subjects that I could've studied that would've been more useful than my courses.

I bet we would see a lot more innovation in instruction methods and content of courses if they were decoupled from social aspects, networking, residences, and accreditation.

nmrm3• 12 years ago

For me, the social aspect of college was about a lot more than forming a "professional network".

I learned a lot and grew as a person interacting with people outside of my area who will probably never (directly) provide me with a competitive advantage in the job marketplace. However, I know what I don't know in much deeper ways than I otherwise would.

Attending meetups might get you this for the very narrow slice of the world that is CS.

jotux• 12 years ago

provides me the opportunity to challenge myself and not be restricted to the 10 or 12 classes available in a major

This seems like an exaggeration to me. Looking back at my BS I took about 45 classes total (not including labs). Of the 45 classes 16 were specifically for my major (EE), 14 were science/math/engineering, and the last 15 were general education.

amorphid• 12 years ago

Personally, I think this idea is awesome. My off the top of my head suggestion would be to open source the requirements for accrediting a specific course.

For example, it's determined that students from the "Intro to Calculus for Programmers" course need to meet certain qualifications to pass. If they finish the course on their own, with no help from an instructor, then they only need pay an Instructor to oversee an "I know my stuff" exit process. If a student needs instruction, then the student can pay for the bits that they need. Instructors can become highly leveraged, experts in the parts where people really need help, charge more for their expertise, and students pay less because they need less overall instructor time.

That may be a little unclear. I've got a couple beers in me.

Michael-XCIX2• 12 years ago

Thanks! That's really nice of you to say. What you suggested is 100% what will be happening.

Everything, with the exception of the actual instruction between a professor and a student/class (not recorded lectures, actual instruction) will be open source and freely available for anyone to use with a non-commercial clause in the license allowing for the author (or anyone the author permits) to generate revenue from their use with banner ads etc.

fillskills• 12 years ago

Absolutely fantastic idea Michael. I have been trying to solve the same problem from a different perspective. Would love to see you succeed.

sinwave• 12 years ago

Monday evening beers ---> check in on Hacker News.

A winning combo.

VLM• 12 years ago

"open source the requirements for accrediting a specific course."

Isn't this MIT OCW and a zillion competitors?

araftery2• 12 years ago

A new form accreditation is really what's holding back a huge change in higher education. MOOCs right now, at most, can replace only traditional professional development classes. They're still not a drop-in replacement for college degrees.

That's because of accreditation. Bachelors degrees are valuable, in large part, because they're a common currency: employers know when they see a potential hire has bachelor's degree, he/she at least spent four years learning at a high level and fulfilled some level of competency in his/her chosen major.

Right now, there's no way for employers to make similar judgments about people who have obtained their education entirely online, so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé. In that case, you'd need to build up a portfolio of OSS projects, etc. Whereas a newly-minted bachelor's in CS will get your foot in the door somewhere, even without that extra work to back it up.

One approach to accreditation/evaluation are domain-specific exams, like the Boards in medicine or the Bar in law. But just passing an exam doesn't necessarily communicate the same thing as a degree, and thus doesn't really solve the problem. There are also, no doubt, disciplines not well suited to this form of accreditation. This approach (Alyxandria) seems more focused on accrediting courses (which solves the same problem) and does it by peer-reviewing those courses, which I think is a very interesting, credible, and scalable approach.

Right now, LinkedIn might be the closest competitor out there to this. They offer a form of peer-review for one's skills with their endorsement feature. Another company that was trying to tackle this problem is Accredible[1], but it seems they've now pivoted to include many more features than peer accreditation — perhaps at its expense.

It'll be really cool to see how this problem is solved in the long run. I think "accrediting" individuals, rather than institutions or classes that individuals can then take, will be the winning strategy, as education becomes increasingly unbundled. That is, if articles, YouTube videos, etc. are to be considered legitimate tools of learning in the future, as college classes are today, then accreditation of individuals will be the only sensible approach.

[1] http://www.accredible.com

sampo• 12 years ago

"so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé"

Well this is not a general solution, but for Coursera's Probabilistic Graphical Models, I remember someone in the course discussion board said that this was such a demanding course that he would hire anybody, who passed the course with good points, to his company.

grayclhn2• 12 years ago

It would be fun if the general solution was making online classes absurdly hard. Unfortunately, it's hard enough to stop cheating on exams in physical lecture halls, so once a high grade guarantees students job interviews....

TheOtherHobbes2• 12 years ago

"so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé"

I think most wise recruiters will look for evidence of being smart, of getting stuff done, and of being a good fit.

Unless you're in research, serious jobs are project based, not learning based.

If you spend three years learning all you can about CS and making an Awesome Cool Thing, I don't think many employers are going to think 'Meh.'

The situation in the UK is that degrees are getting more and more expensive and less and less valuable. It's making more sense now to go straight into work, even at intern level, than to lose three years and rack up tens of thousands in debt for no obvious benefit.

<i>If</i> the teaching and learning were truly worth the cash, it would be no contest. But outside the Big Name universities, they really aren't. And even there, a big part of the benefit comes the networking opportunities.

In middle league universities you don't get the networking, or the teaching, or the experience, or the industry connections. So what are you paying for?

snowwrestler5• 12 years ago

This might be heresy here on HN, but I think that there is more than accreditation paperwork at play here. I think it remains to be proven whether a MOOC actually does deliver an education that is on par with what you would get from attending a 4-year CS degree program at a college or university.

MOOCs are new and exciting, but they're also new and unproven. Accredited bachelor degrees are valued because they have a long history of delivering value. MOOCs do not.

araftery2• 12 years ago

I think you're spot on. The challenge is to find away to evaluate both on a level playing field. A CS grad from different caliber universities probably (on average) have different levels of competency. Even graduates from the same university won't have the same level of skill. For traditional colleges, employers can cut through these asymmetries by using heuristics like institutional prestige and metrics like GPA.

The key is to find a method of credentialing general enough that it can apply to both traditional, college-educated job applicants and non-traditional ones alike.

Whether MOOCs will be enough for those non-traditional applicants to be successful in this modern credential system is a separate issue, and, as you point out, far from certain.

eastbayjake• 12 years ago

You've got moxie, kid! It seems like some other commenters are raising questions about your model -- if you change your mind, I'm sure someone in this thread could get you a job that would let you pay the bills and use your spare time to learn whatever interests you. (Going to a prestigious college was cool, but Matt Damon was right: I could have learned just about everything at my local library for $1.50 in late charges.)

nostrademons2• 12 years ago

This is sorta the business idea that I always thought should exist but never had the guts to start. So, kudos for giving it a try.

However, the reason I never started it is because the value of a degree exists mostly inside other peoples' heads. Unless you can change what's in there, it doesn't matter what the piece of paper says.

And you'll face an uphill battle in changing it. Most people are not like Hacker News readers. They don't automatically assume that new ideas are interesting ideas; they tend to be risk averse instead. And so organizations that have built up a reputation over hundreds of years (like Harvard or Oxford) are at a significant advantage compared to even colleges that are decades old. Without a significant marketing campaign and a first class that goes on to be very accomplished, it'll be very hard to get people to take a new accrediting agency seriously.

Good luck.

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

I wonder how the kids in the movie "Accepted" would've fared after graduating from S.H.I.T.

Good on you for trying this, but try to work with existing accreditors.

cardamomo• 12 years ago

Why not depart even further from the traditional model of higher education? Open Master's is an interesting concept in this vein: http://www.openmasters.org/

alphaoverlord• 12 years ago

This blog post seems like a jumble of ideas that are neither consistent or connected.

It starts with colleges should be more than job training centers, then ends with trying to create an accreditation process to prove value to external entities (of which I assume employers are a big part?).

It mentions the high cost of education, then describes how his current options are lacking because the number of classes in each major is limited.

He talks about how administrators are unnecessary, then suggests a similarly labor intensive accreditation system that requires experts, committees and other logistics that requires significant manpower and time/energy.

There are many flaws with the educational system, of which convenience, rigor, equality, and cost are a few the OP mentions, however his solution doesn't seem to solve many of the challenges he mentions. I doubt that accreditation is a major cost to running a university - there are simply many other market forces (wanting facilities, a good football team, strong researchers that might not put teaching first) that causes the cost/benefit relationship to be the status quo. He finds it unconscionable that adjunct faculty don't make enough money, then hopes to solve it with a free market - where honestly the things he values might not be the things many others value. He wants rigor - then critiques current accreditation processes that largely does what he suggests.

Each of the major MOOCs already are trying to accredite/build reputation/be rigorous. What OP is essentially doing is describing the idea of Udacity, Coursera, etc without the technical backend, the users to attract such a marketplace, connections, support, or actually being able to do a MOOC.

MayanAstronaut• 12 years ago

Agreed, it is almost as if he needs a BA in English Lit

ChuckMcM3• 12 years ago

Considering that it is their first degree, I made the possible inaccurate assumption that this person was just getting out of the US equivalent of high school. My thoughts at that age were pretty jumbled too.

Many of my peers didn't really have any idea why they were in college until maybe their third year. It wasn't until they had the benefit of having gone through such a program and looked back on it to appreciate what it was that it was and how it affected them.

My sister asked once why I considered college graduation a 'big deal' and not high school graduation. My response is that graduating from college is the first thing you can do where it's reasonably hard, takes a multi-year effort, and is completely optional. It is, for me, a signal that someone has decided to pursue something through to the end, and to do so with the full knowledge that not doing so is also a valid path. It is, for me, the kinds of things that adults do, and kids don't do.

broodbucket• 12 years ago

High school graduation is a rite of passage, university is not, that's the difference.

kalms• 12 years ago

I really like that point of view. Don't have a college degree, but it still resonates.

prof_hobart2• 12 years ago

My response is that graduating from college is the first thing you can do where it's reasonably hard, takes a multi-year effort, and is completely optional

That's not entirely true - taking a job also falls into that category. Not saying that college isn't a valid choice, but 3 years of work at the same point can be an equally valid choice.

epa• 12 years ago

It depends who you are, i think this is all relative. Not talking myself explicitly, but for some people graduating high school is a major accomplishment in their life and is something that took a multi-year effort and was completely optional. Imagine a teenager who is the first one to graduate from high school in their family, who had numerous pressures to drop out (baby, lack of money, etc).

But I do agree with you that many people are unsure why they are in college until they are able to reflect on it after the fact. I think that happens a lot in life where you learn about yourself by looking at prior events.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

There's so many good points in your post.

The one thing which benefited me the greatest when I came out of college is the ability to think critically. I was able to form my opinions, examine things in a scientific manner, and make conclusions based on research and a logical thinking process. Something I wasn't even close to handling when I was 18 years old - which goes to your point about teenagers taking time to find themselves. It took me at least 2 years before I actually realized the opportunity college gave me.

And yet, for all of the questionable classes and lackadaisical professors, I still came out with a much stronger set of tools to look at and examine the world around me and communicate those ideas in a coherent manner to my peers.

These are the kinds of tools you simply cannot put a price tag on.

ap222134• 12 years ago

"...graduating from college is the first thing you can do where it's reasonably hard, takes a multi-year effort, and is completely optional...a signal that someone has decided to pursue something through to the end..."

I see this point-of-view a lot, and it is certainly the conventional wisdom. But, for a moment, let's abandon this belief and explore other perspectives.

What if college isn't a demonstration of tenacity or natural ability? Instead, what if education is just a game that everyone is forced to play at an early age, and what if advanced-degree seekers are those who have learned to enjoy playing the game? (Or, have been forced to play, because of economic reasons)

I certainly can buy that.

For instance, I know a lot of people with advanced degrees, and they generally fit into 3 buckets: 1) people who were expected to get an advanced degree because their parents had them, 2) people who enjoy playing games and winning external validation, 3) people who have an innate obsession with some aspect of knowledge. (BTW - I think the true scholars are category 3.)

What if people who win at education are just people who are naturally competitive, like being bounded by rules, are good at min-max game play, and who ultimately are driven by praise?

Certainly, those types of people would be excellent candidates for the corporation. But, are they also good candidates for being citizens or Humanity, in general?

And, what are other perspectives? I am just a curious person who happens to have a general dislike of conventional wisdom.

nmrm3• 12 years ago

You make some good points, but many of your objections are shallow.

It starts with colleges should be more than job training centers, then ends with trying to create an accreditation process to prove value to external entities (of which I assume employers are a big part?).

It is absolutely consistent to realize that a degree is not about job training, but should probably produce employable graduates. Ensuring the quality of the program is important for both. Many universities/colleges are "not about job training", but all of them are accredited.

I think the point is to ensure quality rather than demonstrate value; the main reason he identifies for not attending the smaller public schools in his area is quality. Similarly for existing online schools, which definitely are about job training.

It mentions the high cost of education, then describes how his current options are lacking because the number of classes in each major is limited.

I don't think this is inconsistent (which seems to be what you're implying), but agree that the author probably has a poor understanding of how such things work. See threads below.

He talks about how administrators are unnecessary, then suggests a similarly labor intensive accreditation system that requires experts, committees and other logistics that requires significant manpower and time/energy.

Well, you actually answer this below. Lots of those "administrative" costs are not about necessary things like accreditation and instruction (sports, fancy facilities, libraries, etc.).

Some of these (e.g. libraries) are necessary (for serious students). However, this approach could externalize many such costs. Most public universities open these facilities -- esp. their libraries -- to the public (sometimes for a small fee). That doesn't make the cost problem for the sector go away, but it does provide an affordable education for those who cannot afford the mainstream option.

however his solution doesn't seem to solve many of the challenges he mentions.

I don't think this is intended as a complete solution. I think it's intended to solve one specific problem standing in the way of a whole variety of solutions (that is, quality assurance and associated reputation).

He finds it unconscionable that adjunct faculty don't make enough money, then hopes to solve it with a free market - where honestly the things he values might not be the things many others value.

This is a fair and important criticism. I think the author of the post should think deeply. I imagine there are two answers. First, his approach seems to genuinely value rigor. This can go a long way toward resolving negative perceptions (one major road-block for these sorts of approaches). Second, there might be enough similar people that this sort of project could become feasible.

He wants rigor - then critiques current accreditation processes that largely does what he suggests.

I didn't see any critique of the current accreditation process. It's fair to ask why he isn't using one of those. I assume there are two reasons. First, many probably have a strong bias toward brick and mortar institutions. Second, I am sure many are "rubber stamp" committees (e.g. consider the dubious curricula of various "accredited!" online CS degree programs).

Each of the major MOOCs already are trying to accredite/build reputation/be rigorous. What OP is essentially doing is describing the idea of Udacity, Coursera, etc without the technical backend, the users to attract such a marketplace, connections, support, or actually being able to do a MOOC.

Well, no. His model is actually very different.

The M in the MOOC model is important. Star lecturers, hundreds of students, several TAs and little or no cost to the student has been the model thus far. There are many reasons this model probably doesn't scale to an entire degree program. Quality of assessment is one reason.

His model seems to call for something more intimate and more hands-on, with the instructor paid exclusively through student tuition. This seems both more sustainable and more likely to produce quality students (imho).

edit: cleaned up some grammar. But this is still an internet comment post, so thanks for putting up with my slopping writing!

webhat2• 12 years ago

He does have some critique of the institutions which have received accreditation: ...even though some terrible schools and programs are accredited by the respected accrediting agencies...

There are different levels of approval and accreditation in the US, and as a layperson the distinction might be unclear. Due to this lack of transparency means some agencies might be seen to be doing a better job that others.

My experience with the education board in Vermont was very good. And although it wasn't exceptionally hard to get approval to give course credit, which is what you can get if you don't yet have all the prerequisites for a full degree program, it was certainly not a rubber stamp.

jalanb• 12 years ago

there are simply many other market forces (... a good football team ...)

Not being an American, may I just take a slight space to admit that Mind == Blown

mhb• 12 years ago

So this is your first encounter with the pretty crazy association between education and sports in the US?

senand• 12 years ago

I'm diverging from the topic, but isn't it terrible that "a good football team" is a major cost to running a university (in the US)?

ecocentrik• 12 years ago

It's my understanding that a "good" college football team generates considerable sums of money for a univerity. You're probably thinking about the cost of starting a football program or maintaining an unsuccessful football team.

masters3d• 12 years ago

I understand the frustration the author may have with the current college system but there are ways of getting a cheaper quality education. People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Take 1 college class every 6 months and you will get that degree in due time.

Ologn• 12 years ago

Yes. The title is "I can't afford a Bachelor's degree" and he talks about $12k and $17k a year programs, but if he did not take a full schedule on and cut it in half, it would be $6k to $8.5k a year (or perhaps $7-9k with fees). It takes longer but if you say you can't afford it the other way...

chaostheory• 12 years ago

provides me the opportunity to challenge myself and not be restricted to the 10 or 12 classes available in a major

I don't feel that you're restricted to a set number of courses for your major. Universities tend to tell students about the MINIMUM number of courses that you NEED to take within your major in order to graduate. Universities will be fine with students taking more courses within their major just as long as you take the minimum number of courses in other areas such as general studies. There are also more and more inexpensive online university programs, of which more and more are being offered by public universities.

Even if the courses don't challenge you enough in your university, there's nothing stopping you from asking a professor for more work in the form of a quarter or semester hands on project or research. GA Tech professors are more than happy to hand them out, and there are some cool ones.

Since we're on the subject of something that challenges you, you should try applying to Georgia Tech. I'm not sure what the stats are anymore, but not too long ago only 10% of incoming freshmen (most of whom were the top 5% of their HS's) would graduate.

Michael, I'm not sure you fully did your homework before coming up with your proposed solution (though I could still be wrong). imho I don't feel that anyone can fully understand the problems of the current university system, until they actually attend one.

nileshtrivedi• 12 years ago

Meanwhile, Udacity has started a credential program called Nano Degrees: https://www.udacity.com/nanodegrees

ivan_ah2• 12 years ago

This could be good, but I don't think we need to imitate the "granularity" of the existing system. Currently, the "accreditation" is very chunky: a piece of 11"x17" paper certifying you know how to read and write, and can produce a sustained effort of three years in a row.

A more interesting option would be to issue certificates for each course taken. Specifically, it shouldn't be necessary to sit through all the lectures and do all the exercises, but simply pass an "I know my stuff" exam, as per @amorphid's suggestion.

The test could be a 30 minutes skype interview + problem solving session over skype with an professional accreditator. Of course, this only pushes the reputation question to the problem of who accredidates the accreditators, but that might be easier to solve, at least for certain niches.

jqm• 12 years ago

This is a cool idea.

It needs to be more fully fleshed out and coherent, and it needs more muscle (and players) behind it, but it is a cool ideas.

voidlogic2• 12 years ago

>I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree

That is very true for some degrees, but I laugh when potential C-S students say this.

My first year of undergrad at well performing state university, I took loans and worked at the schools IT support center, 7.50/hr. The following summer I worked as a "Application Development Intern" and made $10/hr. For the following three years I worked part-time at a local software consulting firm and made $15/hr and part-time as a C-S TA and made 10/hr. I paid off my debt 2 months after graduation and I got lots of great experience.

My story is very typical of my C-S and IS major classmates. And now those same internships in my Alma mater's town are paying 17-18/hr.

So when people say that can't afford to get a C-S degree I think they either don't know the score or want to be one of the "too cool for school" kids in the valley, but lack the proper reasoning (I don't use that term for people with good reasons).

balls187• 12 years ago

eh, not everyone will be successful, even with a CS degree.

I know programs at many schools are hyper competitive, so that will weed out the ones that can't hack it, but College is expensive.

That said, I liked the line from Rich Dad, Poor Dad that explained the difference between thinking "I can't afford it." and "How can I afford it?" The former just shuts off your thinking and accepts a situation.

Granted the OP is taking a creative approach to the problem.

snowwrestler5• 12 years ago

I'd argue that a person who is not going to be successful with a CS degree is probably also not going to be successful at starting a brand new accreditation system for higher education.

Getting a programming job requires some hustle. Establishing a new foothold in the hyper-comeptitive landscape of high ed probably requires a whole lot more hustle.

Crito3• 12 years ago

I would go so far as to say that even taking out student loans and not working through college could be reasonable for a CS student, provided that they were confident in their ability to graduate and prove their worth to employers.

I didn't do that; I worked through my CS degree much like you describe, but had I instead taken on debt then proceeded to get the same job offers that I did in this timeline, then I would have had my student loans wiped out within two years of graduating. CS grad earning potential is good enough to make taking on student loan debt not entirely insane; which is more than can be said of many majors.

(Of course that is assuming that I would have received those same offers, which is questionable if I did not have the work experience that got from working myself through college).

steveklabnik2• 12 years ago

How long ago was this? It matters, a lot. Tuition doubled at my school while I was there. I ended up with ~$72k in debt. And it wasn't any Ivy-league school.

Crito3• 12 years ago

While I was at university, I had a total of 18 months of 40-hours/week internships/co-ops. Those were at intern rates, but even so a year and a half of working took care of about $40k of expenses. I continued to work for some of those companies while I was in class, which covered the rest.

It's not easy, but if you work hard you can at the very least keep your debt reasonable.

(It is probably also worth mentioning that your debt was more than double the median student loan debt of people leaving college: ~$30k: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/student-loan-debt-m... Your school (and mine) was far more expensive than was necessary.)

dragontamer• 12 years ago

There's a "for profit" problem going on in the US. First of all, the Echo Boomers just went through college, and during that time period, there wasn't enough universities / colleges for everyone.

So unless you were a very top performer in your class, it was unlikely that you got into a state university. Instead, people got into for-profit universities they heard through internet ads or TV ads. (There is _always_ a spot for you in a for-profit university). For-profit universities were a bad deal, they manipulated their students and lied to them about their accreditation status. The problem didn't become known until maybe 2012 or so when the Obama Administration began to crack down on their shady practices.

The fact of the matter is, State Universities are the way to go, although they weren't an option for many people. Today, the average cost of an in-state university is $9000 / year. (This falls in line with my experience)

Even with books and stuff, that will only be ~$45k in loans for the average in-state university.

As the Echo Boomers leave college age, the college-age population is beginning to shrink again and it will be easier to get a degree now without resorting to overpriced out-of-state costs or for-profit schools.

voidlogic2• 12 years ago

I was a college freshmen in 2004. But I have family members doing something similar now. Consider the interns making 18/hr and working 25 hr a week. That is just over 23k a year which is very respectable for a student.

I think besides where you go to school mattering for tuition, people forget about housing. Where I went to school students today pay ~$300/mo per head for sharing an apartment or house. Welcome to the upper midwest, obviously we can all think of places where housing is far more expensive.

ivan_ah2• 12 years ago

I’m looking for an affordable degree program that is academically rigorous, and provides me the opportunity to challenge myself

If you're not going to university, you must find yourself some good books to read. Get in touch with someone who is knowledgeable in the field you're interested in and ask them for book recommendations. I remember one day my friend recommended me the sequence of books for learning physics (CM by Goldstein --> QM by Sakurai) and reading these two books did more for my physics education than what I learned in class...

<plug> If you're interested in learning first-year science in an affordable manner, check out the No bullshit guide to math and physics. I wrote this book because I was tired of watching my students suffer at the hands of mainstream textbooks. http://minireference.com/ </plug>

dnautics• 12 years ago

I'm not sure this is what is happening with alyxandria, but Whoa. I think a peer-to-peer degree accreditation is an amazing idea, and I am a little bit sad I didn't think of it first. There might be a problem going with a strictly money-based exchange system (bad incentives) but I am certain there are solutions to this problem (some sort of rating system).

I would be willing to help. I have a PhD in chemistry/biochemistry.

JohnHaugeland2• 12 years ago

Given that there are a lot of non-accredited schools filled with teachers and curricula that we don't take seriously, so I'm sure a homemade college degree by someone who thinks university is job training will go over well.

"Oh you graduated summa cum laude? From where? ... your house, you say."

supsep• 12 years ago

How did this make the front page of HN?

bruceb• 12 years ago

We are refining it right now but you can go to http://www.coursebuffet.com and see approximately what level a free online course would be at a US university.

beloch• 12 years ago

1. Apprentice in a good trade and you can earn more than the average professor. Seriously, my plumber makes more than than the prof who taught me quantum physics.

2. If you're at all cut out for college, you can get scholarships.

3. Even if you're not brilliant and just persistent, you can get loans.

University administrators and their associated bureaucracy have been expanding for quite some time now. It's actually rather sickening. I went to a conference and inadvertently lost the receipt for a $20 supper that sparked of a month-long shit-storm of gargantuan proportions when I tried to claim it as a travel expense. I think the University must have spent upwards of $2000 in man-hours lost. I honestly would have just paid the $20 had I only know what I was setting in motion! They weren't even coming down on me! They turned on each other like a starving pack of wolves, desperate to establish who was the alpha!

It's worth asking how we can step back into sanity from our current, ludicrous position. Recently, several University of Alberta professors organized a protest in which dozens of professors have applied, in groups, for the position of president of the University. They argued that any of the many groups applying for this position could do a superior job to any single person, and they'd each be getting a raise despite splitting the salary of the position! While the obvious message is that top administrators make far too much, I actually hope the UofA hires one of these groups. An absolute bloodbath for the administration of the UofA would likely ensue! Perhaps those claiming $20 for dinner at a conference will simply be given the $20 without touching off a grand inquisition that costs thousands!

chrisBob2• 12 years ago

In addition to scholarships, which are merit based, many schools also have good financial aid, which is need based. I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

I am at Boston University now and while the sticker price is $55k/year the average american student pays about half of that. When my wife went to Princeton they used the FASA form to to calculate how much your family could afford and gave you a grant (gift) to cover the portion that should be student loans. In this way the fancy Ivy League schools can be cheaper than most other schools, and this is available to every student that is accepted.

smeyer• 12 years ago

When you say that "the average american student pays about half of that", are you counting student loans towards the half the student pays or the half they don't? I've seen loans treated both of these ways before. I went to Harvard, and like your wife at Princeton, I found the financial aid incredibly generous. Their net price calculator online is a pretty good guide to their policies: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... .

swalkergibson• 12 years ago

I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

Many colleges do not have the endowments of the Ivy League, therefore, need-based financial aid awards are essentially non-existent for people who are simultaneously too rich for aid and too poor to pay outright.

For instance, in my application to Babson College in 2007, I was outright denied all financial aid because my parents (combined) made $90,000 and had a modest retirement portfolio in the $200k range. At the time, tuition was about $50k/year. Without them utterly sacrificing their entire nest-egg or moving out of their own house, paying for school on their own was entirely out of the question. Thus, I ended up going to the private loan market and got a decent rate for a $50k student loan. Thank God I was only there for a year, I cannot imagine having to service a debt of ~$1,500/month for the next 20 years.

Loughla3• 12 years ago

I agree that higher education administrative costs have gotten higher since the 90's, BUT (and that's a big but), as far as your $20 goes, there's a reason you've been rung through the ringer. The institution didn't do that to assert dominance over you. They did it to be in compliance with the law and audit requirements. No one wants to track down $20. They have to because of rules imposed on them from outside forces.

Institutions who receive public dollars are audited at least yearly to ensure compliance with state/provincial requirements, and somewhere around every 5 years on federal statute. These audits include ensuring checks and balances on money paid out to staff/students for any reason, including travel and conference costs (fun fact, many federal programs have travel costs that are based on staff pay, thereby limiting the amount of 'excess' spending the programs can do on travel. . . .because everyone knows we attend conferences in Michigan for fun. . . ).

Anyway, it may seem like a small deal to you that you lost the receipt for $20, and in the grand scheme of life, it is. BUT, in the direct application of audit completion and legislative compliance, that $20 is the first step to lawsuits, persecution and public shaming of the University when it turns out that every employee was allowed to slip $20 past the business office. Controls are controls on everyone, they are impartial and they apply across the board; the same rules apply to the lowly grad. ass. as they do to the provost and president.

Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent on on $20? Yes. Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent to ensure that tax dollars are spent reasonably and within the bounds of the law?

No.

Source: I am part of those 'sickening' higher education administrative costs, and I have personal experience consulting for federal audit compliance at public colleges in the states.

araes2• 12 years ago

TL;DR: You were subjected to a $2000 ordeal over a $20 charge because the audit and compliance system is broken and has no concept of measured response. Because layer after layer of bee watchers have been hired at six, seven, or eight figure salaries to ensure that every other layer of bee watchers is properly covering their asses in case that deli sandwich you bought turns into a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the good bees have left, and no one has noticed that each spoon of honey costs a hundred grand, while tasting oddly like corn syrup.

netcan• 12 years ago

Ambitious. Probably completely overreaching and doomed to failure. Small chance of a wonderful success. Good luck.

" In my mind higher education should be almost exclusively about academics. I’m looking for an affordable degree program that is academically rigorous, and provides me the opportunity to challenge myself and not be restricted to the 10 or 12 classes available in a major."

For someone with these kinds of goals, I think the best perspective is to think of universities as cultural institutions, like marriage. The institution allows young people 3-4 years to spend on education, experimenting with their personality, etc.

Peers are important from that context as are mentors.

tchai_• 12 years ago

Some valid criticism in here, but massive thumbs up for:

"The potential for a good story, is one of my only requirements in deciding to do or not do something."

webhat2• 12 years ago

We went the other way and have approval to give course credit from the state of Vermont. And are in the process of getting accreditation.

johnsteve• 12 years ago

This is an interesting blog. A very good idea in my opinion A good initiative taken as well as a strong idea built for the people who have the poor financials issues. Cheers

MisterNegative• 12 years ago

Universities force students to learn, otherwise students will fail courses etc. I usually make plans to learn stuff etc next to my courses, but while I'm motivated to do so, it never seems to be enough. Therefore, I fail to do this additional work because nobody enforces me to do it.

I hope that the author of the article at least thinks about motivational problems such as mine before going through with it.

mellisarob• 12 years ago

too much going on in merely one article

gdewilde2• 12 years ago

I had a bad idea for you Michael. Every day there are news articles about university professors who did something wrong or have some other reason to quit. You could contact them and point them at your project.

A sample for today:

Professor John Schindler posted a photoshop http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/navy...

Professor Bacevich retired http://www.bu.edu/today/2014/good-bye-professor-bacevich/

and is starting a MOOC https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-intl301x-war-greater-midd...

Reddit user 20kadjunct is adjunct professor with an annual salary of $20,000 and 2 other jobs. http://www.businessinsider.com/adjunct-professors-ama-on-red...

professor Thomas Docherty, a nationally recognised critic of higher education leadership and policy, was suspended last term in March. http://theboar.org/2014/06/23/suspended-professor-prevented-...

A fresh badge of Professors every day.

(the plot thickens)

eitally• 12 years ago

I got really excited about something similar, in 2011, when I read this post about the DIY-MBA movement: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/i-started-a-diy-mba-group-youre...

I haven't done it yet, but I am still contemplating the idea. One of the biggest problems that can arise with not actually attending a university in person is the lack of relationship and teamwork education. That can be partially mitigated via videoconferencing and online team projects, but it's not the same as being in an office and leading a group of individuals in person. One of these years I'm going to actually have time to do this....

kbar13• 12 years ago

in HTML there are such things as anchor tags[0] that allow you to link to other pages instead of using the footnote-y reference-y markup.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html

peter303• 12 years ago

I attended a technology school in the Boston area with the intention of liberalizing my education once I found the time. But I never really did, save a small hobby here and there. I still have great hopes with all the new internet self-education options out there.

Bangladesh1• 12 years ago

Nice reading this was

nickthemagicman• 12 years ago

I love this idea and support it!!

Sort of PhD marketplace.

For smart people who can teach themselves there needs to be some sort of validating and credentialing of the knowledge they have!

yellowapple• 12 years ago

The site mentioned in the article (alyxandria.org) is flagged by my company's filter/proxy (IronPort) as being a potential malware site because "IP address is either verified as a bot or has misconfigured DNS." Perhaps this accreditation organization should check its DNS records?

restless• 12 years ago

"I want America like Europe where they'll educate your kid until his head explodes. You want to go to college, go, we need you, we need doctors because people grow up and fall down and go boom, everyone is going to need a doctor, let's have three doctors per floor of every apartment building in this town. How about that as a good idea? Like that is a good idea. Okay, so let's make college tuition either free or really low and if you have a country full of whip-crack smart people you have a country the rest of the world will fear. They will not invade a country of educated people because we are so smart we'll build a laser that will burn you, the enemy, in your sleep before you can even mobilize your air force to kill us. We will kill you so fast because we are so smart and we will have foreign policy that will not piss you off to the point to where you have to attack us." Henry Rollins

HSO2• 12 years ago

Or… you could just emigrate to (one of the better-functioning parts of) Europe. Public universities with no or low fees, some of them excellent to world-class, no worries about SWAT raids, greater privacy protections, healthier food, etc. etc. I used to admire the US when I was young(er). Mostly, I came to realize, because I have deeply liberal values (liberal, that is, in the original European sense!). These days, I ask myself why anyone would even stay in that pathetic joke system, especially if young, flexible, and intelligent. You can't get anything done for your own people, starting with education and health; all you do is work them harder to extract more taxes to pay for your warlords to terrorize and snoop on the rest of the world.

lgieron• 12 years ago

Aren't non-EU students supposed to pay full price for their university education?

HSO2• 12 years ago

Sure, in the UK. I don't even count them in Europe anymore. ;-) Try Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Sweden, France,…

dinduks• 12 years ago

Not in France for example.

phazmatis2• 12 years ago

This is an interesting idea, but I don't see how it differs from what Coursera and such are offering. Pay for a structured, college-like learning environment, to prove something to yourself, or brag. (I'm excluding those who are just trying to be more marketable to employers)

I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

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