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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

They are basically graduate certificates, which are a normal university thing. You take 3-5 graduate courses, they give you a certificate saying that you did this, you give them money. Not a full blown masters, thus the micromasters branding, but it can open the door to changing a career or entering a specialization.

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Its even less than that. This micro masters is sold as an entry point for a full-fledged masters program. The order of operations is something like:

1. Complete the micromasters courses at your speed.

2. Get a passing grade in a proctored exam.

3. Get accepted to a masters program with 1/2 of your credits taken care of.

4. Finish the masters degree on-campus.

i don't know if that's "less" or "more" than a graduate certificate. Certificates don't usually give you half the credits toward a masters program at the same university, do they?

I can see this being great "marketing" for the university too though -- once you got the "micromasters", the only way to get half your credits toward a degree is to go to the same university that gave you the micromasters (if you can get accepted, they took your money for the micromasters without promising that) -- they've kind of locked you in.

That fair. I suppose its about the same as a graduate certificate until you take the extra steps to get a degree.

Has anyone actually transferred from a Micro-Master to a real masters at Harvard/MIT?

Pretty crucial question!

I dunno, giving people who might not be able to afford a masters otherwise or aren’t able to move away for two years an opportunity to get half a masters degree from home seems like a pretty big deal to me.

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