Also of note - this appears to be the UK-style of master's vs. the typical path a lot of us may be more familiar with, in the sense of very strong undergrads complete a 4th year and earn a Master's vs. finish an undergrad and then spend 2+ years (1 year classes, 1 year lab/thesis) as an in-betweener before Doctoral programs.<p>It seems very expensive for 2-yrs of part-time, online work. I did a MSc in Canada part time and it took me almost three years of year-round effort, completing the course requirements 2 or 3 per semester (which is more than 1/2 time). Because I was P/T I paid full tuition but it was still less than $5K/yr. F/T grad students were almost all on scholarship or covered tuition via RA pr TA duties.<p>IMO, if you want more than the credentials on your resume this would be an expensive and disappointing grad school experience and of limited value.
One of the important parts of learning at a university is meeting fellow students, exchanging ideas, and building relationships. It seems for 36k USD you’re really overpaying for losing this face to face time with other students, imo video calls just aren’t the same.
One thing to note - if you're interested only in pedigree - nobody gives a sh*t about Coursera, Udacity, edX or similar "online" labeled stuff.
The "offline" course prices are here. It seems like the roughly equivalent MSc degree offline would be £15.5K for home and EU students and £33,250 for overseas students. You would have to add to that living expenses which are considerable in London (perhaps another £20K) <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/students/fees-and-funding/tuition-fees/postgraduate-tuition-fees/2020-21/taught-postgraduate-programmes/faculty-of-engineering/" rel="nofollow">https://www.imperial.ac.uk/students/fees-and-funding/tuition...</a><p>I did an MSc in Computer Science at Imperial (long before online courses existed) and it was by far the hardest academic thing I have ever done. Imperial is academically excellent, and likely the best university for science subjects in the UK and perhaps top 5 in the world. Having said that I'm sure much of the value is from being there with other students and teachers, and I don't know how much of that you're getting from an online course.
My INTERNATIONAL FEES for my MSc in Bristol was in 2013 only cost £ 17k. This includes lots of face-to-face contact with lecturers who are research leaders in the field. With living expenses the total would only be £ 30k. Inflation makes the total closer to £ 40k today.<p>However, for £ 28k, Europeans can study at Imperial in-person and live (albeit on a budget) in London.
<p><pre><code> What you get:
Imperial College branded online MSc degree.
What you need:
At least a GPA of 3.9 and £28k+.
</code></pre>
So, One year for a online masters at £28k also requiring a three year BSc degree at £25k of debt sounds like your really getting your money's worth. /s<p>(This is £14k more expensive than a normal masters degree at Imperial)
University education in the UK has become increasingly commercialised and increasingly expensive. Undergraduate tuition fees are over £9k a year (it was zero when I went to university 20 years ago). Those fees are capped by government but universities are free to charge what they like to overseas students so they are rather treated as cash cows.
Shamefully the Univ. of Illinois charges $21k for an online master of CompSci.<p><a href="https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-program/online-master-computer-science" rel="nofollow">https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/graduate/professional-mcs-...</a>
University is just an overpriced IQ test anyway.<p>We want to delude ourselves that everybody has the capability to be a doctor, programmer, engineer, successful business owner etc. We ban employees from using IQ tests, when SAT scores correlate strongly with IQ. Then the best companies hire from the best universities where the best students with the highest SAT go i.e. they just hire the highest IQ people in each year slot.<p>To fund this delusion we would then have to make university available to everybody, as if a degree is in a vacuum a token of value and not the fact that a degree is relatively scarce. A degree when everybody has one isn't worth as much as when only 50% of people have one.<p>And of course the law of supply/demand makes degrees more expensive when everybody has one, but makes the degrees less useful economically when everybody has one. Double-dipped.
That's about $36,000 US. Honest question... is that crazy expensive? How does it compare to other online and on campus programs? I'm guessing it's HIGH?