The Good Tech Companies - Higher Ed Just Got Hacked: This $5K Master’s in AI Changes Everything
Episode Date: October 17, 2025This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/higher-ed-just-got-hacked-this-$5k-masters-in-ai-changes-everything. This week, Udacity (in ...partnership with Woolf) launched a fully accredited Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence. Check more stories related to machine-learning at: https://hackernoon.com/c/machine-learning. You can also check exclusive content about #ai, #career, #artificial-intelligence, #ms-ai, #udacity-degree, #udacity-master's-degree, #higher-ed, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @udacity. Learn more about this writer by checking @udacity's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. This week, Udacity (in partnership with Woolf) launched a fully accredited Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence.
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Higher ed just got hacked.
This $5,000 masters in AI changes everything.
By UDA City.
Let's be honest, higher education has been broken for a while.
The price tags are wallet melting.
The ROI is sometimes murky.
And for anyone trying to keep up with the pace of AI innovation,
traditional universities moves lower than a dot matrix printer.
That's why we decided to hack the system.
This week, Udacity, in partnership with Wolf, launched a fully accredited master of science
in artificial intelligence, an accredited graduate degree that costs under $5,000.
Yeah, you read that right.
A master's degree in AI for less than the price of a campus meal plan.
So, why now?
Because the world is on fire with AI hype and most people are still standing outside with
a garden hose.90% of workers are already using AI at work, but three and four regularly
abandon AI tools mid-task because they don't know how to use them. At the same time, the job
market is exploding. The number of eye-related roles jumped 53% this year, and companies are paying a 25%
premium for people who can actually use AI to deliver business results. Meanwhile, grad school tuition
keeps climbing like it's immune to inflation. Two-year programs now average $74,000 in the U.S.
enter the $5,000 AI master's degree. With this new master's in AI program,
You get the credibility of a traditional degree and the flexibility of modern online learning.
There's no debt trap, not what year lock-in, and no gatekeeping.
You pay a $199 enrollment fee and then just use your Udacity subscription.
If you stop halfway through, you keep your academic transcript with transferable credits for what you've completed.
That's a pretty radical idea.
Education that meets you where you are, instead of the other way around.
From skills to accreditation and why it matters.
Udacity built its reputation on its transformative nanodegray programs, short, focused programs
that actually give you the skills employers care about. Thosi programs have already helped
hundreds of thousands of learners land real tech jobs, but many of our students told us they wanted
something even more to go along with the nanodegray programs they were already completing, something
with the power of accreditation behind it. So we thought, why not give them both? World class
skills in a degree recognized in 60 plus countries, including the U.S.
Canada, Australia, and 40-plus European nations. That combination of skills and accreditation might
just be the unlock higher-ed needs and the one you've been waiting for. The bigger picture.
My MBA cost well over $100,000. It was absolutely life-changing for me, but it also came
with a mountain of debt. It's one of the reasons I'm so excited to launch a master's degree that
costs 5% of that. This isn't just about audacity. It's about rethinking what it means to get
aggraduate education. We're done pretending that good education has to be exclusive or
expensive. We're done with outdated gatekeeping that slows people down while technology speeds
up. This new degree is proof that you can have quality, affordability, and flexibility,
all at once. And it's just the beginning. Massive shout out to the Udacity and Wolf teams
who made this happen. You've just helped hack one of the oldest systems on the planet and we're
just getting started. And if you've ever dreamed about mastering AI, without mortgaging your future,
This is your sign. Sign up here and forge your future in tech. By Jared Moulton, VP of Consumer at Udacity. Thank you for listening to this Hackernoon story, read by artificial intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.
