[skeptic_69]

I think if you want to be a leader in AI research you want to attract and nurture the best graduate students and researchers. I don't really know how much doing good research has to do with good online education. I am sure online education is useful but these issues don't really have much in common.

[mattferderer]

I don't disagree.

I believe that there are a few universities whose education is by far superior. If you can increase the amount of people receiving top education, you can increase those that can then go on to do research.

Getting into MIT is not easy. I imagine it is especially hard for those outside the US. The gatekeeper effect lowers the amount of people who can go on to become graduate students & researchers.

[skeptic_69]

ehhhhhhh I am not so sure the main limiting factor in going on to grad school is access to quality undergraduate education. a diligent student at the top public school in every state is probably qualified to go do research in graduate school.

I'd imagine a more limiting factor is the a) willingness to work really hard for 6+ years for uncertain rewards for the joy of research with very low wages. especially when you can go into industry and make 100k+ b) student loans-see low wages as an academic.

As an academic in ML at least-I think there are more than enough academics in the field or trying to get here....look at NIPs submissions!

[fooker]

>I don't really know how much doing good research has to do with good online education.

I am currently a CS grad student, I got started with computer science by watching MIT Open Courseware lectures.

[skeptic_69]

obviously learning things effectively makes you a better researcher. I am talking about the value to the academic culture of the department.

[moneil971]

Agreed, collaborations and publishing innovative research/experimentation go much further than trying to do a course simplified to the level that it can be taken online.

[anonymous5133]

I view the online education/MOOC type stuff being for teaching the basics. For example, have the undergrad curriculum be online and basically free. If people want to go to grad school at MIT or wherever, then have them take an extremely hard exam in the subject. I think overall, you would get higher caliber candidates this way just because of how big online education can scale.

The current education system is highly exclusionary based on characteristics that are obtained in high school and most of the characteristics are directly linked to income. The problem is many people can still go on to get these skills later in life but can't really get into MIT once they're adults. You can, in theory, but we all know in practice it is not realistic.