Georgia Tech’s Online MOOC-based Master Program with Zvi Galil

Georgia Tech’s Online MOOC-based Master Program

In May 2013, Georgia Tech together with its partners, Udacity and AT&T, announced a new online master’s degree in computer science delivered through the platform popularized by massively open online courses (MOOCs). This new online MS CS— or OMSCS for short — costs less than $7,000 total, compared to a price tag of $40,000 for an MS CS at comparable public universities and upwards of $70,000 at private universities.

The first-of-its-kind program was launched in January 2014 and has sparked a worldwide conversation about higher education in the 21st century. President Barack Obama has praised OMS CS by name twice, and over 1,200 news stories mentioned the program. It’s been described as a potential “game changer” and “ground zero of the revolution in higher education”.  Harvard University researchers concluded that OMSCS is “the first rigorous evidence showing an online degree program can increase educational attainment” and predicted that OMSCS will single handedly raise the number of annual MS CS graduates in the United States by at least 7 percent.

OMSCS started in 2014 with small enrollment of 380; in spring 2019 semester enrollment is close to 9,000; OMSCS is apparently the biggest MS in CS program in the world. So far over 2,400  students have graduated from OMSCS; more than 1,000 will graduate each year from now on. The program has also paved the way for more than 40 similar, MOOC-based online MS programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Science Foundation, in 2020 there will be a shortage of one million computing professionals in the US. Therefore, OMSCS is satisfying a great national need.

The talk will describe the OMSCS program, how it came about, its first five years, and what Georgia Tech has learned from the OMSCS experience. We will also discuss its potential effect on higher education.