Columbia FE course on Coursera

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen

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After University of Washington offered their Intro to Computational Finance on Coursera, Columbia is the second major university that offers a course in financial engineering on this platform.

FinacialEngLogo.jpg

https://www.coursera.org/course/fe
Financial Engineering and Risk Management
Martin Haugh and Garud Iyengar, with guest lectures by Emanuel Derman

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of financial engineering and risk management. We consider the pricing of derivatives, portfolio optimization and risk management and cast a critical eye on how these are used in practice.[prbreak][/prbreak]
 
It certainly does not hurt at all. One, it shows you are genuinely interested in the field. Two, you are disciplined enough to complete the course.
Online courses are notoriously for its low completion rate since it requires a strong determination and there is no penalty for not completing it.
Time is limited commodity so you need to prioritize and see how best to prepare your skill set/knowledge. Find out weakness in your applications and address them.
 
Andy Nguyen said:
It certainly does not hurt at all. One, it shows you are genuinely interested in the field. Two, you are disciplined enough to complete the course.
Online courses are notoriously for its low completion rate since it requires a strong determination and there is no penalty for not completing it.
Time is limited commodity so you need to prioritize and see how best to prepare your skill set/knowledge. Find out weakness in your applications and address them.
Click to expand...
I wasn't aware that online courses had low completion rates.
I am thinking that could be the case for free courses like the post, but what about paid courses like the C++ course offered here at quantnet?
I am not sure if this is an appropriate question for this thread but what is the completion rate for the quantnet C++ course? I noticed that the numbers of students who passed the quiz decreases at a fairly high rate as the levels go up.
 
Wonder what impact this will make on paid online courses like CQF or the lesser known CFE.. my personal opinion is that, education 'ideally' should be free and testing should be charged... what do you all think ??
 
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Sahil Puri said:
Wonder what impact this will make on paid online courses like CQF or the lesser known CFE.. my personal opinion is that, education 'ideally' should be free and testing should be charged... what do you all think ??
Click to expand...

It would be AMAZING if we got whole programs on the internet.
 
this is fantastic news - im taking a course on neural networks/probabilistic graphical models at coursera, and the quality of teaching is very very high.
 
I took Eric Zivot's Introduction to Computational Finance as an on-line University of Washington student. The course is fantastic, but it is a huge amount of work (at least for me). I like to think that I'm pretty disciplined, but the level of effort for a graduate course like this is different from most of the things that we do in our "spare time". In my case, the course consumed almost every non-working hour I had during the summer (it was an eight week, five unit summer course).

So I have also been wondering how this will work out. The opportunity to take the course for free is great, but I have to wonder how many people will actually complete all of the assignments and the exams.
 
Yes its true completing such course with full time job and a healthy social life is bit difficult. But its not so difficult if you are ready to sacrifice your social outings. I did complete 2 courses at once which included doing weekly assignments and two exams.
 
Ian Kaplan said:
I took Eric Zivot's Introduction to Computational Finance as an on-line University of Washington student. The course is fantastic, but it is a huge amount of work (at least for me). I like to think that I'm pretty disciplined, but the level of effort for a graduate course like this is different from most of the things that we do in our "spare time". In my case, the course consumed almost every non-working hour I had during the summer (it was an eight week, five unit summer course).

So I have also been wondering how this will work out. The opportunity to take the course for free is great, but I have to wonder how many people will actually complete all of the assignments and the exams.
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I also took it. I personally have no academic background nor in finance nor in computer programming, so this is a great opportunity to see what do students actually learn during these classes. And as a European, I show a bit of how things are taught there in the US (I acknowledge that MOOCs are quite specific).

I agree this requires a bunch of time to follow the program a week after another. I mean this is not the level of the course is incredibly high (and that okay for me) but this just take time to watch the videos, rework the examples, explore a bit along the topics. Anyway, I think that rocks!

I enrolled to 5 or 6 other courses all due to start from october to march, .... maybe too much.

I long the Financial Engineering and Risk Management starts!

Generally speaking, I think that video lectures add some value compared to reading books. I had the chance to see few online courses of the QFC. Also very valuable, nevermind there I get a statement of accomplishment after completion.

Best,
Édouard
 
Sahil Puri said:
Wonder what impact this will make on paid online courses like CQF or the lesser known CFE.. my personal opinion is that, education 'ideally' should be free and testing should be charged... what do you all think ??
Click to expand...
That brings up lot of interesting questions. How much should universities charge for the testing/certification? If they offer the whole degree, how much should that be? How would that affect their in-class enrollment, degree value? How would employers treat this?
Can't wait to see how this shape up.
 
Andy Nguyen said:
That brings up lot of interesting questions. How much should universities charge for the testing/certification? If they offer the whole degree, how much should that be? How would that affect their in-class enrollment, degree value? How would employers treat this?
Can't wait to see how this shape up.
Click to expand...

I remember when the whole courera thing started people saying, " Tier 2 universities should start to watch out..

but just imagine a world with free education and paid testing in computer labs by universities or groups of universities. GRE and GMAT have proved themselves to be effective ways of testing on a global level.. could this be extended further ?? 'It is indeed an exciting time'
 
I actually emailed Eric Zivot and asked him about putting the whole program up, and he said only a few courses so the program itself can continue making $.

Also, I talk with the HFT quant who writes all the software for the program regularly, and he said not to really dream of free MS degrees in their entirety going up on the internet, since why the heck would any university want to give away what it can charge upwards of $35k a year for?
 
word of advice to aspiring courserians - stick to a few courses per semester instead of enrolling in every course you find interesting. many of these courses require (and rightfully so) extreme dedication, so if you are working full time I wouldn't recommend more than 2 courses a semester. for example the probabilistic graphical model class says that stanford graduate students spend approx 15-20 hours a week on the class. this is not an exaggeration!
 
Thank you, Andy! QuantNet is the most valuable site on Quant...thank you for your dedication...my best.
 
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