udacity has gone too far the other way for me. It seems very slick but I switched off after a couple of minutes because I felt like I was watching a kids tv show.
I am taking the udacity statistics 101 course and while I agree with the statement you make, if you visit the forums there are plenty of people having trouble with the current material itself. The last assignment had a fill in the blanks proof of the maximum likelihood estimator. Some people were complaining on the forum that it did not belong to a 101 course. Either ways I am glad that the course is being offered. It may not be the best introduction to statistics I get but it at least pushes me into starting to read about statistics.
That wasn't supposed to be a comment on the material, simply the way it's being presented. This was a discrete mathematics course, don't have time to look it up right now. (edit: Relatives are faffing - here it is: http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs221/CourseRev/1)
I personally think there's room for many services like coursera and udacity to serve different levels of academic experience and expectations.
I realise my initial comment might have come across as more confrontational than I intended. I definitely agree that there's room for services catering to different academic experience and exceptions. What I wanted to highlight was even the hand-holding approach of the udacity instructors might be to cater to absolute beginners.
Great to know. I've been working on a third option that's less lecturey and less condecending. People can complain about it profusely next month when it launches.