[mindcrime]

I am not against having a hacker ethos and personally am happy to research and learn on my own, but I fail to see the logic in charging money to tell people to Google.

I'm about halfway through the JHU Data Science program and I agree that there's a fair amount of "extra" work you have to do. But still, coming into it as somebody who had never used R at all before, I've learned a ton and have definitely found it to be worth the money I've spent (I plan to actually do the entire track and get the certificate and everything).

Now that said, I probably woulnd't pay much more than what they're charging now (I think most of these classes have been $49.00 / class so far), but at that rate, I definitely feel that it's been worthwhile. And even if it isn't a formal degree, it still gives me the ability to legitimately mention JHU on my resume. So if somebody is just quick skimming my resume to make a decision on which pile to sort it into, that probably gives mine a small nudge in favor of the "look deeper" pile.