[pdonis]

If you mean there is more to the credential than the coursework, of course that's true. But the only possible value in the credential is scarcity; if everyone gets it, it ceases to have any value as a credential.

Or if you mean there's more to the experience of going to college than just the coursework, of course that's true as well. But if everyone went to MIT (or any other selective school), that experience would change too; all those people would not be getting the same experience that people going to MIT now are getting.

In short, it is not really possible for everyone to "go to MIT" (or any other selective school) in either of the above senses. So I was focusing on what is possible, namely, for everyone to have access to the same actual learning materials that MIT students have access to.

There is one other thing you could be referring to that the online materials can't give you, namely in person instruction and feedback. Personally, if I think back to the classes I took at MIT, I didn't learn anything significant in those ways; everything significant I learned, as far as the actual academic material was concerned, I learned from reading the course notes and textbooks and working the problem sets and taking the exams (and seeing what I got right and what I got wrong). And all those things are available to anyone who goes to the OCW site. I can't say for sure what other people's experiences are, but I think this quote from Gibbon is relevant:

"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

[908B64B197]

> There is one other thing you could be referring to that the online materials can't give you, namely in person instruction and feedback

It's the labs and the projects. Especially for engineering degrees, a good part of learning comes from shipping projects. I think it's where "everyone doing MOOC" falls short.

[pdonis]

> It's the labs and the projects

True, this is one thing that online course materials can't give you. But I also don't think a school like MIT has any real advantage in this respect over other schools. At least, not if the labs I had there are any indication; the materials we were given to work with were just as half-baked as anywhere else.

[ghaff]

And if I'm really honest, not to suggest the coursework (especially hands-on) didn't have value, but a huge part of what I learned was exposure to many things--including non-STEM--and various activities outside of classwork. I only use things I learned undergrad in the most general sense today.

[pdonis]

> a huge part of what I learned was exposure to many things--including non-STEM--and various activities outside of classwork

I think these things can be found at any decent school. Or, for that matter, in many kinds of activities outside of any school.

[ghaff]

Oh, I don't disagree. Certainly with respect to hiring, I'm usually interviewing fairly senior people in not-directly hands-on tech roles. I won't say I don't look at the schools but they don't really play a factor in my evaluation. And some of the best senior folks I know are from schools that no one's heard of.

[908B64B197]

That's my observation too.

At the senior level, folks have typically carved a path out for themselves. College is typically the oldest thing on their resume anyways.

[ghaff]

Yeah, without in any way to disclaim a rather privileged background, and without every really being outside of a engineering-adjacent space, I have had a very twisty turny path. And I don't think that's at all uncommon for a lot of people with a long career.

I think a lot of people here assume a fairly linear SWE progression beginning with a CS degree but that's not the norm for a lot of people who work in the computer industry in various roles even that didn't involve wholesale career shifts.