Reminds me of all the online data science degrees from 5-7 years ago.

Except this is the result of a $20m NSF grant to one of the top CS schools in the country, not a fly-by-night startup looking to profit off a trend.

I’m actually kind of interested in this. I’ve taught myself a decent bit and done my own projects but going through a structured curriculum with a cohort of peers has its benefits.

You should check out Georgia Tech's Online Masters of Computer Science (OMSCS). I learned about the program through hacker news and got a master's degree in 2 years. The classes are incredibly well put together, especially those by Dr. David Joyner.

CU Boulder has an online MSc in Data Science for about that, too (15k). [0]

I'm not sure if we are seeing a race to the bottom in ed-tech yet, there is still a long way to go, but it has certainly dropped after COVID. the BSc is still the most costly, but consider that a year at CU Bolder for out of state students is roughly that so it goes to show just how drastic things are getting.

0: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie...

Good luck to them but if there’s one thing we learned during the pandemic as educators it’s that large online lectures are awful and generally ineffective.

It depends entirely on how the program is implemented. If you record the classroom lectures and post them online and call it a day, then yes, it will be woefully inadequate.

So what's the spread? How often is this the case?

I am currently in the online MS in CS from UT Austin, and I am really enjoying it. I’m just doing one class at a time for fun. I’m only in my second class right now, but I’m excited for this to add new courses!