Micromaster's degree as a new form of education. Overview of the first pilot program

Micromaster's degree as a new form of education. Overview of the first pilot program.

This article highlights the concept of micromaster's degree - a new direction in online education. The purpose of the article is to acquaint the reader with general information about this phenomenon and point out new educational opportunities that it opens.


Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Answer word

Online education is no longer news for anyone. The direction itself has existed in the services market for about 20 years, but at the stage of exponential growth it was introduced relatively recently, or more precisely in 2011, after launching the course in the so-called MOOC format - massive open online courses (mass open online courses) by Stanford University, on who recorded about 160 thousand people. Since then, several large aggregators have emerged, on which courses from various educational organizations are concentrated, enabling them to master this or that material. Among them are two polar groups: with a more academic bias (coursera, edx), or a significant proportion of informal areas (udacity, udemy). At the same time, academic platforms, which are the next turn in the evolution of distance learning, worked for a long time on the model of free education with paid certificates, and on edx until 2016 there was even a file with the fact that along with paid certificates they gave out free with rare exceptions, they were not inferior in utility to paid ones (and those and those, by and large, did not give any advantages to their owners). In the desire to monetize such courses, they began to assign new value to paid certificates, first in the form of additional content, then in the form of the opportunity to close a few credits as a student of the campus having completed an online course. The idea of ​​enrolling MOOC results in the discipline instead of traditional offline education ultimately grew into the creation of the first series of courses that can officially replace an entire semester of graduate studies and upon completion give the right to continue education on campus and get a classic diploma. MIT pioneered the Supply Chain Management course cycle deployed on the edx platform. They also introduced the concept of Micromaster's degree, the virtues of which will be discussed further.

What is Micromaster's degree?

This is a series of online courses related to a single field of application, which are aimed at studying a certain amount of material, have a relatively high recognition in the industry, the results of which are equivalent to 25-50% of the credits necessary for obtaining a master's degree and give the right to continue studying on campus as part of the educational program of which they are part. So, the Supply Chain Management program consists of 5 MOOCs, each lasting 10 weeks and a final exam. On the passage of one week to spend from 4 to 12 hours, and another 4 hours will be spent on the final exam. Thus, the passage of this program at a quiet pace lasts about a year, of which about 400 hours of time are spent in total.
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What gives Micromaster's degree?

The benefits of this program are rationally viewed on the same example of Supply Chain Management Micromaster's degree, the first in the world graduation of which took place in August 2017. In total, over 180,000 people registered for all courses of the cycle, but far from all reached the end - only 622 people (out of 1,100 who passed the final exam) received micromasters certificates. These certificates are valid for 3 years from the date of receipt and in terms of academic potential allow their holders the following:

1) to count the part of credits for such programs as:

• Rochester Institute of Technology Master's Program in Professional Studies (USA);
• University of Queensland Master of Business (Australia);
• Supply Chain Management (Australia)

2) submit your candidacy for continuing education on campus, with enrollment of the results of micromasters as one semester of study and the actual start in the second semester of such programs as:

• MIT's SCM Blended Master's Program - Online and On Campus (USA);
• MIT Zaragoza Blended Master of Engineering in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (ZLOG), Zaragoza Logistics Center (Spain).

The most important advantages can be felt by those who have chosen the second option. They, by and large, two:

1. Simplified application for admission, eliminating the need to provide GRE / GMAT results;
2. A significant reduction in campus learning time (by 50%), and most importantly, a huge difference in price in favor of the student.

Thus, the full cost of a similar program on the MIT campus for 2017-2018 is officially estimated at $ 102,012 , while a program based on online courses will cost a student $ 58,059. This comparison is less profitable for the option with training in the Spanish branch of MIT Global Scale Network - Saragossky Logistics Center, the cost of the full campus program for which is unofficially estimated at 37,000 euros, while the program based on online courses will cost the student 25,000 euros . However, it is worth noting that in the case of studies in Zaragoza, the student will spend the first three weeks in the USA, therefore the second semester of this program is much more expensive than the first one and in this case not a high percentage of savings is achieved, as in the case of studies in MIT. The cost of online courses is paid separately as they pass, and amounts to $ 150 for each course, plus $ 600 for the exam, that is, $ 1,350 in total. It is assumed that if a student works in an industry and can prove the applicability of results in an activity, his employer may pay for his courses. Practice shows that this is happening.


PLaza logistics park - location of Zaragoza Logistics Cente r

Why is this so important?

While the cost of hybrid MOOCs-based study programs remains unacceptably large for many potential students, the Micromaster's degree is a significant step forward in education, in terms of its availability and quality. The need to enroll the results of passing online courses along with the program on campus requires maximum interchangeability from their creators, and therefore equalizes their educational value. At the same time, such courses will gradually gain recognition from a larger number of employers, and therefore can become a significant competitive advantage in the labor market. To date, more than 30 micromasters are available in the edx platform, in the areas of IT, management, robotics, business, bioinformatics, and others. Micromaster certified graduates are ready to admit universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berkeley, Rochester Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Hong Kong Polytechnic Institute, Leuven Catholic University (Belgium), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) , and many others.


Edx platform

Total

The first set of hybrid supply chain management programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Saragossa Logistics Center has already been completed, and about 40 people who have received their Micromaster's degree will continue their education on campuses from January 4, 2018. The final opinion on such programs can be folded in the next 2-5 years, when their graduates finish their studies and work in the industry for a while. In the coming years, we should also expect an increase in the availability of hybrid programs, with the advent of opportunities to partially or fully compensate for the cost of such training through scholarships and grants.