In May 2013, Georgia Tech together with its partners, Udacity and AT&T, announced a new online master’s degree in computer science delivered through the platform popularized by massively open online courses (MOOCs) This new online MS CS — or OMSCS for short — costs less than $7,000 total, compared to a price tag of $40,000 for an MS CS at comparable public universities and upwards of $70,000 at private universities The first-of-its-kind program was launched in January 2014 and has sparked a worldwide conversation about higher education in the 21st century Great progresses have been made ever since So far, 590 students have graduated from OMSCS The program has also paved the way for a number of similar, MOOC-based MS programs The talk will describe the OMSCS program, how it came about, its first three and a half years, and what Georgia Tech has learned from the OMSCS experience We will also discuss its potential effect on higher education

Zvi Galil earned BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, both summa cum laude. He then obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. In the past decades, he served as the chair of the Computer Science department of Tel-Aviv University in 1979-1982, the chair of the Computer Science Department of Columbia University in 1989-1994, and as dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science in 1995-2007. Galil aslo served as president of Tel Aviv University in 2007-2009. In July 2010, Galil became the third John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech. Galil's research areas have been the design and analysis of algorithms, complexity, cryptography and experimental design. He is a fellow of the ACM and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2009 the Columbia Society of Graduates awarded him the Great Teacher Award.