Laird Stewart☀️
10/11/25

Online Master’s Programs are Worthless

When I say “Online Master’s” I mean fully remote programs for professionals from accredited institutions. For example, JHU Engineering for Professionals, where I’ve taken courses. These programs provide value via

1. Instruction (materials and guidance provided by the professor)
2. Signaling (proxy for intelligence/conscientiousness – for career advancement)

The introduction of reasoning models represents a drastic decrease in the value of both factors. First, equivalent instruction is possible via the combination of publicly available syllabi and recorded lectures in concert with LLM tutors.

Second, the elephant in the room, reasoning models can get As in most classes. I’ve only tested these models on physics, math, and CS courses, but I suspect this is the case for all STEM subjects. Whether or not you want to call this cheating, if a student wishes to do so, they can get an A with almost no effort and without learning anything. If they haven’t already, employers and PhD admissions committees will soon realize that online Master’s degrees are only worth the student’s word.

I predict online Master’s programs will lose 90% of their value in the next year as LLM tutors improve and employers wake up. Assuming these programs won’t suddenly fall 90% in price, I expect enrollment to fall.

What next?

I won’t be taking any more classes at JHU. I’m toying with the idea of finding a group of coworkers or friends who want to find a textbook or recorded online course to study together. If I were in charge of my company’s HR department, I would stop compensating employees for online coursework. I would also stop counting online Master’s programs awarded after 2025 as “years of experience” when calculating salary scales. Finally, if I were a director making hiring decisions, I would weigh online Master’s coursework equally to a prospective hire claiming to have self-taught a course via a recorded lecture series and LLM tutor.

Given the following observations:

• What previously costed $2,500 (assuming instruction is 1/2 the value of these courses) can now be offered for the price of an LLM subscription.
• Demand for post-graduate education will increase as students drop out of (or never begin) these programs

There’s an opportunity here for a startup (or open source project). I’m imagining a service that organizes publicly released lectures and syllabi and matches students with others in their city to form study groups. What remains is recovering the lost signaling value. Perhaps peer reviews or in-person final exams at testing centers.