[Homunculiheaded]

I find this attitude really strange. The value in going to Stanford isn't that you get to take the physical classes, it's that you can walk up to Prof. Ng's office (and/or similar caliber profs) and have a chat, and more importantly target yourself to be doing some research under them before you graduate.

Having merely taken a class with someone big in the field (especially a large class) is essentially an interesting point of trivia to bring up at dinner sometime. If anything these online courses are about demonstrating that the scarcity of chairs in a great professors classroom is rather artificial. Having done research under (even if it's pretty trivial stuff you personally do) someone great will really have an impact on your career.

If you're an undergrad and your not spending a good amount of your time talking one on one with researchers you have access to you're not taking advantage of a huge benefit of attending a university.

[bradleyjg]

The online students aren't getting the most valuable part of the entire thing - a diploma with the name "Stanford" on it. Yes computer programming is a young profession that isn't as hidebound as many others, but it is maturing and as is true for most other professions, soon proxies will dominate hiring.

[gallamine]

Additionally, you can actually make relationships with these folks, which are highly useful in the future for recommendations, etc.

[aik]

Even more interesting to me anyway is the fact that this is potentially a sign of a shift in the industry from importance of the traditional higher education credential to importance of a worthy alternative credential not owned by traditional university systems and structures -- which is extremely exciting.

I still agree that the networking components and group-learning (or face-to-face interaction) are missed (and are extremely valuable), and so it will be very interesting to see how this new paradigm deals with that issue.