[throwaway984393]

Well, call me crazy, but doesn't that already exist? Free lectures are available in a variety of media and locations in a variety of subjects. Libraries have a ton of content, and often the space available to host talks/lectures. The Internet has pretty much all information you will ever need in one form or another.

If the Catherine Project is indeed just one more form of that kind of decentralized ad-hoc learning, then the only downside is that it'll be just as successful. That is to say, a bunch of random people learning random things without a curriculum. Which is not really "an education", and carries a series of challenges and burdens for a great number (maybe most) of the population, that traditional academia is intended to address.