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 move slower than a dot-matrix printer.

That’s why we decided to hack the system.

This week, Udacity (in partnership with Woolf) 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 in 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 AI-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 $5K 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, no two-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 Nanodegree programs—short, focused programs that actually give you the skills employers care about. Those 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 Nanodegree programs they were already completing—something with the power of accreditation behind it.

So we thought: *Why not give them both? *

World-class skills AND a degree recognized in 60+ countries (including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and 40+ 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 $100K. 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 Udacity. It’s about rethinking what it means to get a graduate 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 shoutout to the Udacity and Woolf 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 Molton, VP of Consumer at Udacity