Udacity has announced three Ruby Nandoegrees, with the first one at Beginner level already open for enrollment. Unlike other Udacity content, the courses preparing students for the projects they need to build to earn the credential don't appear to be available for free.

Udacity has partnered with GitHub to create a Ruby curriculum that has three levels of expertise:

1. Beginning Ruby Nanodegree Program
2. Ruby on Rails Developer Nanodegree Program
3. Senior Ruby on Rails Developer Nanodegree Program

Only the first of these is currently available and it designed for those new to programming who want to a career in web development. Udacity's overview states:

Do you want to build applications for the web? Great! Are you new to programming? No problem. You’ve just got a few things to learn first, because in order to succeed as a web developer, you need a strong foundation in programming. The good news is, this Nanodegree program will provide that for you.

In this program, you’ll be learning Ruby, a modern programming language that reads almost like English, making it perfect for beginners! This will prepare you to learn Ruby on Rails, a powerful framework which uses Ruby and powers websites like GitHub, Groupon, and Twitter. Throughout the Nanodegree program, you’ll hear from major voices in the industry, including the creator of the Ruby language himself!

As in other Nanodegrees, students work on projects that are added to a personal portfolio to demonstrate their skills to potential employers. The blurb states that most students can complete the requirements in 2-3 months at 10 hours per week - but it can take longer.

The second course in the series, expected to become available later this year is at intermediate level and covers the web application framework Sinatra,, goes on to introduce databases and ActiveRecord, which students use to create new Sinatra apps and finally teaches students how to create full-featured Rails apps and deploy them. It is expected to take students  6-9 moths to complete at 10 hours per week.

The third one, which has the same estimated workload, is at advanced level and is suitable for those with knowledge of both Ruby and Ruby on Rails. The blurb states:

Over the course of this program, students will go under the hood of Rails and learn everything from metaprogramming and test-driven development to RESTful APIs and Rails design patterns. Graduates will ultimately build their own micro-framework packed as a gem (with documentation!), an API, and an app that consumes their API.

Whichever level, the cost of enrolling is $200.00 per month (after a 1-week free trial) and if you graduate in less than 12 months half of what you've paid is refunded.

Whereas a lot of Udacity course material is also available for free to those who don't want to earn a credential, there is currently no open access content on Ruby from Udacity. However, according to the comment below received from Udacity, this doesn't signal a new precedent and once the content is tested Udacity will be releasing some of it for free.

Given the level of demand for Ruby on Rails experience, if Udacity's outcome-based model succeeds in improving the hireability of its students, paying the monthly subscription seems a cost effective way to improve your career prospects. 

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