SLOW AND STEADY: The first 20 people from the Georgia Institute of Technology's online Master's program in computer science have graduated. Begun in 2013 with $3.5 million in funding from AT&T, the program has 2,789 students enrolled this semester, compared with 312 enrolled in the on-campus version. There are, according to The Wall Street Journal, 1,300 new applicants for each new term of the online program.
The program is on track to turn a profit by May 2016, the university says, charging students roughly $7,000 for the degree. (The offline degree sports a price tag of $38,000.) Online students move more slowly than their brick-and-mortar counterparts: they enroll in an average of 1.4 courses per term, much slower than the university initially predicted. This pace may explain why 253 members of the first group of students remain enrolled six terms after their schooling began. To be fair, a great portion of those enrolled in the program are employed full-time.
