[nverno]

MIT is the gold standard of education. Most of their computing classes already give you full access to all the course materials, videos, labs, readings, handouts, etc. directly from the course page. These direct resources are far better than typical edX/Coursera courses.

The same is not generally true of Harvard courses (with a few exceptions like cs50), which hide all materials behind paywalls.

[dragonwriter]

> MIT is the gold standard of education

A complete tangent, but its somewhat amusing that this idiom remains popular when the literal gold standard itself is no longer generally considered a figurative gold standard of anything.

[oceliker]

I didn’t know where the term “gold standard” came from up until a couple of years ago. I thought it simply meant top standard (and there would be a silver standard, bronze standard, etc)

[nverno]

Orwell says something along the lines of never use outdated idioms in his Politics and the English Language. I'm withholding judgement on the extinctioness of this one until we see how the whole debt bubble plays out though :)