Coursera is free, or $50 a course if you want a "verified certificate", where they make an attempt to verify your identity and that you are there while the tests are taken. Courses are across broad topic ranges and include some solidly advanced, nerdy stuff. There's no admissions process and it isn't accredited. Assistance is from peers, not the instructors, though they may choose to drop in to the forums to lend a hand. Starting a class is as easy as creating a login and clicking a button. Professors so far are really strong. Cirriculum is a solid whoopin'. It's challenging. Even though there's no textbook, you have to use piles of online resources and figure out a lot of things for yourself or from each other. In a sense, that makes it more realistic and applicable to real life. I took some good CS classes while I was at UMN the first time, and these guys have well respected, accomplished professors at major institutions putting together rock solid classes.

UMN Crookston is $387 a credit hour, with most classes being between 3-4 credit hours. Things aren't streamlined much for online courses. I haven't started classes yet, but I've talked to a dozen people between (re-)admissions, those strange consouler people who tell everyone to do the same thing, tech support, financial aid, the registrar's office, the bookstore, and so on. In addition to tuition, there's a $150 fee per online course, and then a bit of a surprise, a "required textbook" is a $100 piece of paper with a code on it to take tests on a 3rd party site. That's $200 extra per course, to take it online, but to help offset that, the $387 is the MN resident rate. Selection has some interesting things but is a lot of community college style fodder. You can't get a CS Bachelors degree online from any major institution though several have it as a Masters, and UMN Crookston didn't seem any worse than any others for what was offered undergrad, plus had some more interesting things to choose from than most others. Staff is very friendly and helpful. I love the MN nice even though I never really picked it up myself. Since it is accredited, financial aid is available. If you make less than about $20,000 last year, you can get Pell Grants. Otherwise relatively low interest loans are what passes as financial aid. An undergrad degree will cost you about about $50,000 with books (and things required and sold through the bookstore), starting from scratch.

Or so they say. I'm discovering that the hidden fees bump total cost of attendance well above their estimate. Since they make such a big deal of load entrance counciling with a forced online learning session that makes you do a budget, you'd think that they themselves would take budgets a bit more seriously rather than dipping into daddy's wallet every time they want a little extra cash.

Then there's McGraw Hill "Connect" aka "mhlearnsmart.com". The name should be a huge red flag. They claim to boost student scores by 12% up to 83%, which is fascinating, since it litterally will not let you get a wrong answer. It'll tell you the answer if you get it wrong, and then come back to the question and make you do it again, repeatedly if necessary, and show you where in the book the answer is if you push a button. A little head pops up and starts talking at you to tell you how to do everything. The fact that people don't get 100% indicates that 17% of people decide that rather than being handed an A and chocking that steaming pile of crap down, to unplug the computer and walk away.

The thing is delivered by terrible Flash, which makes it confusing why it refuses to work with most operating systems. The UI is a kindergarten-esque drag-and-drop-the-answers abomination that makes you at least feel stupider for using it. Every rote regurgitation science question feels like sticking the star in the correct shaped hole. Maybe they can teach Biology to kindergartners with this thing, but, at that point, are they really teaching Biology?

I was curious why freshman Bio didn't have a book requirement for the student bookstore. It turns out that McGraw Hill providers a digital copy of the text book as part of the online quiz platform. As if CIA mk-ultra operatives themselves custom designed a torture program for me, this book comes pre-highlighted. They force you to flip through this pre-highlighted online book page by page, before giving you the exam. If you flip too quickly (perhaps because you purchased a paper copy, or, god forbid, sat in a library and read the reference copy and took notes), it yells at you and complains that you aren't actually reading it. Good previous quiz scores aren't enough to get you off the hook. Clockwork Organge-esque, you are forced to sit there and endure page after page of highlighted text.

The instructor for each online course apparently decides which online exam tool to use, and with a sample of two, all of them have picked something paid. "learnsmart" doesn't support Linux or OSX 10.6 (a bit older now, admittedly) forcing me to get Windows 7 going on another machine (virtualbox is busted due to a kernel upgrade to an unsupported version).

Since JaWS was working an online learning platform 15 years ago when I was there (blackboard), and that platform was better than what they're currently outsourcing, I'm guessing there was a lot of direction uncertainty, thrashing, and throwing out of babies with bathwaters. Meanwhile, Coursera slipped in with clear focus and comprehension and whooloped everything UMN has touched.

Freshman level classes don't have to be tedious rote slogfests. The Anthro class I took absolutely rocked. It was a TED talk on wheels. Intriguing students is so much better than taking knowledge ramming to new levels of mechanicality. This makes me sad panda.