More than 80 of the students are employed by AT&T, which provided $2 million to Georgia Tech to support the program.
“This program addresses a clear and growing need globally: to provide flexible, high-quality education in vital fields for a price that’s affordable for working professionals,” said Nelson Baker, Georgia Tech’s dean of professional education. “Almost every student enrolled this spring is also working full time, something that would be extremely difficult to do in a traditional program. OMS CS represents a valuable option to a population of students who need it.”
In many ways, the program has officially started at a time when MOOC platforms find themselves at a crossroads.
The courses’ infrastructure will be based on the model of, and maintained by, Udacity, a company whose CEO announced a pivot toward vocational training late last year and called MOOCs a “lousy product.”
One of Udacity’s main competitors, Coursera, recently charged ahead in the opposite direction, debuting their own MOOC approximation of degree programs called “Specializations,” complete with final exams and capstone projects.
“This new approach is a huge step toward revolutionizing higher education by making an advanced technical curriculum more accessible and affordable,” said Bill Blase, senior executive vice president for human resources at AT&T. “We need highly skilled software engineers, network engineers and data scientists. Through this program, we will enhance training for our current workforce and ensure a great pipeline for these roles and others going forward.”
Follow Jake New on Twitter at @eCN_Jake.
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