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Now Even Harvard Business School Is Working On Free Online Courses

RDS

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It is certainly good quality if it is from Harvard.
One of the school's most prominent professors, Clay Christensen, has been predicting this for some time. He's the father of the concept of disruption innovation, and sees it coming for higher education in general and business schools in particular.
"At Harvard Business School, we’re getting disrupted by online learning," Christensen said recently at the World Business Forum in New York City. "It truly isn’t as good, but does this technology, over time, get good enough to meet the needs of our customers? The answer is yes."
The threat to universities comes on multiple fronts: Online education is dramatically less expensive; it gives the best professors the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people, instead of a couple hundred a semester; and the actual student experience is getting better all the time.


Read more: Harvard Business School Online Courses - Business Insider
 
I see it as part of the future, but we still have to overcome the decline in the professorial-student relationship and the consequences of a lack of feedback. Reaching thousands for cheap is great, but you still want to make sure you develop a student's potential.
 
With an online education you earn a degree, with a college education you earn and experience. That is the difference in my book. I'm not downplaying the importance of one or the other, simply there are pros and cons to each. I really don't think online education would be growing so fast if the economy was better and college costs were lower.
 
It is certainly good quality if it is from Harvard.

Had some recent experience with this type of program. My son had to take another 3 courses to hit 150 credit hours for his desired field. He took them over the summer at a cost of something like $1,700. Not bad considering a term at his college was costing about $30K. The classes were clearly not as challenging as the school he got his degree, but it was accredited.

So for something like that, filler it worked fine. For a full degree from this university, I guess you get what you pay for. Same will be true with this Harvard stuff. It will be fine but will not get the same respect as people coming out of their full time program. Perhaps in 10-20 years it will have value.
 
Had some recent experience with this type of program. My son had to take another 3 courses to hit 150 credit hours for his desired field. He took them over the summer at a cost of something like $1,700. Not bad considering a term at his college was costing about $30K. The classes were clearly not as challenging as the school he got his degree, but it was accredited.

So for something like that, filler it worked fine. For a full degree from this university, I guess you get what you pay for. Same will be true with this Harvard stuff. It will be fine but will not get the same respect as people coming out of their full time program. Perhaps in 10-20 years it will have value.

It's worth to go for the credits to qualify for advanced standing later.
 
Had some recent experience with this type of program. My son had to take another 3 courses to hit 150 credit hours for his desired field. He took them over the summer at a cost of something like $1,700. Not bad considering a term at his college was costing about $30K. The classes were clearly not as challenging as the school he got his degree, but it was accredited.

So for something like that, filler it worked fine. For a full degree from this university, I guess you get what you pay for. Same will be true with this Harvard stuff. It will be fine but will not get the same respect as people coming out of their full time program. Perhaps in 10-20 years it will have value.

For 30k I get two-three years of a degree at a top Canadian university. What school does he go to?
 
For 30k I get two-three years of a degree at a top Canadian university. What school does he go to?

A lot of times we aren't comparing apples to apples. The figure one person is quoting may include food/housing/transportation/beer cost, the other might just be quoting a tuition only cost.

All the public colleges in my state have a tuition sticker price of around $12k/yr, for in-state students, but thats tuition only. Private colleges are typically more in the $25-$35k range, tuition only. One of the private colleges that my kid applied at only offers an "all inclusive" price, it includes housing and a meal plan which all students are required to have, and it's a little over $50k/yr.

One private Jr. college in my county advertising "free" tuition for any student with over a 1000 (two part) SAT and a high school GPA of 3.0 or better and who graduated in the top 30% of their class. The tuition still isn't exactly free, what they do is they combine a state grant that all instate students get who chose to go to a private instate college, plus the state lottery scholarship, plus any other grants or scholarships, and the college then provides an academic scholarship making up the difference. So yes, college can actually be as cheap as "free" in the US.

Our state lottery academic scholarships range from $2000 to $7500 a year (depending on qualifications), so that alone can pay for a big chunk of the cost of education.
 
A lot of times we aren't comparing apples to apples. The figure one person is quoting may include food/housing/transportation/beer cost, the other might just be quoting a tuition only cost.

All the public colleges in my state have a tuition sticker price of around $12k/yr, for in-state students, but thats tuition only. Private colleges are typically more in the $25-$35k range, tuition only. One of the private colleges that my kid applied at only offers an "all inclusive" price, it includes housing and a meal plan which all students are required to have, and it's a little over $50k/yr.

One private Jr. college in my county advertising "free" tuition for any student with over a 1000 (two part) SAT and a high school GPA of 3.0 or better and who graduated in the top 30% of their class. The tuition still isn't exactly free, what they do is they combine a state grant that all instate students get who chose to go to a private instate college, plus the state lottery scholarship, plus any other grants or scholarships, and the college then provides an academic scholarship making up the difference. So yes, college can actually be as cheap as "free" in the US.

Our state lottery academic scholarships range from $2000 to $7500 a year (depending on qualifications), so that alone can pay for a big chunk of the cost of education.

12k covers all my fees and tuition for an out of province university without scholarship or government subsidy; it is about what I will pay for going to Montreal (out of province) and will be even less if I claim Quebec residency. Housing is more but can be entirely optional and living off campus can be cheaper. Some universities offer paid co-op which can sometimes earn you enough money for tuition, housing, and some nice things. I still don't understand why they are called colleges when they are not. Some universities here have free tuition if you meet a minimum average (usually 90%+) I just wouldn't go to any of them.
 
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12k covers all my fees and tuition for an out of province university without scholarship or government subsidy; it is about what I will pay for going to Montreal (out of province) and will be even less if I claim Quebec residency. Housing is more but can be entirely optional and living off campus can be cheaper. Some universities offer paid co-op which can sometimes earn you enough money for tuition, housing, and some nice things. I still don't understand why they are called colleges when they are not. Some universities here have free tuition if you meet a minimum average (usually 90%+) I just wouldn't go to any of them.

I was talking about tuition plus room and board. So the tuition part alone was probably $40-50K.

He could have gone to a state school for zero cost of tuition and been part of their honor program which is actually a separate school within the university. The state is very generous trying to keep its best students home.
 
I was talking about tuition plus room and board. So the tuition part alone was probably $40-50K.

He could have gone to a state school for zero cost of tuition and been part of their honor program which is actually a separate school within the university. The state is very generous trying to keep its best students home.

the university that my kid goes to has the #1 in the country ranked honors college. It's close to an ivy league education, at a public school price. You and your son might should have considered that option more closely, but of course I shouldn't be critizing because I have no clue of your situation.

One of the really nice things about some of the honors colleges is that they often offer special degree programs that aren't offered to regular students. Like at my kids college, they have a 5 year joint Batchelors/JD program for honors college students. I mean where else can you get a bachelors plus a doctorate in just 5 years? Unfortuantely, my kid got my academic genes, so he didn't score high enough on the SAT and didn't have the grades to get into the honors college. he is still going to be able to complete his bachelors/mba/JD in 6.5 years though, as he is graduating with his bachelors a year early. Thats assuming that he has a 160+ on the LSAT that he took last weekend.
 
the university that my kid goes to has the #1 in the country ranked honors college. It's close to an ivy league education, at a public school price. You and your son might should have considered that option more closely, but of course I shouldn't be critizing because I have no clue of your situation.

One of the really nice things about some of the honors colleges is that they often offer special degree programs that aren't offered to regular students. Like at my kids college, they have a 5 year joint Batchelors/JD program for honors college students. I mean where else can you get a bachelors plus a doctorate in just 5 years? Unfortuantely, my kid got my academic genes, so he didn't score high enough on the SAT and didn't have the grades to get into the honors college. he is still going to be able to complete his bachelors/mba/JD in 6.5 years though, as he is graduating with his bachelors a year early. Thats assuming that he has a 160+ on the LSAT that he took last weekend.

American stuff is what this posts amounts to for me. I'm glad I don't deal with I would say 80% of that.
 
I was talking about tuition plus room and board. So the tuition part alone was probably $40-50K.

He could have gone to a state school for zero cost of tuition and been part of their honor program which is actually a separate school within the university. The state is very generous trying to keep its best students home.

Well provinces don't really have to try to keep people in their province as each have their prestigious institutions and most provinces have a fairly large variety of them. The only real reason to leave your province is a change of scenery or to get into a certain province's professional associations like accountants.
 
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American stuff is what this posts amounts to for me. I'm glad I don't deal with I would say 80% of that.

What type of "American stuff"? Not sure what what it is that you wouldn't want to have to deal with.
 
What type of "American stuff"? Not sure what what it is that you wouldn't want to have to deal with.

We don't have: honour colleges, Ivy League schools per say, SATs, calling universities colleges (why?), and large price difference between different universities; public and private universities are similar in price.
 
the university that my kid goes to has the #1 in the country ranked honors college. It's close to an ivy league education, at a public school price. You and your son might should have considered that option more closely, but of course I shouldn't be critizing because I have no clue of your situation.

One of the really nice things about some of the honors colleges is that they often offer special degree programs that aren't offered to regular students. Like at my kids college, they have a 5 year joint Batchelors/JD program for honors college students. I mean where else can you get a bachelors plus a doctorate in just 5 years? Unfortuantely, my kid got my academic genes, so he didn't score high enough on the SAT and didn't have the grades to get into the honors college. he is still going to be able to complete his bachelors/mba/JD in 6.5 years though, as he is graduating with his bachelors a year early. Thats assuming that he has a 160+ on the LSAT that he took last weekend.

Good luck to your son with his LSATs.

I mentioned our option of the state school to show the person talking about the cost of college in Canada that people can get a good education here at a very good price.

While the honors program is very hard to get into (average SAT score of 1400 for the two parts) he was accepted to a business school that is ranked top top ten in the nation. We are fortunate so cost was not an issue.

All that being said I am in favor of state schools being very affordable ( as close to zero tuition as possible). Also they should take kids only from their state, so don't worry about ranking just giving the kids a great education. I say that they should take kids only from their state which I think is compatible with state residents subsidizing the cost of education.
 
We don't have: honour colleges, Ivy League schools per say, SATs, calling universities colleges (why?), and large price difference between different universities; public and private universities are similar in price.

I don't really know why some institutions of higher learning call themselves colleges and other call themselves universities. The main ranking publication, US News and World Report, distinquishes the difference as whether or not the school offers post graduate degrees. So the main branch of our state flagship university, which has a very large graduate student enrollment, is considered a true university by US News and World Report, while the local branch of that same university (which has the same name, and includes the word "university") is considered a college because it does not have a graduate school.

So Canada doesn't have any type of university entrance exam? And just anyone can go to any university, even the "popular" ones or the world famous ones?

Public universities in the US are generally subsidized by the state and thus are fairly inexpensive, and usually not super selective of their students, unless the school is just really popular. Private colleges will often also take anyone who can pay for their higher tuition, but of course the more popular private colleges are able to get more for their product (supply and demand), so they cost more. However, often at private colleges, good students can get very large scholarships, and this can help to offset the cost difference.

the public university that my son goes to offered him a very low scholarship amount, the very expensive private college that he was accepted at offered him a much larger scholarship, although it was still not large enough to offset the cost difference. fortunate for me, my kid decided to go to the public college due to the fact that they had a world famous instructor for his particular major, so that made for an easy decision, and we didn't have to struggle with tuition money.

Choices and options are always a good thing, even if they can be confusing.
 
I don't really know why some institutions of higher learning call themselves colleges and other call themselves universities. The main ranking publication, US News and World Report, distinquishes the difference as whether or not the school offers post graduate degrees. So the main branch of our state flagship university, which has a very large graduate student enrollment, is considered a true university by US News and World Report, while the local branch of that same university (which has the same name, and includes the word "university") is considered a college because it does not have a graduate school.

So Canada doesn't have any type of university entrance exam? And just anyone can go to any university, even the "popular" ones or the world famous ones?

Public universities in the US are generally subsidized by the state and thus are fairly inexpensive, and usually not super selective of their students, unless the school is just really popular. Private colleges will often also take anyone who can pay for their higher tuition, but of course the more popular private colleges are able to get more for their product (supply and demand), so they cost more. However, often at private colleges, good students can get very large scholarships, and this can help to offset the cost difference.

the public university that my son goes to offered him a very low scholarship amount, the very expensive private college that he was accepted at offered him a much larger scholarship, although it was still not large enough to offset the cost difference. fortunate for me, my kid decided to go to the public college due to the fact that they had a world famous instructor for his particular major, so that made for an easy decision, and we didn't have to struggle with tuition money.

Choices and options are always a good thing, even if they can be confusing.

As best I understand it a college has one discipline of majors while a university has several. As a matter of fact there may be several colleges within a university. So when my son graduated the kids came up by college during commencement. They then went to their college commencement to receive their degree.
 
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I don't really know why some institutions of higher learning call themselves colleges and other call themselves universities. The main ranking publication, US News and World Report, distinquishes the difference as whether or not the school offers post graduate degrees. So the main branch of our state flagship university, which has a very large graduate student enrollment, is considered a true university by US News and World Report, while the local branch of that same university (which has the same name, and includes the word "university") is considered a college because it does not have a graduate school.

So Canada doesn't have any type of university entrance exam? And just anyone can go to any university, even the "popular" ones or the world famous ones?

Public universities in the US are generally subsidized by the state and thus are fairly inexpensive, and usually not super selective of their students, unless the school is just really popular. Private colleges will often also take anyone who can pay for their higher tuition, but of course the more popular private colleges are able to get more for their product (supply and demand), so they cost more. However, often at private colleges, good students can get very large scholarships, and this can help to offset the cost difference.

the public university that my son goes to offered him a very low scholarship amount, the very expensive private college that he was accepted at offered him a much larger scholarship, although it was still not large enough to offset the cost difference. fortunate for me, my kid decided to go to the public college due to the fact that they had a world famous instructor for his particular major, so that made for an easy decision, and we didn't have to struggle with tuition money.

Choices and options are always a good thing, even if they can be confusing.

University admission is based on your high school course marks and usually a minimum average is required overall and in certain classes, yes even the most "prestigious" ones; anyone can get into the University of Toronto or McGill (internationally recognized ones) as long as their marks are high enough. Again we don't really have prestigious schools either especially for undergrad it doesn't really matter it is more about what you did (co-op, actual degree) than where you went but let's just say some offer more connections than others and on top of that each province has their own which are known in the province but not outside of it. For graduate the schools above dominate that field.

We call universities what they are, universities and it may also be because college courses in high school are geared towards the "intellectually challenged" so college generally has negative connotations associated with it for those of us who go to universities. Most of our universities have both undergraduate and graduate (I can't think of one that doesn't) but they usually specialize in one or the other.

Well I actually do not know about the price differences between public and private as there are virtually no private universities in Canada, seriously look at the list. I have never heard of any of those and our most "prestigious" universities are all public. Actually I have heard of St. Mary's but they are apparently crap at what they do. The only price difference is between Quebec and the rest of Canada as Quebec heavily subsidizes the cost of university with average cost being 3000$/year in tuition while else where it is 6000$-8000$. This is why since I want to go to school in Montreal (McGill or Concordia, probably Concordia) it might be cheaper to permanently move to Quebec than come back home every summer.
 
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I really think many colleges will be shutting down or drastically cutting programs in the next few years, but it's another thing entirely for many people to actually do well in Harvard b-school quality online classes, and earn a 'degree.' That is kind of necessary in order to become much of a threat.
 
All that being said I am in favor of state schools being very affordable ( as close to zero tuition as possible). Also they should take kids only from their state, so don't worry about ranking just giving the kids a great education. I say that they should take kids only from their state which I think is compatible with state residents subsidizing the cost of education.

Problem is that they don't subsidize any more. The reason elite schools like UCB have taken more and more from out of state is because the state, or rather the taxpayers, have chosen to disinvest. In michigan, this has been going on since before 9/11. So they are now reaping what they sow, which is an inability to access the best public schools. Here, it has gone from 35% to 55% out of state in a decade, entirely due to budget cuts.

As for most public colleges, they can barely stay afloat as is, much less take exclusively in state students. Rankings are one thing that i agree is overly obsessed over. Being taught by fellow undergrads is unfortunately what your system would lead to though.
 
As best I understand it a college has one discipline of majors while a university has several. As a matter of fact there may be several colleges within a university. So when my son graduated the kids came up by college during commencement. They then went to their college commencement to receive their degree.

thats an entirely different definition of the word "college", so ya, it can get real confusing to someone who is not familiar with the US system.

It's the same way at my son's school. They have departments which are called "colleges" and others which are called "schools", and there are really no differences between these subdivisions, other than just names. So at my son's school, they have the "School of Music" which is the entire music department, and the "Darla Moore School of Business", yet they have the "College of Education" and the "College of Engineering", but in all four examples the words "college" and "school" are interchangable with no clear distinction between what makes on department a school and another a college.

That's not to be confused with an independent facility of higher education, which may be called a "college" though, even though it may offer a wide variety of degree programs in different majors, like Boston College, or Wofford College. Both Boston College and Wofford college are considered more prestigious than a lot of institutions with the name "University", such as the private Garner Webb University, or the public Winthrop University.
 
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