Udacity is launching a new spin on its Nanodegree certification programs today. With its new Nanodegree Plus offerings, the for-profit education company guarantees that you will get a job within six months after graduation. If you don’t, you will get all of your tuition back.
While the standard Nanodegrees will set you back $199 per month (though you will get 50 percent back if you graduate within 12 months), the Plus versions will cost $299 per month. The job guarantee is only available to eligible U.S. students, though.
Udacity assumes you will graduate within about nine months with 10 hours of work every week.
The new degrees will be available for four courses: Machine Learning Engineer, Android Developer, iOS Developer and Senior Web Developer. Udacity plans to bring this guarantee to more of its Nanodegrees over time.
As Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun notes, students in these programs “will work closely with our Career Services team, and enroll in our new Career Advisor program and Career Concierge services.”
You can, of course, still take all the courses on the site for free, though you won’t get a certificate at the end.
Udacity says it quietly placed some of its students into jobs with its partners over the course of the last few months. The company worked with the likes of Google, Facebook, AT&T, MongoDB and Cloudera on developing these programs, so that’s likely where it also placed these students. Some also joined Udacity itself.