MOOC for Freshman Year Credit via ASU

[KittenMittens]

Sure, you could take classes from a community college for less money. You could do CLEP/Straighterline/etc. for less money. But being able to get RA credit from a full-on university, without any risk of wrecking your GPA, and only paying if you passed? That's a completely unique offering in the land of higher ed as far as I know.

One crowd that I could really see taking advantage of it is highschool kids - especially the homeschooling crowd. They can try college level work, and get credit if they do well... but with no negative consequences if they don't do well. For parents & kids that are worried about competitive admissions and GPAs, that might be a more attractive prospect than dual enrollment at a local school.

Not as interesting for a lot of people here, though. For one, these are full courses - likely with a comparable workload to ASU online's traditional online classes. I know that for me, part of the appeal of testing out is *not* having to do all that work! Lol. Not to mention that almost all the classes they're going to offer would duplicate classes already available by CBE - though not all. Their 200-level "Human Origins" anthropology class looks interesting.

Ultimately I think these are more for the larger crowd that takes advantage of things like testing - the people who use a few tests to get ahead, or save a little bit of money, but are for the most part looking for a conventional college experience - not the people who are trying to test out of everything (we're a pretty fringe minority ). The same students who are using AP tests will probably also be interested in this. Interestingly, ASU also accepts up to 60 credits of CBE. So between the freshman course offerings, and CBE, you could probably finish almost everything but your actual major requirements before you ever took a traditional ASU class.

$600 is just too much for LL credit especially if it's just for a pass - we'll have to see if it can be done with UL courses. I mean Georgia Tech's online master's in computer science program is $7,000 for 30 credits and it's a top 10 school, and that's $233/credit for a graduate level program.

The only reason why we're a minority is because higher ed never tell students to look into these options - they have no financial incentive to do so. It hasn't really gained much traction until a few years ago with guys like bain4weeks.com and 123collegedegree.com, MOOCs will only make it a more popular option.

I can't wait until the higher ed bubble pops, almost no where else in the world do students go through 4 years of random coursework after high school. British, French, Indian, Chinese, etc. are all typically done for 2 years, and then you end up specializing in something practical.

But there's a pervasive culture here in the US that no college = no success and that success = living in overpriced crappy dorm rooms (not for studying but for partying more than anything else) and becoming "well rounded" (literally) to end up 4 years older, and poorer, and typically not having learned anything of real tangible value. You don't even get taught by a professor in a lot of courses and you are on your own if you want to succeed. Yes, college is about being independent and self-actualizing, but most professors couldn't care any less on how you do; though I guess it depends on where you go too of course.