[AISWorld] Georgia Tech offers a $6, 600 Master's Degree in Computer Science

[Bhattacherjee, Anol]

Leon asked a very interesting question at the very end of his post: "you have three choices: Prepare for it, build it, or ignore it. What's your path?" Here's my two cents on this issue:

Ignore it:  After e-commerce transformed retail, banking, and other businesses, it was just a matter of time before it impacted the education business.  MOOC and online education were inevitable and are here to stay.  I'm pretty sure there will be MOOCs in MIS and other business disciplines as well.  They have a clear value proposition high quality content at cheap prices) and they will grab market share from the traditional education business, just as Amazon has displaced many small retailers.  Ignore MOOCs, and you will see declining student enrolment, and you are risking your own survival.

Built it: This is the strategy that my university has adopted. But in my opinion (which probably doesn't matter :-), this strategy is doomed to fail.  Our experience with e-commerce shows that with increased growth potential on the Internet comes increased competition.  Since geographic location is no longer a constraint, if one assumes that a computer science degree from University A is not very different from a similar degree from University B, the basis of competition will be price and/or brand.  Why would a student register for an online degree from a less known university, if they can get the same degree from a well-known school like Georgia Tech for only $6600?  By the same logic, why would a student sign up for the Georgia Tech degree, when they can get the same degree from Harvard/MIT/BU (the edX consortium) - a stronger brand?  90% of e-commerce firms have failed within their first two years of operation, and I predict that the same will happen for 90% of universities offering MOOC classes.

Prepare for it: This third option is possibly the only reasonable one for those of us who don't teach at Harvard/MIT.  We have to build/rebuild our traditional programs to compete with MOOCs and figure out a survival strategy that continues to appeal to our local markets.  In the traditional education environment, many students pay $200,000 for a Harvard degree, when they can get the same education from a reasonably good state school for $25,000-50,000.  But they would do that only as long as they see they see value in the higher priced education option (for instance, getting access to Harvard's  illustrious network of venture capitalists and Wall Street firms/jobs/internships, which may not be replicated at a state school).  Likewise, there will always be a (perhaps smaller) market for traditional in-class education, even in the presence of cheaper MOOC, but only if traditional education can differentiate itself and demonstrate value over and above online education to justify the higher price premium.  If traditional education continues to follow the "talking heads" (lecture) model that can be replaced by an online video-based "talking head", then there is no reason why a student will continue to come to a classroom and pay a premium for it.  But there are things that we can do in the classroom, such as collaborative learning, projects, interaction and discussion, that are less replicable in online environments.  We have to collectively put our heads together and figure out how best to do this.  This will require some creative thinking, and the change will not be easy and resisted by many.  But, perhaps that is our best hope for survival.

Best regards,

Anol Bhattacherjee, Ph.D.
Professor & Dean's Fellow, ISDS Department
College of Business, CIS 2083
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620
Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=INT1RB4AAAAJ
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