Research Degrees vs. Practice Degrees: An Evolving Educational System

Research Degrees vs. Practice Degrees: An Evolving Educational System

The Gap Between Universities and Corporations

Have you ever wondered why there is always a gap between universities and corporations?! Why there is always someone working on bringing both together? Have you ever looked at the root of this issue to eliminate it from the first place? It’s been there for 10s of years, right?

Well, there is a misalignment of interests and incentives here:

On one hand, you have university degrees, syllabuses and courses designed by professors who have scientific research in mind. This is usually directly related to research government grants. They design courses to teach science for the sake of exploring and learning more about the world we live in. Scientists are explorers. We all respect them for this and we all love science.

On the other hand, you have companies who want to practice the results of all the scientific research through projects and tasks. In other words, companies need graduates who know how to perform tasks and ready to execute from day one, which is rare in fresh grads.

They both share interest and incentives for the R&D departments in big corporations, but other than that, they are totally different worlds.

Education Evolution

The education system, in my opinion, is not broken, it’s just evolving. This evolution includes the birth of a new segmentation of education degrees: “Research Degrees” that teach Exploration (B.Sc., M.Sc. PhD, etc.. by universities), and “Practice Degrees” that teach Execution (NanoDegrees by Udacity). This evolution was a result of years of hard work by smart entrepreneurs who tried to disrupt the education status quo.

Lots of EdTech or eLearning startups tried to work with universities to design accredited online degrees, but that didn’t really work. They ended up with online certified Courses not Full Degrees such as Coursera. Some others provided quick fragmented courses provided by individual trainers here and there like Udemy and Khan Academy.

The First True Disruption

However, the first to truly disrupt this market was Udacity. They offered a whole new system by excluding universities. Udacity realized that the gap between corporations and universities can not be filled, it should actually be enlarged, I mean both should be separated. This is education decentralized and unbundled!

Udacity created a new kind of degrees that are designed by professionals at corporations not by professors at universities. These degrees, that I call “Practice Degrees” as opposed to “Research Degrees”, are designed to fit actual job needs of companies. They teach students what they need to know to perform every day work tasks in their selected fields. It’s learning by doing in a project based curriculum.

Moreover, it’s much cheaper and faster! It’s only a couple of hundred dollars a month for 6–9 months. It also increases your chances of landing a job faster in top tech companies, as you will have actual work and projects to show in your interviews as opposed to a fresh grad who’s goal was to pass exams not to learn how to make things work.

I think that this separation might also help universities focus more on research instead of keep trying to satisfy corporations and being lost in between research and practice. This will help reduce the number of years needed for a B.Sc because it will be dedicated for science and research only.

How To Choose

So if your goal is to join a tech corporation, a startup, or even to start one, why would you spend 4 years studying things you won’t need! Just get a “Practice Degree” in less than a year, learn what you really need to learn and get to work.

But if you’re goal is to become a researcher and to pursue an academic career or a R&D career, then yes, you should get a traditional “Research Degree” at a university.

And if you’re a founder hiring for your startup, why would you hire a Research Degree graduate if you have someone who has a Practice Degree and knows how to do things from day one and needs no training!

More Info on NanoDegrees

For more information, here is a post that includes curated articles and reviews about Udacity’s NanoDegrees