[coopdog]

They do also get the recognition from teaching the class. Andrew Ng is now universally renowned as a machine learning expert (I imagine the consulting fees he could charge to businesses could be immense). Martin Odersky's excellent class on functional programming graduated 10,000 new Scala programmers, which can only help his company Typesafe.

Come to think of it though I actually would send a donation if a large portion of it went to the professor, although 'to advance the field' and 'because it's my passion' as reasons for teaching do make for better classes.

[mikle]

Your points are of course valid. I was just saying there are many things one can offer the teacher, and donations shouldn't be one of them.

[Mvandenbergh]

>Andrew Ng is now universally renowned as a machine learning expert

I don't doubt that this has helped his profile with non-ML people - who might be in business positions to hire him as a consultant - but he was renowned as a machine learning expert before this.