[swalsh]

This whole scenario is kind of silly. I can understand the simplification in order to debate the merits of a free mass scale online education. However it's not realistic. No two candidates will ever be the same. Everyone has different levels of communication, most will think a little differently. If they're programmers, there's probably different levels of understanding of language concepts, or OOP concepts. In the scenario of one entry level candiate from a brick and mortar institution vs the candidate from MITx. I'm going to choose the person answers my questions most coherently, and writes the better code on my sample problem.

I'm going to hire the employee who i believe will work with me better, and who will produce a higher quality product. I don't care which school he/she went to.

[bayleo]

It's a gedankenexperiment and he's invoking ceteris paribus. It's no different than isolating the velocity of two balls rolling down a slope by opting to ignore things like friction & drag in a physics problem.