Georgia Institute of Technology shook things up in the world of academia when it announced its plan to offer an online master’s degree in computer science for basically $7,000. One-seventh the price of doing it on campus.

The project is a joint venture with Udacity. Udacity is an online course provider that specializes in higher education. It’s been reported that Udacity could earn 40% of all revenues brought in through GIT’s program.

According to an article in Forbes magazine “Georgia Tech expects to hire only eight or so new instructors even as it takes its master’s program from 300 students to as many as 10,000 within three years,” said Zvi Galil, the dean of computing at Georgia Tech.

Exciting right? However not everybody is feeling the buzz.

Some worry that the low price and mass availability of programs like this will cheapen higher education across the board. Some of those involved in Academia are worried programs like this will dilute the quality of higher degrees such as Masters and MBA’s. I’d be willing to bet most of the people who are worried about the new advances in education are scared for their own teaching, administrative jobs and aren’t thinking of the issues objectively.

It’s time to face the music…

The internet is changing our lives. These centralized power structures of the past are slowly dissolving into more efficient laterally based operations. Gone are the days where Jack Writer needs to wait for approval from the big publisher, or Johnny Rockstar needs the big record label to push his album out there. People have access to other people like never before and if you’re trying to fight it… stop. It’s futile. You’d have better luck telling the ocean to go the other way.

You’ve got all of these politicians saying, “We need to increase education. We don’t have enough skilled workers. We need to figure out how to help graduates with their absorbent amount college debt.” Right? Well this is how you do it!

The main purpose of our education programs needs to be to educate others. If people can figure out how to make money while doing it that’s great. We just can’t have a few people’s economic interests getting in the way of others who want to learn and ultimately better their lives.