<edit> To address a question below about GT's program, NC State's is practically equivalent to their campus-based stuff. You apply, and are admitted, following exactly the same process as everyone else. After admission, you follow the same rules and processes as everyone else. The one exception I've found -- besides making it easier to study part time and draw out the total duration -- is that professors are usually much more lenient with deadlines for their online students. They know a large percentage of online students are doing it that way because they're working full time (or are deployed military, or any of a plethora of other situations), and they offer a lot of leeway. This helped me & my peers quite a lot.

Out of curiosity, how does this work with project-based courses where the students design their own projects? Or do those not exist?

At least in the kinds of CS masters projects I'm familiar with, they tend to require a lot of one-on-one meeting time, which seems like it would be hard to scale up. It's certainly possible to do online, so online vs. physical isn't really an issue. But if one of the goals of offering these programs online is also to massively increase student:teacher ratio (as GT seems to be indicating), that seems like it would present a problem for individualized projects.

A typical arrangement is that students propose a project, possibly based on some suggestions from the professor. In the ideal case it intersects students' interests with something active going on in the research world or even the professor's lab, so the students and professor might even co-write a conference paper at the end of the course (for the best projects). They meet with the professor a few times to refine the project idea and scope so it's appropriate for the course, likely to be doable, etc. Then they meet a few more times during the project to ensure they're on track, agree on what parts could be cut if time doesn't allow them to be completed as originally envisioned, etc. Finally they do an oral, conference-style presentation of their work/results, and then hand in a report.

The biggest pain has been exam proctoring. It seems to all be done by hand (exams being emailed/faxed back and forth) and I've experienced every point of failure in the system. And strangely the professors always refuse to tell us when the exam windows are... haven't figure that one out yet.

As far as I know, they have the exact same work.

I think there will be quite a few companies willing to pay $7000 in tuition assistance so their employees can get a MS.

I don't think they said that. In the faqs they say you don't need to take the GMAT.... which every graduate student has to take.

> Georgia Tech said it does not plan to lower admission standards to find 6,000 or so students for this track -- a number than is 20 times larger than its current computer science master’s degree program. Instead, Georgia Tech hopes to attract more qualified applicants from across the world, including inside the military and at companies – places that harbor nontraditional students who could not previously come to a traditional campus or find the money for a full degree, on campus or online.

There is nothing in CS that requires your physical presence in a lecture hall to learn.

In my search thus far, I've found zero schools that offer a traditional undergrad CS program online. And please, before we get into the 'you can learn most of undergrad level CS topics online' - I would like the structure and support from an online, instructor led course that offers student assistance/office-hours. This is something I'd pay for, but because I'm working full time, I can't take classes during the workday.

Generally, 2-way interaction is done via message board, but most (maybe all?) of the instructors I've had so far keep specific office hours and available are for web chat or telephone calls during those hours.

Any of the prereqs that you're missing could potentially be taken as a transient at another institution (be it locally, or online). This is how I've handled the few classes I was missing.

Based on the rates listed on the page linked above, it should be around $25k for the whole thing (based on needing 60 credits of upper-division classes, since you already have a Bachelor's), even as a non-resident.

Also, there is an element of selection bias. Those who are likely to apply to an MS in Computer Science self-select according to their perception of the requirements of those programs. This enables programs to capture those without a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science but who still have the level of motivation, acumen, and interest necessary to succeed in an MS program in Computer Science.

So long as they know the fundamentals of programming (through, say, the equivalent a Data Structures class) I think a mathematician could take a go at it without much issue. An EE probably wouldn't have too much trouble either.

And the materials themselves will be free, like a regular Udacity class.

I feel the USD 40,000-50,000 price is overpriced for the on campus course. People should verify independently of me about the University of Leuven and post something here.

The general idea is that the society can afford to foot the bill for education better than it can afford to have people not attain the highest level they could reach.

Hm. Unless this is a master's course that requires that you already have a different master degree, it should only cost about 500 euros for Belgian students.

If the student passes the course, doesn't he deserve a masters? If he doesn't, well, he still paid 7k.

For all the talk about on-line degrees, I don't see them being a good replacement, unless as the cheap/distance option (makes more sense where tuition is high such as in the US), or for mature students with a job/family on the side.

Nothing can replace the full university experience (perhaps until somebody boots up a proper Matrix).

College is not just about book-knowledge, but also about being immersed in a new environment, meeting new people and developing new skills.

Naturally all this can be done in ones sleepy home-village, or on the 10/5-6 city job as well, but very few people find the time, or do the root-cutting necessary to be able to do so.

It's the poorly-subsidized, "for profit" nature of the US educational system which has led to the US going from first to twelfth place in the percentage of young people with university degrees (http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files...) (warning: pdf).

While I applaud what I'm seeing here and I think it's great news, the "low price" of $7000 is only for the Masters program ... you already have to have a Bachelors degree and it's still a far higher price than you'll pay in many parts of the world.