I am sure that this year, with all the quarantine uncertainty, the need for distance learning will increase. Here and there are mushrooming new online graduate. I will tell you my story of decision making and admission, the experience of the first year, and the pros and cons at the end. I collected everything that I would like to read myself a year ago, when I made my choice.
Background
My name is Eugene, I am 32 years old and I am a programmer.
For about 10 years I have been working for a foreign office. My income is growing, the results are appreciated, and projects are changing. I realized that programming is a great skill for translating ideas into reality and a way to make good money in a comfortable environment. But the soul requires development. And in my case, this desire cannot be saturated with another technology or another programming language. As it is sung, "our hearts demand change."
The desire to study for a master's degree arose 12 years ago - at the time of defending my bachelor's work. At that time, life plans were slightly different, and there was no understanding from which side to continue gnawing the granite of science.
But the break, as usual, dragged on. The main stumbling blocks over the years have been:
- not understanding how to combine study with work;
- focus on other things.
In 2012, while living in Moscow, I wanted to go to HSE - there was (probably is) a wonderful evening program. But then, for some reason, I decided to return to Novosibirsk, and my admission plans fell through. And then 8 years passed unnoticed.
By the way, Coursera started in the same 2012.
Choice
I was attracted by two directions: "economics, finance, investments" and "transformation of ideas into reality." If with the first it was clear, then where to study the second, I did not really know.
I was registered with Coursera, even started taking some courses there, but mostly did not finish. There was not enough involvement in the process, maybe the incentive to reach the end. Many courses migrate to this platform from universities, mostly foreign. When you are taking the course program, you start receiving offers for admission to these educational institutions by mail. Once it came from MIT - I took a lot of pride, even thought about entering, but was afraid not to withstand the load and the language barrier.
And in 2018, I received information about the MIPT master's program "Technological Entrepreneurship"... These two words I have never said together before. After reading the program, I realized that this is about how to become a startup in Russia. Controversial, but interesting.
There was also an ONLINE postscript - no need to go to Moscow. I looked a little at what MIPT is. To my shame, I did not know the glorious history of this scientific school. Well, to be honest, I didn't really focus on this then. Already now, during my studies, I learned how many successful economists (for example, Sergei Guriev) and entrepreneurs in high-tech spheres have left the walls of this university. The price was something like 270 thousand a year. Quite a lot, but I am not 18 years old either - I have collected something.
Why Online Masters at All? An alternative would be:
- an attempt to file a project on your own - it's stupid to run a marathon if you haven't run at least twenty;
- Going to a startup and learning from a living example is a great option, but a conflict of interest arises very quickly: you perform routine tasks, and do not make key decisions;
- independently collect a set of courses, trainings - but I believe in an integrated approach, I think that it is difficult to put together the necessary program myself, it will be fragmented.
I started preparing for admission in 2018, but ...
Admission
… Another, more interesting opportunity appeared there (part time work in a startup with Russian founders - here it is, visualization of the final goal).
In 2019, I returned to the idea of admission. I had to go through an interview about the topic of my project (work in a startup helped here - there were a lot of hypotheses to test there) and pass mathematics (here I had to strain myself - a lot had already been forgotten). I was a little nervous, but I passed everything with an average result sufficient for admission. The main thing here is the desire and awareness of responsibility and time costs. And thanks to my wife - she supported me (she just didn’t know, like me, that some subjects would be held at my place at two nights)
Start
Laptop. Headphones. Zoom. Now the whole world lives like this. And in October last year, this is how a new "September 1" of my life began for me. In front of me on the screen are 25 tiles with videos of my classmates, some from the states, some from Bali, some from Rostov, some from St. Petersburg, mostly, of course, Moscow. We were united by the Russian language and the desire to create wonderful things in this world, and, as a result, to make a lot of money on it. Our future teachers, people with high achievements, spoke before us. This is one of the key things for me in education: you surround yourself with those who are wiser, more experienced than you, and you learn from them. Here it is, megarost. Therefore, I believe that true learning is possible only in the community, not individually.
Process
Since then, Zoom has continued every Saturday and Sunday. Additionally - on weekdays, about once a week in Moscow from 9 to 11 pm. Given the time difference, for me this is from 1 to 3 at night. At webinars, only a discussion of the work done (everyone applies knowledge to their project). A lot of work with various online platforms: Coursera, eduNano and others. Despite the territorial remoteness, many hobby groups emerged in the group in the form of various telegram chats for 3–6 people. A lot of teamwork. Overall, online education is better than it sounds. And, what is important, everything here was initially deliberate, and not cooked up for quarantine. Some subjects had the opportunity to come in person. On one I even flew to Moscow - I really wanted to see the guys live. I combined my arrival with work, but it's nicethat there is an opportunity to snatch a live presence in the "potokka", "working" lunch in the student canteen. Immediately became 10 years younger).
What's next
There is still a year of study ahead. Defense and state exams are held in person. This year, due to quarantine, it was removed, but there is still a year before my defense - I hope everything will be restored by then. There is time to work out the project, the promised mentor must be actively involved (another plus compared to homemade compilation of courses).
A spoon of tar ...
Let's start with the cons. They are mainly related to personal perception, and not to the shortcomings of the educational process.
1. Without a project, learning brings sadness. In the Master's program TechPred, your project is important - without it everything becomes insipid. You need to burn with something. It is better to immediately find ideas and thoughts that you like, and communicate a lot, in order to carve something intelligible out of this diversity. Here the teachers are ready to communicate, but you have to be persistent - they are busy people. I believe I've really started taking advantage of this opportunity in the last couple of months. It's a pity.
There are classmates who were given good ideas to work out for educational purposes. We must actively use this opportunity. In the end, the goal of the study is first of all to try all aspects of the promotion of an idea on yourself, and secondly - to build a successful company
2. Learning happens at night. I've written about this before, but I will repeat: some subjects, for example philosophy and English, were not very convenient on the schedule. But in general it was not more often than once a week - you can endure it.
3. It takes a long time.Upon admission, the amount of time that would be required to devote to study was declared - 10 hours a week. Here, my math did not fit, in real life 10 hours are only face-to-face classes on weekends (sometimes more). In fact, it is worthwhile to allocate 20-25 hours a week to study in order to fully absorb the material.
4. Lack of tracks.I already wrote that our group is diverse. This, in addition to the pros, there are also disadvantages. In some subjects, emphasis can be placed depending on the stage (idea, prototype or scaling) and the area of the project (roughly speaking, software, hardware, or working with people). In general, there is an opportunity to choose courses, but in fact - rather, to go extra. I chose one course because I liked it and did not regret it. There were courses that I didn't like. If there was an opportunity to miss - I would miss / replace with something else.
5. For regions it can be expensive. But to fly to Moscow and study there would be clearly more expensive.
6. There are gaps in the organization of the learning process.In some subjects, the feedback is excellent, and in some it is clearly lagging behind. Some are more fortunate with mentors, while others are less fortunate. This is partly the flip side of the pluses, which will be discussed below. Teachers are practitioners, not theorists. Feels busy. There is room to grow. For online, it is doubly important to respond quickly to requests, full feedback on training. Otherwise, interest may be lost. It is well written about it here .
... in a barrel of honey
1. Teachers - practitioners and theorists. Their names are perfectly googled, and under other circumstances I could hardly count on communicating with them. In addition to simply giving out knowledge, they influence the methods of thinking, help to see things from those sides that you did not think about before. There are such teachers in ordinary universities and schools. But if there the ratio of 20 to 80 is turned towards the minority, then there are such a majority. Artemy Malkov, Roman Yankovsky, Vadim Voronin, Anatoly Levenchuk, Alexander Fursov, Mikhail Bukharin, Alan Bakhchiev, Vyacheslav Chikin and others.
2. Classmates.Mostly a little older than me, but there are much younger. This is very cool in itself. Experience and youth collide. As the saying goes, "if youth knew, if old age could." Here youth knows, and old age can (there is not much old age, of course. Probably 40 is the ceiling). The average age is just mine: 30–32. All from different spheres, 30% are IT specialists, 30% are already entrepreneurs, 30% are product managers, managers in large companies and start-ups. It gives a good cut and many points of view
3. Online. Say what you like, everything else would not be an option for me. Learn when (well, almost) and wherever you want.
4. Material... Most of the teaching materials are uploaded to open platforms, which sets the bar high. High quality materials. Many of them are available for review just like that - if interested, I will throw off the links separately upon request. Materials on marketing, legal law, project management, systems thinking and others. In one way or another, I came across many things in my life, but everything was somehow not on the shelves.
5. University. I already wrote above that now I am proud to be involved with MIPT. The circle of useful and pleasant acquaintances has expanded greatly. Here we are in the same boat for two years with classmates and teachers. Such a relationship is not built in a couple of days of a conference.
6. State diploma.A diploma and master's degree is more significant and more enjoyable than several Coursera certificates.
Output
I like studying, it evokes a lot of emotions (from “I want to go to the academy” to “how cool it is that I learn from these people” - the latter is many times greater). I am sure, whatever my further life path, this knowledge and acquaintances will be very useful. Well, the main thing in studying is to use all the opportunities, not to waste time, and this does not always mean that you need to get A's in all subjects. If you want to learn, there are more opportunities in the world now than 20 years ago. Better to start and quit - attend a couple of presentations, apply for training, pass entrance exams. And you can make a decision when you need to make a payment.
Afterword
One of the skills I want to improve is writing lyrics. In my student channel, I talk more about studying in an online master's program at a Russian university and about my path from programmers to entrepreneurs: t.me/tehprednub