Sebastian Thrun Pivots Udacity Toward Vocational Education 86
lpress writes "Udacity CEO and MOOC super star Sebastian Thrun has decided to scale back his original ambition of providing a free college education for everyone and focus on (lifelong) vocational education. A pilot test of Udacity material in for-credit courses at San Jose State University was discouraging, so Udacity is developing an AT&T-sponsored masters degree at Georgia Tech and training material for developers. If employers like this emphasis, it might be a bigger threat to the academic status quo than offering traditional college courses."
MS the new VoTech (Score:2, Informative)
The BS is the new high school degree. So now the MS is the new VoTech? Sheesh, people are getting stupid. I actually took electronics VoTech the last two years of high school in the late 80's, and we covered Karnaugh mapping, small signal response, assembly level programming, etc.
Not at all true (Score:5, Informative)
There is a fact a high demand for actually skilled labor. There's a high demand for skilled developers, for example; I have seen that first hand.
I also know from others there is high demand for really skilled heavy machinery workers, skilled plumbers, skilled electricians, etc.
What there is a lack of is people willing to put time and especially effort into learning a real skill rather than a degree. You can find guys willing to sling code or a hammer as just a job, but very few that can (or want to) operate at a higher level.