| What a complete lack of imagination. You sound like someone who saw the first flight and said "pfft... 100 meters? I can do better on a bicycle". Think about possibilities. Imagine what can happen 10 years from now, when Udacity covers the whole curriculum of all major majors, not the few courses that they managed to build in few months of their existence so far. Imagine what happens if they have 10 years to tweak and improve their lectures, based on feedback on data they gather from past students. They can only get better! (which is not the case in physical universities, due to rotation of lecturers and the fact that some of them were never good to begin with). Imagine that they hire faculty to start doing real research project, the way MIT, Standford et al do, all coordinated via internet, live video calls etc. Imagine they do it so well that they are allowed to start giving Ph.D.s. Imagine that they start giving master degrees via testing centers, after you pay a modest fee for taking the test (something they have already started doing). Imagine that they start coordinating in-person study groups via meetup or some other such service, the way e.g. programmers self-organize and create "Android SF user group" and such. Those are just 5 minutes ideas that I'm sure are not escaping Thrun - he's much smarter than I am. The disruption here is zero cost. If they can maintain that and expand to offer more, better courses, it'll be massive. |
I saw the first flight and then Wilbur and Orville went to my local railroad magnate and somehow convinced him to destroy half his trains and use their primitive plane for mass transport instead when I had already paid the train magnate most of my savings for a four year contract to haul my goods to a distant city. I'm already upset but I give the two people the benefit of the doubt and send my goods on their plane anyway because there's no alternative. It promptly crashes and burns and I lose all my money.
Are you arguing that Udacity in its current state will make you a world class computer scientist? Because that's what /I/ am arguing against. It is not currently anywhere near a replacement for the current higher education at Stanford. Look at the reviews above for evidence of this.
Edit: Sarcastic response to above commenter's statement about my imagination removed. Downvotes duly noted.