[shon_]

I'm a current cs major at Harvard so I might be qualified to comment on the structure of Harvard's classes. If you are an undergrad and physically present at the lectures, then the instruction and individual attention are both phenomenal. In that regard, I would say that Stanford and Harvard classes are equivalent.

As far as online classes, I would say Harvard is fairly behind Stanford. While Harvard films nearly all of its lectures so that students in the extension school can still take regular courses, there is little if not zero attention given to them in lectures and assignments. In one class I took last year, a professor actually made fun of a few of the submissions from extension school students in front of the class.

Furthermore, attending office hours as an extension student is nigh out of the question. I'm unsure if some of our TF's (TA's) are available for extension school students are not. Probably so, but I've never witnessed it. All that is to say, from the AI lectures from Stanford I've watched, I would say their online instruction is superior to Harvard.

edit: formatting