Udacity Update

[KayV]

A few months ago, I posted on another thread about my experience with trying to get Udacity’s Intro to Statistics class put on my ACE transcript. To make a long story short, ACE has now put the following disclaimer on all of its Udacity course descriptions:

“Credit is recommended for students who earn a Verified Certificate from Udacity for this class. This requires enrollment in the full course and completion of a verified final assessment. Completion of the free courseware alone is not sufficient to receive ACE credit recommendations.”

Udacity is transitioning to offering “verified certificates,” which cost $150 per month, per class. They still do not offer verified certificates for all of their ACE-approved classes, but I think they are developing verified versions of them. Udacity is also changing its website to place less emphasis on the free classes and more on the verified certificates. I can no longer find any mention of ACE approval on Udacity’s website, so clearly it’s not something they wish to promote.

When I first decided to take the Intro to Statistics class, my hope was that it would be a free alternative to ALEKS classes. ALEKS, however, clearly wins the stats prize; I cannot imagine why anyone would pay $150 for only two hours of credit.

However, I can see Udacity’s usefulness in two different areas. First, the free courseware might be useful to some, especially for test prep or learning code. Also, some of the verified certificates they offer in computer science count as upper-level credit, so $150/ month for 3 UL credits wouldn’t be fantastically expensive if you could knock out the class quickly. They even say that some of their classes are part of a Georgia Tech Master’s in CS program, but once again, the website has remarkably little to say on that subject.

Udacity’s customer service was rather lamentable, but I really appreciated ACE’s going the extra mile (and the weeks it took) for them to figure out exactly what was going on with Udacity. I also appreciate the disclaimer they now have posted about Udacity classes. If I had seen that before taking the class, I would have pursued other options.