Many people, technology professionals included, after several years into their careers, start aspiring to getting a Master degree. This can be an expensive endeavour. To overcome the exorbitant costs of an on-campus Master degree program, several potential students are now looking for online opportunities. In this blog post, I examine this subject, and suggest 5 good online Master degree programs from reputable institutes of higher learning, that technology professionals may want to enroll in.
What is a Master degree?
A Master Degree is considered to be a “graduate degree”. It is designed around an advanced subject. While, an undergraduate degree is usually broad based in course requirements and content, a Master degree is for students wanting to specialize and grow their knowledge in a specific field.
Those who qualify with the necessary prerequisites, can benefit from a Master degree to advance their skills and open doors to new career paths and job prospects.
Why enroll in an online Master degree program?
The on-campus Master degree program may be the traditional approach, but the online avenue is developing with more opportunities, by top universities and at good pricing. The online programs are usually taught by the same faculty and same curriculum as the on-campus ones. Costs is the major factor in Master degree programs, with online ones usually costing students a fraction of the on-campus tuition costs, not to mention zero costs in travel and accommodation.
Here are some advantages of an online Master degree program:
- Cheaper than the on-campus version
- Usually taught by same faculty members
- Usually same curriculum as on-campus program
- Learn at your own pace
- Keep your existing job while studying at nights
What is Coursera?
Coursera is an online platform that partners with many global top universities and create very affordable learning programs that make degrees more accessible to everyone. In fact, the tuition costs are so much lower than on-campus degree programs which makes it ideal for those with budget constraints.
Online degrees on Coursera are formulated to allow students to invest in their education, increase their earning potential post-graduation, without the burden of hefty tuition fees. Even though tuition fees are lower than on-campus programs, financial aid is available for qualified students.
Before enrolling in the Master degree program, students on Coursera can also look into “courses”, “specializations”, and “MasterTrack” certificates. These are usually part of a degree program but allow students to start learning immediately and make progress at their own pace. Moreover, if you are admitted to the full program, your completed courses count towards your degree learning.
With the power of technology and tools, the online degree programs on Coursera help connect students with faculty and peers. Throughout the program, students may attend online lectures from anywhere in the world and easily interact directly with professors and classmates. There is also a dedicated online student support team available to render assistance at any time to help understand and resolve sticking points so you can master new concepts and skills.
On Coursera, all Master’s Degrees are issued directly by the university offering them. They are all 100% online courses at affordable pricing.
Top 5 picks for online Master degree programs
For technology professionals who want to look into enrolling online classes for that prestigious Master degree, I suggest looking into these 5 Master degree programs. I selected these 5 programs, listed on Coursera, due to the popularity of the program (notice some on trending topics such as machine learning and data science), the weight that it carries to your future career post-graduation and the brand of the university. These programs are open for enrollment in 2020.
- Global Master of Business Administration (Global MBA), Macquarie University, Sydney.
- MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, HEC Paris
- Master of Machine Learning and Data Science, Imperial College London
- Master of Applied Data Science, University of Michigan
- Online Master of Computer Science, Arizona State University
Global Master of Business Administration (Global MBA), Macquarie University, Sydney
Macquarie University is in Sydney, Australia. According to QS World University Rankings (2019), it is ranked among the top one percent of universities in the world. Also, the Macquarie Business School (MGSM) MBA is ranked in the top 100 MBA programs in the world by The Financial Times and The Economist.
This Global MBA program allows students to differentiate themselves in the workplace by mastering six capabilities – Strategizing, Leading, Analyzing, Influencing, Adapting, and Problem Solving.
In today’s world of new and highly disruptive technologies, these skills will enable students to meet the challenges in today’s business environment.
During the course of this program, students will have ample opportunities to collaborate through hands-on projects with a global network of classmates guided by some of the world’s best instructors. There will be practical courses designed to help students acquire and master skills and apply them immediately into the work environment
Macquarie offers an on-campus MBA degree as well as the fully online Global MBA degree. These are two different programs, with different course structures, curriculum, and delivery modes. However, both of them offer the same high-quality education through world-class academics and industry partners.
Macquarie University partners with Coursera to allow potential students to try before they buy. This means that all of the courses feature an open component, allowing potential students to experience the course before committing to the degree program.
This online program consists of 24 units and costs AUD $33,000. It will take students about 14 to 32 months to complete, assuming they put in 10 to 12 hours per week. Applications are now open for 2020, with the final application deadline set on July 20, 2020.
MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, HEC Paris
HEC Paris specializes in management education and research. It offers a wide and unique range of educational programs for tomorrow’s leaders: Masters programs, Summer School, MBA, Ph.D., Executive MBA, TRIUM Global Executive MBA, open-enrolment and custom executive education programs.
HEC Paris was founded in 1881 by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Today, it has a faculty of 138 full-time professors, more than 4,400 students, and over 8,000 managers and executives in training each year.
This institute was ranked #3 Worldwide in the Financial Times Executive Education (2019) ranking and ranked #1 Business School in Europe in the Financial Times (2019) ranking. It boasts 60,000 Alumni in 152 Countries and 445 Research articles published in the past 5 years.
This Masters of Science program has a strong focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. It encourages students to explore a new way of thinking when faced with different opportunities in social ventures, governments, and life. In fact, this program will help students prepare for a career in business as entrepreneurs; consultants in innovation management; decision-makers for launching innovative projects and making R&D investments; or even members of the executive teams in companies.
To join this program, applicants should have at least a bachelor’s degree, 5 years’ work experience, and demonstrated English proficiency.
This online program consists of 20 courses and costs EUR 20,000. It will take students about 18 months to complete, assuming they put in 20 hours per week. Applications are now open for 2020, with the next cohort starting June 15th, 2020. The final admission deadline is June 1st, 2020, though there are four earlier rounds of admissions, which is recommended.
Master of Machine Learning and Data Science, Imperial College London
Imperial College is a well-known name and a global top ten university with a world-class reputation in science, engineering, business, and medicine.
Imperial College educates its students with a research-led approach, shaping students into a style of learning that relies on learning-by-discovery. This allows students to graduate and bring fresh perspectives to the modern world of science and technology.
Here are some of the recent rankings for Imperial College London:
- #10 university in the world (Times Higher Education World Rankings 2020)
- Top 5 for most international university in the UK (Times Higher Education 2017)
- 1st in the UK for the most innovative university (Reuters)
- #30 QS Graduate Employability Ranking
This program will bring students to study the mathematical, computational, and statistical foundations of machine learning, and pioneer new research into today’s most pressing scientific and technological problems. During the two years of coursework, students will complete 12 modules, including a research portfolio.
This Master degree prepares students to open up their engineering or data science careers into a wide variety of roles, such as data scientists, machine learning engineers, or computational statisticians. These are very high-demand and well-paying roles, today.
This online program consists of 12 modules and costs £28,000. It will take students about 24 months to complete, averaging 21 hours per week. Applications are now open for 2020, with the next cohort starting September 14th, 2020. Admissions will close once the class is filled.
Master of Applied Data Science, University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is considered the number 1 public research university in the U.S. according to the National Science Foundation. Founded in 1817, the University of Michigan was the first public university in the Northwest Territories. Today, it is a leader in higher education, attracting top students and faculty from across the globe. It has over 540,000 proud alumni.
There are many illustrious graduates, among them the first American to walk in space, the creator of the iPod, the co-founder of Google, and the 38th U.S. president. The University of Michigan also proudly boasts 8 Nobel laureates.
The Master of Applied Data Science Program equips students with the necessary skills needed to apply data science in any number of real-world contexts. It combines theory, computation, and application in a flexible online format. The courses cover:
- Computational methods for big data
- Exploring and communicating data
- Visualizing data using various methods
- Analytic techniques (machine learning, network analysis, natural language processing, experiments, and causal inference)
- Data science applications in context (search and recommender systems, social media analytics, learning analytics)
- 3 portfolio-building major projects
The classes in this program are flexible and offered in one-credit, four-week course modules. The degree is designed to fit the students’ lives, even if with full-time jobs and family commitments.
Graduates of this program are qualified to become data scientists in the field of their choice.
This online program consists of costs between $31,688 and $42,262, with scholarship opportunities available. It will take students a minimum of 12 months to complete. Applications are now open for 2020, with the final application deadline set for May 15th, 2020.
Online Master of Computer Science, Arizona State University
Arizona State University is recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the country’s most innovative school. Here, students and faculty work with NASA to develop, advance and lead innovations in space exploration.
This online program comes from the university’s School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE). CIDSE is a leader in online education with their school claiming to have the first four-year online engineering management program for undergraduates. Now they have launched an online master’s program in computer science, enabling thousands of students around the world access to this rigorous curriculum.
For a student to earn his master’s in computer science, he has to complete a total of 30 credit hours (10 courses) in advanced computer science topics, such as AI, Software Engineering, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and Cybersecurity.
In this online program, students will get involved in fascinating projects such as:
- Design a Visual Analytics System. Students will explore and reason with data by designing and building a visual analytics system for analyzing visitor data to a fictional theme park.
- Build a Deep Learning Architecture. Students will design and build a deep neural network of many layers, creating a network that can recognize image categories from a given dataset.
- Build a Movie Database. Students will demonstrate their abilities to design and build a seven-table movie database from scratch, in addition to creating applications to work on top of the database.
- Implement a K-Means Algorithm and Its Variants. Students will create and build a clustering algorithm that can group the input collection of documents into a desired number of clusters.
This program consists of 10 courses and costs $15,000. Students will take about 18 to 36 months to complete the program, averaging 20 hours per week. Admission to class 2020 is open with the next cohort starting on May 18th, 2020. The final application deadline is April 19th, 2020.