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Accredited self-study
In the UK we have the Open University which provides means for those later in life, in actual jobs, etc., to do distance learning and earn respectable degrees. When I was young I enjoyed watching the lectures that they would televise, early at the weekends if I recall correctly. There was a good range of courses and the material tended to be interesting and well-delivered. I thought it a great public service to have such available.
Then, things changed; the televised lectures disappeared. I assumed that they were still made and available, just only to paying students, but some recent conversation suggests that not to be the case: the teaching approach has changed more fundamentally. The Open University do collaborate with the BBC on making documentaries but that's really not the same, it's more an interesting taste than actual teaching. Of course, these days various instructional presentations can be found on YouTube and its ilk: perhaps the televised lectures of my childhood now have adequate equivalents conveniently to hand.
(An aside: I was surprised that the recently repeated
This got me to thinking. The Open University's become rather expensive these days: perhaps more due to less government support than more moneygrubbing but, either way, it has. But, surely the teaching is more expensive than the examining? Who offers accredited examination-based degrees without also wanting to provide the associated teaching, i.e., at a good price?
I don't know the answer. In investigating, I did discover the University of London International Programmes who, for instance, offer a distance-learning Graduate Diploma in Mathematics for £1,556, which would probably do me good. That includes study materials of some kind at least. I wonder who the alternatives are.
Then, things changed; the televised lectures disappeared. I assumed that they were still made and available, just only to paying students, but some recent conversation suggests that not to be the case: the teaching approach has changed more fundamentally. The Open University do collaborate with the BBC on making documentaries but that's really not the same, it's more an interesting taste than actual teaching. Of course, these days various instructional presentations can be found on YouTube and its ilk: perhaps the televised lectures of my childhood now have adequate equivalents conveniently to hand.
(An aside: I was surprised that the recently repeated
Order and Disorder(2012) got so far toward articulating some relationship between thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy but then stopped short.)
This got me to thinking. The Open University's become rather expensive these days: perhaps more due to less government support than more moneygrubbing but, either way, it has. But, surely the teaching is more expensive than the examining? Who offers accredited examination-based degrees without also wanting to provide the associated teaching, i.e., at a good price?
I don't know the answer. In investigating, I did discover the University of London International Programmes who, for instance, offer a distance-learning Graduate Diploma in Mathematics for £1,556, which would probably do me good. That includes study materials of some kind at least. I wonder who the alternatives are.