←back to thread

OMSCS Open Courseware

(sites.gatech.edu)
234 points kerim-ca | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
rs186 ◴[] No.46178589[source]
In the past they made videos available via Udacity, which were removed after Udacity turned their focus to short & easy (which often means superficial) courses for enterprise training instead of "serious" university courses. I guess that was not a viable business.

Of course they did not come with any assignments, just like these courses. Can't blame them, but other universities offer much resources -- for the same topic, you can often find a course offered by another university that provides videos hosted on YouTube, full assignments and labs, even exams. The only thing you are missing is TA/office hours and the course credit. In other words, unless you actually want to earn credits and work towards a degree, I suggest that you skip OMSCS videos unless there is no alternative.

replies(3): >>46178671 #>>46179464 #>>46181694 #
cgearhart ◴[] No.46179464[source]
I was the head of enterprise curriculum in 2018 and an OMSCS grad in 2016. This was a weird time to work for Udacity and the company went thru a major shakeup in 2019. The “breakup” with GT happened before the focus on enterprise and the enterprise focus was somewhat short-lived as the CEO was replaced just as enterprise was ascending as the primary revenue stream. COVID was rough for Udacity, and content production was commoditized.
replies(1): >>46181701 #
justin66 ◴[] No.46181701[source]
That’s counterintuitive. If COVID couldn’t bring in business, what could?
replies(2): >>46182018 #>>46185020 #
rs186 ◴[] No.46182018{3}[source]
I imagine what it means is basically, "Before COVID, universities had to collaborate with Udacity to produce these courses and manage course credits/online degrees. Now they realized that they can easily do it themselves (perhaps at the institution level)"
replies(1): >>46185063 #
1. cgearhart ◴[] No.46185063{4}[source]
Nah. There was some of that as the tools available to unis improved alongside Udacity, but it was a very intentional choice. The business with GT made $X/year while the consumer & enterprise businesses brought in $20X/year. It seemed like we could maybe double the OMSCS or scale linearly with effort by making more partnerships, meanwhile the other lines scaled faster with much less effort. Terminating this partnership was just one of the business lines that got cut off to focus everything on the lines that were growing much faster.