Nano Degrees For the "Great Acceleation"

[Arthur Hanson]

Sebastian Thrun is working with some of the top technology companies to develop Nano Degrees that answer many of the challenges the "Great Acceleration" pose.
As most knowledge and information have a shorter and shorter useful life, traditional education is becoming increasingly cost ineffective as traditional degrees take five years and well over a hundred thousands dollars when living expenses are figured in. They also take a significant cut in time of a working career. Online education complete with virtual or robotic remote labs can substantially reduce the cost and time of education. Combined with AI and adaptive education that tailors itself to each individuals learning style, the old way of education will rapidly become obsolete. In many areas of education, the days of a person competing with a machine are rapidly coming to an end. The current instructors will have the opportunity to greatly leverage their talents over far more students the world over. Education will go from a starter program with a lifetime subscription to be cost, time and fully up to date when current education fails in all three of these areas. The countries and companies that adapt to this will be the ones the survive and win. Education/training will become one of the largest competitive edges an individual, country or company can have. Those that are proactive will quickly become the winners. Traditional educational institutions will either adapt or rapidly become irrelevant. If anything, the world is changing it is the rate of change is constantly accelerating and those that don't change will lose. Opinions, ideas and thoughts on this issue solicited and wanted. I also feel this will be one of the next great investment areas.


https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...nternal&utm_medium=homepage&utm_source=grid_1

Udacity turns 5: Sebastian Thrun talks A.I. and plans for a nanodegree in self-driving cars | VentureBeat | Business | by Paul Sawers

 

[Daniel Payne]

Arthur,

The best semiconductor and EDA companies have internal, continual learning programs in place to equip their own workforce to stay current, relevant and competitive. While at Intel in the late 70's they had a mandate of so many hours per year of continual education, and they used their own Intel employees to conduct the training. I was invited to be one of the teachers at Intel in the area of semiconductor device operation.

At Mentor Graphics there was a similar emphasis on life-long learning through internal training classes, many with external teachers.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Dan, I have taken courses from ATT, Diebold, Digital, 3M among others, plus the Novell courses. It would have been nice if a formal pathway had been set out so material wasn't repeated and a formal end point had been determined. This is why I think a career long subscription would be the way to go and would make the company schools shorter and more focused. Education and training are still in the wild west stage as far as sophistication and effectiveness. With all programs from college to company courses there has been to much repetition and time wasted, which also leads to slower learning.