Date: October 22nd, 2012 11:51 AM Author: beady-eyed plum feces
Meanwhile, about 3,000 students have signed up for Udacity’s employer-connection program, allowing their CVs to be shared with 350 companies. Employers pay Udacity a fee for any hires made through this service. So far, about 20 students have found work partly through Udacity’s help, Thrun says. Tamir Duberstein, 24, who studied mechanical engineering in Ontario, recently got two job offers after completing six Udacity courses. He took one of the offers and now works at a software company in San Francisco.
Still, it will be a long time before companies besides high-tech start-ups trust anything other than a traditional degree. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people a year enroll in the University of Phoenix, which most students attend online. Says University of Phoenix spokesman Ryan Rauzon: “They need a degree, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.”
400,000 total students
20/400,000 = .00005 or .005%
working with the 3,000 number gets you to .66%
thoughts:
off the top that seems pretty shitty
I think what they need to do is focus on providing remote high end temp opportunities for their students
if you've taken one of those classes and done well, that's the skill set you've demonstrated that you have
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:00 PM Author: Light boistinker
>Still, it will be a long time before companies besides high-tech start-ups trust anything other than a traditional degree. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people a year enroll in the University of Phoenix
Technologies change quickly. While savvy companies are quick to adapt to these changes, universities are sometimes slower to react. This discrepancy can lead to a growing gap between the skills graduates have and the skills employers need. So how do you figure out exactly what skills employers are looking for? Our thinking: work with industry leaders to teach those skills!
And that’s what we’re doing. We are working with leading academic researchers and collaborating with Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Autodesk, Cadence, and Wolfram to teach knowledge and skills that students will be able to put to use immediately, either in personal projects or as an employee at one of the many companies where these skills are sought after.
The classes that are opening for enrollment include:
HTML5 Game Development with Colt McAnlis and Peter Lubbers
Introduction to Parallel Programming with John Owens and David Luebke
Interactive Rendering with Eric Haines
Functional Hardware Verification with Axel Scherer and Hannes Fröhlich
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:08 PM Author: beady-eyed plum feces
other things is, if you're hiring, you can get alot more data about the udacity student you're hiring than you can about the U Phoenix student, or the Big State U student
with U Phoenix student, or the Big State U, you get a list of classes taken and a letter grade earned
with Udacity you could get that, plus a detailed click history, do they do things early? do they wait until the last minute for everything? do they stick to a set schedule? do they comment in class forums?
there is alot more data that can be mined to predict successful hires
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:19 PM Author: beady-eyed plum feces
read this the other day:
"Yesterday I was in a meeting. I’m on the board of a company in the temp-staffing business. They provide temp staffing in almost every industry. I’m a big believer that we are moving towards an employee-less society and everyone will begin either outsourcing or hiring temps rather than deal with all the regulatory issues of hiring people."
got me thinking, the problem is that hiring someone is too big a commitment to make from someone off of a udacity class
temp assignments are the right level of commitment for an employer to make for someone who has done well in a udacity class, they should be trying to work with companies to hiring people on a temp basis,
then people have real experience to put on resumes, and employer have an even better look at the candidates
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:16 PM Author: arrogant halford native
I misunderstood udacity. it's not that impressive. I thought it was like generalassembly in that you take an intensive 8-24 week course on a specific tech skill and get an entry level job in that field. Udacity sounds like a good alternative to UofPheonix
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:40 PM Author: arrogant halford native
the class's pace for entry level students is probably on point. I'm sure they give you assignments to do that take up a lot of time b/w classes and with somethign like web development you can always naturally advance your skills.
Date: October 22nd, 2012 12:46 PM Author: beady-eyed plum feces
yeah I don't know, not necessarily knocking it
seems like society should be able to figure out a way to take advantage of the skills of people the are smart enough to do well in these free online classes
from the article:
Meanwhile, Thrun had told his Stanford students they could take the class online if they didn’t want to attend lectures. More than three-quarters of them did so, viewing the videos from their dorms and participating as if they were thousands of miles away. Then something remarkable happened. On the midterm, the Stanford students scored a full letter grade higher on average than students had in previous years. They seemed to be learning more when they learned online. The same bump happened after they took the final.
Still, the Stanford students were not the stars of the class. At the end of the semester, not one of the course’s 400 top performers had a Stanford address.
Date: October 22nd, 2012 5:53 PM Author: at-the-ready fuchsia bbw
the program is new, leading to several effects. many employers probably aren't even aware of the program. the productivity of udacity hires hasn't been measurable so far. the traditional signaling effects of a degree are still highly valued, meaning that the most qualified candidates are still likely to pursue employment through traditional means. and maybe i'm off here, but i don't understand why a company would need to pay a fee for potential hires in this employment market.