Last updated on 13th May 2016
Here's an interesting article from yesterday's The Hindu (May 11th 2016), MOOC is a potent tool with job guarantees thrown in: Sebastian Thrun, http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/mooc-is-a-potent-tool-with-job-guarantees-thrown-in-sebastian-thrun/article8581449.ece.
In the interview Mr. Sebastian Thrun says, "The momentum around MOOC has slowed but the new Udacity model is moving very fast. Going forward, we would love to extend our job guarantee (or money back) plan to all geographies, including India.
Top notch Indian employers such as Flipkart have hired Udacity Nanodegree graduates based solely on their performance in our programme, without any in-person interview."
The following comment (slightly edited, and broken into two parts) appears on the above web page:
I would like to say that I am greatly encouraged with Udacity's Nanodegree program as a way to provide software development skills to interested Indians (and others the world over). It is of great interest to me to note Mr. Sebastian Thrun's words that Flipkart, a top Indian e-commerce company, has hired Udacity Nanodegree qualified persons solely/mainly due to their Udacity Nanodegree qualification! Congratulations to Udacity & Mr. Sebastian Thrun, and a big thank you for having started this seemingly more effective Internet based alternative to regular Indian academia including its MOOC offerings for learning software development skills.
My background: As a B.Sc. (Physics) graduate (M.Sc. Physics drop-out), I made a career in the international software industry by joining an Indian software company in Mumbai in 1984 as a trainee programmer, underwent an around four-month intensive training period in programming & systems analysis and then did on-the-job training. I retired from commercial work in 2002, and then taught programming (software lab. courses) as a free service, for around 9 years (2003 to 2012) in a deemed university in Andhra Pradesh, India. I have also blogged extensively on my thoughts & suggestions on improving the practice of software development in Indian Computer Science & Information Technology academia.
--- end submitted comment ---
I then did some browsing for Udacity in India which led me to two interesting webpages:
a) https://www.udacity.com/india
The first thing that comes to the fore in this page is that Google & Tata Trusts (a few of the famous philanthropic Trusts from the house of Tatas) are offering 1,000 scholarships for students in India to take the Android Developer Nanodegree of Udacity, for free.
It then lists the various Nanodegrees (different from courses alone) on offer:
1) Beginning iOS App Development
2) Data Analyst
3) Android Developer
4) iOS Developer
5) Ruby Programming
6) Machine Learning Engineer
7) Full Stack Web Developer
8) Senior Web Developer
9) Front-end Web Developer
10) Tech Entrepreneur
11) Intro to Programming
The Nanodegree program will provide access to courses, projects to build a portfolio, coaching and project reviews. Monthly cohorts would also be provided/arranged.
b) https://www.udacity.com/wiki/india-faq
I have given below the first Question & Answer of this faq:
Q: Why India?
India is one of Udacity’s fastest-growing countries in student engagement and interest. It is already our second largest student base; perhaps not surprising as India boasts the world’s second largest developer population with 3 million software developers. With the right resources and focus, India has the potential to have the #1 developer population by 2018. We want to help students in India to be part of that journey.
--- end short extract from www.udacity.com/wiki/india-faq ---
Ravi: No wonder, we have Sebastian Thrun making visit(s) to India! I am so happy to see this interest and services being rendered by Udacity to Indian students and Indian software development industry.
The FAQ states that the cost of a Nanodegree program in India will be slightly less that Rs. 10,000 per month with the students expected to take 6 to 9 months to complete the program. On program completion ("successful graduation"), 50% of the tuition costs will be reimbursed to students!
So for a determined and capable student who successfully completes the degree say in 8 months, the payment to Udacity will be around Rs. 80,000 with half of tuition costs being reimbursed (don't know whether that means half of the total 80,000 or of something lesser). Let's presume that the effective payment to Udacity then comes down to Rs. 50,000. [As of today, 12th May 2016, 1 US Dollar = Rs. 66.67; so Rs. 50,000 comes to around 750 US Dollars.]
That would be a very reasonable sum for middle class and higher class Indians! Note that the job prospects being high after passing in-demand Nanodegrees like, I presume, the Android Developer Nanodegree, makes it a very attractive proposition for those who are interested in this area. However, they need to have 1-2 years experience in Java or another object-oriented programming language prior to enrolling in this Nanodegree program.
The Nanodegree program will be the taught by the same instructors as globally. But there could be some localized support.
a) Intro to Java Programming, https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-java-programming--cs046, a four month course.
b) Android Development for Beginners, https://www.udacity.com/course/android-development-for-beginners--ud837, around 4 weeks course.
==========================
Update on 13th May 2016: An Indian correspondent (IC1) who was a researcher and university professor in India and the West for much more than a decade, then spent a decade in Indian IT industry, and is now associated with the teaching of Computer Science in India, wrote the following over email (and was OK with public sharing; slightly edited):
Dear Ravi
Four years ago, the MOOC scene looked crowded with Udacity, Coursera, EdX and others offering free university-level courses (you had to pay for the certification). Was the traditional university going to last? Should we in India be pushing MOOCs to try and solve the problem of poor education? And so on.
It is interesting to see how the major players have now differentiated their offerings. EdX is promoting life-long education with preparatory courses, shortened university degrees and so on (see Anant Agarwal's article in today's Times of India -- I read the paper version and could not find a pointer to the online version). Udacity is now focussing more on the commercial/training market which is also huge. Coursera is still trying to license their courses to colleges and universities but (a) they do not fit in with Indian degree curricula, and (b) they are expensive.
Some prominent online universities have had to drastically change their models. Others supplement online courses with a lot of hands on teaching and tutorials.
At present, I think the big players are still running on venture capital and have not yet become commercially viable. So more changes should be happening in the coming months and years. Perhaps we will evolve something that suits our needs better than the canned material that is currently available.
--- end main part of response from IC1 ---
I (Ravi) responded as follows (slightly edited):
Read Anant Agarwal's article here, Where higher education is headed in the 21st century: Unbundling the clock, curriculum and credential, http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/where-higher-education-is-headed-in-the-21st-century-unbundling-the-clock-curriculum-and-credential/, dated today (May 12th 2016). I guess this is the article you were referring to in your mail.
Thanks for your interesting views, --name-snipped--.
My interest is more in the area of imparting affordable and job worthy skills to poor and lower middle class Indians. In this area, the quite affordable price of the Nanodegree programs of Udacity along with the job guarantee (or else you get your money back), makes it a standout MOOC based program. I should also say that I do recognize that traditional educators have a much larger perspective to worry about than my limited interest in affordable and job worthy skills being imparted.
Based on interactions that I have had with quite a few students & parents of the poor and lower middle class in India, as well as fair level of reading on the matter, it is crystal clear to me that almost all, if not all, of such students and parents view higher education as a passport to a decent paying job. The parents are willing to beg and borrow to fund the higher education of their children (both boys & girls). Sometimes the boy does part-time work to fund his higher education expenses. Their clear goal is a good paying job. The higher education expenses and time are viewed as an investment for the job. And if after doing all this hard work and spending all that hard earned money, if the higher education degree does not land them a job, they face heartbreak of a terrible kind. I have seen enough of this in my town of Puttaparthi and am very upset with the heartbreak so many youngsters face with a degree that does not land them any decent job.
For such persons, a Udacity like Nanodegree program with a job guarantee (or money back) seems to be a very interesting option. Note that the Udacity Nanodegree would not be recognized by govt. authorities, I guess, or Indian academic authorities. [This would be like how my 4 month intensive industry training followed by on-the-job training was not recognized by govt. authorities or Indian academia.]
But that's fine. It is a private enterprise response to a desperately felt need in Indian software development education. Youngsters would get a graduation degree from recognized Indian academia like B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) or B.E. (Bachelor of Engineering; B.Tech. is a similar degree standing for Bachelor of Technology) or B.Com. (Bachelor of Commerce), and additionally do one of these Udacity Nanodegrees to land a job in the well paid Indian software industry. [Like I did B.Sc. Physics followed by industry training.]
Udacity will not be under the purview of Indian academic regulators like UGC or AICTE. That will free them completely from any bureaucratic control and/or politics from these top academic regulators. If Udacity does a good job of providing well trained software developers to the Indian software industry, the software industry itself will not only put in a good word about Udacity to the government, but may also help Udacity to grow by leaps and bounds. It will be a market driven thing.
So essentially there will be competition between traditional academic model of Computer Science and Information Technology degrees and Udacity type of Nanodegrees, in terms of duration, price and level of job-worthy skills imparted. Yes, of course, the traditional CS and IT degree curriculum would be a more wholesome one and something that can create visionaries, innovators, ground-breaking researchers and tech. leaders of the future, and the Nanodegrees alone would be weak in that area. But there will be competition on the job-worthy skills part. That will be good.
I would also like to make an overview comment. Student debt and the rising cost of college tuition have become USA presidential campaign issues! Student debt in India is also becoming a significant issue but I don't think it has reached very high levels yet (don't know about the future). Many youngsters in the USA seem to be at a loss about their job prospects, and USA presidential candidates are talking about how college students are telling them about how worried they are about job prospects after they graduate. I think the situation is very serious - honestly. Something has got to give. USA and Indian academia cannot go on like they have in the past few decades (and centuries, actually). What exactly may happen in the future is not clear. But I do think that job guarantee (or money back) kind of education offerings may become very attractive to many confused and worried students (& parents) in USA as well as in India.
--- end my response ---
IC1 correspondent wrote back (main part of response):
Dear Ravi
Feel free to use my comments. By the way, I was a research and university professor for much longer than the 10 years I spent in the Indian IT industry.
Your own comments provide an important view orthogonal to the usual reports on university education. Like you, I see people struggling to earn money for their children's education with a clear eye on what this will buy them in terms of future jobs. They send children to schools with substantial fees (despite having free municipal schools nearby), they pay for extra tuition and generally try and groom them to get out of the low-paid job rut that they themselves are in. Sadly, these are not the motivations that the HRD ministry sees and recognises as driving forces for education. [Ravi: HRD ministry in India is the union/federal education ministry in charge of primary, secondary and higher education.]
University/college education is a whole area that needs a lot of study. It is interesting that Udacity has chosen to pitch their efforts towards securing jobs. I hope they are sincere about this and that the participants will benefit.
--- end IC1 correspondent main part of response ---
Here's a response I sent to another correspondent (only my response is given below; slightly edited):
Happy to receive your response, --name-snipped--.
I think the Nanodegree is more than one course offering. The crucial thing about it is that it offers a job guarantee. I have known of such offerings made by private Indian software education companies in specific industry in-demand areas (e.g. some IBM mainframe skills or even ERP skills, if I recall correctly), during my software industry days [1984 to 2002]. They would charge a Lakh [Lakh is one hundred thousand Rupees] or two then and the program would last six months or so, if I recall correctly. They had an arrangement of pre-interview by software export companies who would give a conditional appointment letter to selected candidates, the condition being that they successfully finish the program. At that time, providing appropriate computer hardware and software facilities and knowledgeable instructors was the vital part of those offerings by the successful private software educators with industry job tie-ups.
I don't think the Udacity Nanodegree can be viewed as costlier than 10 Lacs engg. degree college. [Ravi: 10 Lakhs/Lacs is Rs. 1 million; @66.67 Rs to 1 US Dollar, around 15,000 US Dollars. This would be total cost including tuition fees, hostel fees and any other fees for a 4 year engineering degree in a good quality private engineering college in India. The tuition fees alone would be more like Rs. 1 Lakh per year, and so Rs. 4 Lakhs (around 6,000 US Dollars) over four years.] Yes, for a fresher there are additional skills to be picked up, either via Udacity courses (not Nanodegrees but courses) or courses elsewhere. However, I think that would be available at lesser cost than the Nanodegree. Worst case, I think, it would be 50,000 more, over a less than six month period.
So the Udacity Nanodegree for a fresher would be around Rs. 1 Lakh (around 1,500 US Dollars) and a time period of around a year and a quarter. But this cannot be directly compared to a B.E. or B.Tech. degree in CS or IT. As I have mentioned in the mail extract given below, students will typically need/want to do graduation elsewhere in regular Indian academia - could be a B.Sc. or B.E. or B.Com. but this need not be a 10 Lakh kind of college and could be govt. funded colleges (and so cheap even if teaching quality may be medium or worse). So, in my view, the Udacity Nanodegree would be a post-graduate UNOFFICIAL (not recognized by govt. or UGC/AICTE) qualification which has the all important job guarantee (for those who finish the program successfully; so they need to have some level of ability). Of course, there could be exceptions where somebody does a Nanodegree after 12th standard (or even after 10th standard) board exams, but these would be exceptions and not the rule, as graduation recognized by govt. of India has become a minimal expectation for all kinds of things (almost all kinds of white collar jobs in private and govt. sector in India, emigration and foreign visa clearance for white collar jobs/assignments abroad, social standing including marriage prospects :-) ...) in India.
--- end my response ---
Terry Reis Kennedy wrote over email (and was OK with public sharing):
Very informative and very exciting....Just great to know this, Ravi.
---end main part of Terry response ---
A software engineer correspondent wrote (and was OK with sharing):
A job guarantee is the most important part of it, given that many college degrees in India don't lead to a job, and are therefore a useless investment of money and time.
Still, I'm surprised that it's as costly at 50K. That's out of reach of the poor, whom I thought MOOCs could reach given the hype about them. Maybe Udacity isn't as democratising as I thought. It's still good for the middle and upper class, but I wish it were more affordable.
--- end software engineer correspondent comment ---
[I thank udacity.com and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above short extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
