12 ms·

Is Sebastian Thrun's Udacity the future of higher education?

41 points by subbu 14y ago

trevor99 14y ago
No, it's a good attempt though. Most of his courses are too theoretical to matter or get anyone anywhere a job.
- UK-AlasGou 14y ago
  The exact opposite criticism from me. Courses should not be "watered down". They should be as hard as they are at top universities, other wise they will lose credibility. Do primer courses, leading on to the harder courses if you have to. This revolution should be used to make high-end knowledge available to everyone who seeks it, not to water-down that knowledge. I want online courses, but good ones which are comparable to top courses.
  - trevor99 14y ago
    Sorry, I meant they are too niche.
carlsednaoui 14y ago
As a current Udacity Student I believe that we are reaching (or have reached) the tipping point for online education. The Udacity classes are very informative and relatively engaging (love the lecture quizzes), however, I do believe that there is still a lot of room for improvements. On another note, I am pretty excited about the upcoming local Udacity Meetups (http://udacity.meetup.com/ http://udacity.meetup.com/).
tom_b 14y ago
I think online, low-cost education will supplant courses taught with low or no instructor-to-student interaction in a very short window of time. Less obviously, I think that mentors (teachers and professors at all levels) who provide value to individual learners will stay in high demand, along with the institutions that employ them. I also think that the personal networks of these mentors will become the gateway to top-level employment in many fields.
sopooneo 14y ago
What portion of any of the hot online education projects could have been done without the web? For instance, how much of each of them could have been replicated by mailing people DVD/VHS lecture videos and quiz software? If most of it could be done without the web, why wasn't it? Cost? Excessive waiting and friction caused by going through the mail? I agree with almost everything I've read of what Khan has said, and Thrun is certainly impressive. But when other people go nuts about the possibilities of online education, they seem to imply that the primary hindrance to educational success worldwide has been a lack of access to video lectures. For most students, I do not think that is the case.
- carlsednaoui 14y ago
  I think that "consuming education" via video + interactive quizzes (and course-specific chat room & in person meetups) is much more attractive, and engaging, than sitting on your couch watching a DVD. It is pretty incredible to know that learning a topic of interest is literally a few clicks away... Also, on another note, it could be that since my cost as a student is almost zero (let's take the value of my time out of the equation) then I am more willing to "try" a class and, since the Udacity classes tend to be engaging, I actually stick around. Edit: IMO Udacity is a great way to start learning something new, such as basic CS stuff.
- randomdata 14y ago
  The timing is probably more important than the actual technology used. People's attitudes towards education have changed dramatically in the past few years, in my opinion. It wasn't long ago that Google bragged that they would only hire the best students from top universities. Now they have hired people just because they have successfully completed a Udacity course, have college dropouts amongst their ranks, you name it. That is a pretty dramatic shift in such a short time, and they're not the only company to follow in those footsteps. It is not that mail-order education was impossible years ago, but nobody would have taken it seriously. There was a strong leaning that a college degree from a traditional school was the only way to make it. Without that, you were going to flipping burgers at McDonalds. I think people are now ready for new ways of learning and it just happens that the web is now a great way to distribute that education.
avsbst 14y ago
No. The class Sebastian Thrun taught on AI, was a class devoid of all the qualities that made CS 221 one of the (formerly) greatest classes in not only the CS department, but all of Stanford. His AI class was dumbed down and slapped with a Stanford logo to make people think that they were performing at the same academic level as top notch university students when in fact he had simply lowered the level of achievement so that anyone could take the class. AI is hard. Machine learning is hard. Computer science is hard. Not everyone can do it, and no online course will change that fact. Why can I say this? These are class reviews of CS 221 from Courserank before and after Sebastian Thrun made it his flagship for online teaching. ============================================================ BEFORE: ============================================================ Note: When taught by Andrew Ng the class received no ratings less than 4/5 stars "4/5 Stars Autumn 2006-2007 Andrew Ng A+ 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Covers a broad spectrum of topics in AI. If you are interested in AI, but you aren't sure what area in AI you might want to take classes in or you don't know much about AI, this is a good class to take. After CS 221, you can go on to CS 229 (machine learning), CS 223B (computer vision), CS 224N (natural language processing), etc. This class is a lot of work, and most of it is valuable although not all of the programming assignments were that well designed when I took it." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Winter 2008-2009 Andrew Ng A- 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Good class. Andrew isn't the most exciting lecturer, but you'll learn a lot of different AI techniques, and the programming assignments are interesting. The problem sets and midterm are heavily algebra/proof-based, so be prepared. Work through the section problems and you should be fine with that. Since all psets, assignments, and the final project can all be done with a team, make sure you have at least 2 other people you know you can work with, or else you'll get dragged down." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Winter 2008-2009 Andrew Ng CR 0 of 0 people found this review helpful I really enjoyed this class. Very interesting topics, long and involved problem sets, and not-so-difficult programming assignments. Except, of course, for the final project. GET A GROUP ... I had to drop down to CR/NC because my partners dropped the class, and so I spent most of dead and finals weeks working on this stupid robot dog. That being said, I loved the class." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Autumn 2009-2010 Andrew Ng A- 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Terrific class with great lecture material and interesting videos. I think the Audi parallel parking itself by driving backwards at 40mph, braking, and sliding into the parking spot was what kept me going. The problem sets make sure you really understand the material, and the programming assignments are a great way to learn Matlab. The project is HARD and time comsuming, so make sure you have time in your schedule near the end of the quarter!" ============================================================ AFTER: ============================================================ Note: Under Sebastian Thrun the class has received no rating higher than 3/5 stars, even more telling, look at the comments for Autumn 2011/12 when the online system that Udacity is based off of was rolled out for Stanford students. "3/5 Stars Winter 2010-2011 Sebastian B Thrun A- 5 of 5 people found this review helpful With Thrun class had a very different feel than it would have Ng. It skimped on the math/theory and focused on intuition and practice. I liked it less, but for people who are less interested in the math, it was an improvement." ------------------------------------------------------------ "3/5 Stars Winter 2010-2011 Sebastian B Thrun A- 5 of 5 people found this review helpful If you can take this class with Andrew Ng I would recommend it. The version I took was pretty poorly taught. The lectures lacked both detail and clear explanations of the concepts. I feel like I came out of this class without having learned much of anything." ------------------------------------------------------------ "1/5 Stars Autumn 2011-2012 Sebastian B Thrun B 7 of 7 people found this review helpful Hands down the worst class I have taken at Stanford. Terribly taught, unresponsive and incompetent TAs, mixed up deadlines. Avoid at all costs." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 5 of 5 people found this review helpful god awful. learned absolutely nothing." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 7 of 7 people found this review helpful As the quarter wore on it became painfully clear that the focus on students was minimal for this class. Lectures aligned poorly with homework material, coding assignments were rarely well designed, and grading procedures were at best illogical and at worst completely incomprehensible." ------------------------------------------------------------ "2/5 Stars Autumn 2011-2012 Sebastian B Thrun A- 4 of 4 people found this review helpful This class was a waste of time. Seriously. The only beneficial part to me was the final project. Everything else was so frustratingly simplified and easy that I wanted to slap myself for taking this class. Here's an actual problem from the midterm that demonstrates our professor's opinion of Stanford students: For a coin X, we know P(heads) = 0.3 What is P(tails)? And whenever there was anything REMOTELY difficult, the teachers would, without fail, give a hint... Just skip to 229. It may be tougher, but this class is not worth it anymore." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 6 of 6 people found this review helpful Hands down the worst class I have ever taken in my life. This was a joke of a class, far too easy so the curve was mind boggling (the average on the midterm was around 97% because they gave the same test to us as they did to the online class). Essentially, this class catered to its free online constituency that doesn't pay for tuition. Seriously, I am completely ashamed of this class, and it has no place in one of the best AI universities int he world. Only take it if u need it, otherwise go straight to 229 or something else much better." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 4 of 4 people found this review helpful This course is useless and you should probably take it only if you have to. The class should be the Stanford class given to anyone for free, but it has became the class for anyone given at Stanford (where we have to pay for it). The homeworks were really easy, the only difficulty was to understand what was expected with poor indications. The real lectures sometimes conflicted with the online videos, and in this case the teachers considered the online video as the reference. This means that going to the class every morning instead of looking at free online video gives you a disadvange in this class. (confirmed by the TAs and posted on the class forums). In one sentence : if possible take the online free class instead of paying for it. It will even be better." RELATED: Jeff Atwood’s blog post “Please Don’t Learn to Code” (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-to-code.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-t...). Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” from Welcome to the Monkey House Edit: Fixed whitespace TL;DR: Learn AI Hard. Thrun make class dumb. Now anybody learn AI.
neilparikh 14y ago
A little off topic, but when is the testing center partnership being started? I read the blog post announcing it, but there was no exact date on when one go and take the test.
geogra4 14y ago
As someone who is vaguely familiar with programming and got about 1/2 way through the Udacity Python course I was disappointed with the education I received. Udacity courses seem to gamify to the extreme, giving hyper-specific tasks and immediate feedback without that much context or exploration. I decided to sign up for an O'Reilly School of Technology course instead. Yes it's not free, but I fee like I am actually learning something.
brown9-2 14y ago
At the very least Udacity seems to be winning the PR war. Coursera had the same origin as Thrun's AI class, and arguably had the better platform/user-experience from day one and today offers many more courses than Udacity - yet all the attention seems to be on Udacity only.
porter 14y ago
So much negativity here. Udacity is great. I have a finance background and struggled through some MIT OCW courses when I was learning how to program, and then ended up taking a year's worth of computer science courses at UF. One year later I have my first b2b web application with several dozen paying customers. I'm now taking some udacity courses and boy, I sure wish these existed 2 years ago. Udacity won't turn you into a world class computer scientist, but it is a wonderful way to learn and improve.
- avsbst 14y ago
  "Udacity won't turn you into a world class computer scientist, but it is a wonderful way to learn and improve." Exactly, Udacity is essentially a more interactive version of w3schools and other tutorial websites. With a more expansive collection of areas of study. The problem stems from this statement, the crux of this post: "Is Sebastian Thrun's Udacity the future of higher education?" That's where the negativity comes in. As you said, Udacity won't make you a world class computer scientists, but that's what universities like Stanford, MIT, UW, Michigan, Caltech, CMU and other top CS schools are /supposed/ to do. If you want to learn what AI is generally about, Udacity can help. But if you want to build a career out it, and become and actual expert, these sites fall flat on their faces. By embracing Udacity and Coursera as tools of higher education, Stanford and universities that follow suit are damaging the quality of the education they provide.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    But if you want to build a career out it, and become and actual expert, these sites fall flat on their faces. I don't think anyone believes that eight days spent learning how to build a driverless car will make you an expert in AI, but what if you followed up with similar, and increasingly challenging, courses for several hundred days like a traditional student would? Where then would you stand in relation to those who went to a traditional institution? In other words: Is the problem the delivery mechanism or the lack of content, which should improve with time?
    - avsbst 14y ago
Shenglong 14y ago
Often we forget, that "higher education" is just as much about building networks and adaptation, as learning traditional material. You learn what's acceptable, what kinds of people are successful, and what kinds of people you work best with. You meet the people who are going to find you that dream job. If you're an entrepreneur, you find the people who you'll want working for/with you. You meet the people who'll help you get things done. The question here really shouldn't be about whether Udacity is a good educational model. It should be about how far it can go - and I absolutely do not believe it is a replacement for traditional "higher education".
- randomdata 14y ago
  I read somewhere that Udacity's long-term business model is to profit through building those networks. Of course business models can change, but as it stands they have a lot of incentive to provide those foundations, more so than the education itself.
leal 14y ago
(note: did not read the CNN article) I think that all the complaining about the lack of difficulty is completely missing Thrun's and Norvig's objectives. The most important thing educators provide is inspiration, not information or putting students through mental push ups ad nauseam. I think Thrun's classes are extremely effective in that regard.
karpathy 14y ago
I don't believe that the intent is to replace higher education for the tiny fraction of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford it thanks to money, time or location, but to make it much more widely available. Sebastian's quote from the end of the article: "It's the beginning of higher education for everybody."
Corvus 14y ago
A perfect example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines): “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'”
nickc1188 14y ago
Udemy is closer than Udacity to being the future of education but both are far too narrow.

41 points by subbu 14y ago

trevor99 14y ago

No, it's a good attempt though. Most of his courses are too theoretical to matter or get anyone anywhere a job.

UK-AlasGou 14y ago
The exact opposite criticism from me. Courses should not be "watered down". They should be as hard as they are at top universities, other wise they will lose credibility. Do primer courses, leading on to the harder courses if you have to. This revolution should be used to make high-end knowledge available to everyone who seeks it, not to water-down that knowledge. I want online courses, but good ones which are comparable to top courses.
- trevor99 14y ago
  Sorry, I meant they are too niche.

carlsednaoui 14y ago

As a current Udacity Student I believe that we are reaching (or have reached) the tipping point for online education. The Udacity classes are very informative and relatively engaging (love the lecture quizzes), however, I do believe that there is still a lot of room for improvements. On another note, I am pretty excited about the upcoming local Udacity Meetups (http://udacity.meetup.com/ http://udacity.meetup.com/).

tom_b 14y ago

I think online, low-cost education will supplant courses taught with low or no instructor-to-student interaction in a very short window of time. Less obviously, I think that mentors (teachers and professors at all levels) who provide value to individual learners will stay in high demand, along with the institutions that employ them. I also think that the personal networks of these mentors will become the gateway to top-level employment in many fields.

sopooneo 14y ago

What portion of any of the hot online education projects could have been done without the web? For instance, how much of each of them could have been replicated by mailing people DVD/VHS lecture videos and quiz software? If most of it could be done without the web, why wasn't it? Cost? Excessive waiting and friction caused by going through the mail? I agree with almost everything I've read of what Khan has said, and Thrun is certainly impressive. But when other people go nuts about the possibilities of online education, they seem to imply that the primary hindrance to educational success worldwide has been a lack of access to video lectures. For most students, I do not think that is the case.

carlsednaoui 14y ago
I think that "consuming education" via video + interactive quizzes (and course-specific chat room & in person meetups) is much more attractive, and engaging, than sitting on your couch watching a DVD. It is pretty incredible to know that learning a topic of interest is literally a few clicks away... Also, on another note, it could be that since my cost as a student is almost zero (let's take the value of my time out of the equation) then I am more willing to "try" a class and, since the Udacity classes tend to be engaging, I actually stick around. Edit: IMO Udacity is a great way to start learning something new, such as basic CS stuff.
randomdata 14y ago
The timing is probably more important than the actual technology used. People's attitudes towards education have changed dramatically in the past few years, in my opinion. It wasn't long ago that Google bragged that they would only hire the best students from top universities. Now they have hired people just because they have successfully completed a Udacity course, have college dropouts amongst their ranks, you name it. That is a pretty dramatic shift in such a short time, and they're not the only company to follow in those footsteps. It is not that mail-order education was impossible years ago, but nobody would have taken it seriously. There was a strong leaning that a college degree from a traditional school was the only way to make it. Without that, you were going to flipping burgers at McDonalds. I think people are now ready for new ways of learning and it just happens that the web is now a great way to distribute that education.

avsbst 14y ago

No. The class Sebastian Thrun taught on AI, was a class devoid of all the qualities that made CS 221 one of the (formerly) greatest classes in not only the CS department, but all of Stanford. His AI class was dumbed down and slapped with a Stanford logo to make people think that they were performing at the same academic level as top notch university students when in fact he had simply lowered the level of achievement so that anyone could take the class. AI is hard. Machine learning is hard. Computer science is hard. Not everyone can do it, and no online course will change that fact. Why can I say this? These are class reviews of CS 221 from Courserank before and after Sebastian Thrun made it his flagship for online teaching. ============================================================ BEFORE: ============================================================ Note: When taught by Andrew Ng the class received no ratings less than 4/5 stars "4/5 Stars Autumn 2006-2007 Andrew Ng A+ 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Covers a broad spectrum of topics in AI. If you are interested in AI, but you aren't sure what area in AI you might want to take classes in or you don't know much about AI, this is a good class to take. After CS 221, you can go on to CS 229 (machine learning), CS 223B (computer vision), CS 224N (natural language processing), etc. This class is a lot of work, and most of it is valuable although not all of the programming assignments were that well designed when I took it." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Winter 2008-2009 Andrew Ng A- 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Good class. Andrew isn't the most exciting lecturer, but you'll learn a lot of different AI techniques, and the programming assignments are interesting. The problem sets and midterm are heavily algebra/proof-based, so be prepared. Work through the section problems and you should be fine with that. Since all psets, assignments, and the final project can all be done with a team, make sure you have at least 2 other people you know you can work with, or else you'll get dragged down." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Winter 2008-2009 Andrew Ng CR 0 of 0 people found this review helpful I really enjoyed this class. Very interesting topics, long and involved problem sets, and not-so-difficult programming assignments. Except, of course, for the final project. GET A GROUP ... I had to drop down to CR/NC because my partners dropped the class, and so I spent most of dead and finals weeks working on this stupid robot dog. That being said, I loved the class." ------------------------------------------------------------ "5/5 Stars Autumn 2009-2010 Andrew Ng A- 0 of 0 people found this review helpful Terrific class with great lecture material and interesting videos. I think the Audi parallel parking itself by driving backwards at 40mph, braking, and sliding into the parking spot was what kept me going. The problem sets make sure you really understand the material, and the programming assignments are a great way to learn Matlab. The project is HARD and time comsuming, so make sure you have time in your schedule near the end of the quarter!" ============================================================ AFTER: ============================================================ Note: Under Sebastian Thrun the class has received no rating higher than 3/5 stars, even more telling, look at the comments for Autumn 2011/12 when the online system that Udacity is based off of was rolled out for Stanford students. "3/5 Stars Winter 2010-2011 Sebastian B Thrun A- 5 of 5 people found this review helpful With Thrun class had a very different feel than it would have Ng. It skimped on the math/theory and focused on intuition and practice. I liked it less, but for people who are less interested in the math, it was an improvement." ------------------------------------------------------------ "3/5 Stars Winter 2010-2011 Sebastian B Thrun A- 5 of 5 people found this review helpful If you can take this class with Andrew Ng I would recommend it. The version I took was pretty poorly taught. The lectures lacked both detail and clear explanations of the concepts. I feel like I came out of this class without having learned much of anything." ------------------------------------------------------------ "1/5 Stars Autumn 2011-2012 Sebastian B Thrun B 7 of 7 people found this review helpful Hands down the worst class I have taken at Stanford. Terribly taught, unresponsive and incompetent TAs, mixed up deadlines. Avoid at all costs." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 5 of 5 people found this review helpful god awful. learned absolutely nothing." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 7 of 7 people found this review helpful As the quarter wore on it became painfully clear that the focus on students was minimal for this class. Lectures aligned poorly with homework material, coding assignments were rarely well designed, and grading procedures were at best illogical and at worst completely incomprehensible." ------------------------------------------------------------ "2/5 Stars Autumn 2011-2012 Sebastian B Thrun A- 4 of 4 people found this review helpful This class was a waste of time. Seriously. The only beneficial part to me was the final project. Everything else was so frustratingly simplified and easy that I wanted to slap myself for taking this class. Here's an actual problem from the midterm that demonstrates our professor's opinion of Stanford students: For a coin X, we know P(heads) = 0.3 What is P(tails)? And whenever there was anything REMOTELY difficult, the teachers would, without fail, give a hint... Just skip to 229. It may be tougher, but this class is not worth it anymore." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 6 of 6 people found this review helpful Hands down the worst class I have ever taken in my life. This was a joke of a class, far too easy so the curve was mind boggling (the average on the midterm was around 97% because they gave the same test to us as they did to the online class). Essentially, this class catered to its free online constituency that doesn't pay for tuition. Seriously, I am completely ashamed of this class, and it has no place in one of the best AI universities int he world. Only take it if u need it, otherwise go straight to 229 or something else much better." ------------------------------------------------------------ "User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing 4 of 4 people found this review helpful This course is useless and you should probably take it only if you have to. The class should be the Stanford class given to anyone for free, but it has became the class for anyone given at Stanford (where we have to pay for it). The homeworks were really easy, the only difficulty was to understand what was expected with poor indications. The real lectures sometimes conflicted with the online videos, and in this case the teachers considered the online video as the reference. This means that going to the class every morning instead of looking at free online video gives you a disadvange in this class. (confirmed by the TAs and posted on the class forums). In one sentence : if possible take the online free class instead of paying for it. It will even be better." RELATED: Jeff Atwood’s blog post “Please Don’t Learn to Code” (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-to-code.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-t...). Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” from Welcome to the Monkey House Edit: Fixed whitespace TL;DR: Learn AI Hard. Thrun make class dumb. Now anybody learn AI.

neilparikh 14y ago

A little off topic, but when is the testing center partnership being started? I read the blog post announcing it, but there was no exact date on when one go and take the test.

geogra4 14y ago

As someone who is vaguely familiar with programming and got about 1/2 way through the Udacity Python course I was disappointed with the education I received. Udacity courses seem to gamify to the extreme, giving hyper-specific tasks and immediate feedback without that much context or exploration. I decided to sign up for an O'Reilly School of Technology course instead. Yes it's not free, but I fee like I am actually learning something.

brown9-2 14y ago

At the very least Udacity seems to be winning the PR war. Coursera had the same origin as Thrun's AI class, and arguably had the better platform/user-experience from day one and today offers many more courses than Udacity - yet all the attention seems to be on Udacity only.

porter 14y ago

So much negativity here. Udacity is great. I have a finance background and struggled through some MIT OCW courses when I was learning how to program, and then ended up taking a year's worth of computer science courses at UF. One year later I have my first b2b web application with several dozen paying customers. I'm now taking some udacity courses and boy, I sure wish these existed 2 years ago. Udacity won't turn you into a world class computer scientist, but it is a wonderful way to learn and improve.

avsbst 14y ago
"Udacity won't turn you into a world class computer scientist, but it is a wonderful way to learn and improve." Exactly, Udacity is essentially a more interactive version of w3schools and other tutorial websites. With a more expansive collection of areas of study. The problem stems from this statement, the crux of this post: "Is Sebastian Thrun's Udacity the future of higher education?" That's where the negativity comes in. As you said, Udacity won't make you a world class computer scientists, but that's what universities like Stanford, MIT, UW, Michigan, Caltech, CMU and other top CS schools are /supposed/ to do. If you want to learn what AI is generally about, Udacity can help. But if you want to build a career out it, and become and actual expert, these sites fall flat on their faces. By embracing Udacity and Coursera as tools of higher education, Stanford and universities that follow suit are damaging the quality of the education they provide.
- randomdata 14y ago
  But if you want to build a career out it, and become and actual expert, these sites fall flat on their faces. I don't think anyone believes that eight days spent learning how to build a driverless car will make you an expert in AI, but what if you followed up with similar, and increasingly challenging, courses for several hundred days like a traditional student would? Where then would you stand in relation to those who went to a traditional institution? In other words: Is the problem the delivery mechanism or the lack of content, which should improve with time?
  - avsbst 14y ago

Shenglong 14y ago

Often we forget, that "higher education" is just as much about building networks and adaptation, as learning traditional material. You learn what's acceptable, what kinds of people are successful, and what kinds of people you work best with. You meet the people who are going to find you that dream job. If you're an entrepreneur, you find the people who you'll want working for/with you. You meet the people who'll help you get things done. The question here really shouldn't be about whether Udacity is a good educational model. It should be about how far it can go - and I absolutely do not believe it is a replacement for traditional "higher education".

randomdata 14y ago
I read somewhere that Udacity's long-term business model is to profit through building those networks. Of course business models can change, but as it stands they have a lot of incentive to provide those foundations, more so than the education itself.

leal 14y ago

(note: did not read the CNN article) I think that all the complaining about the lack of difficulty is completely missing Thrun's and Norvig's objectives. The most important thing educators provide is inspiration, not information or putting students through mental push ups ad nauseam. I think Thrun's classes are extremely effective in that regard.

karpathy 14y ago

I don't believe that the intent is to replace higher education for the tiny fraction of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford it thanks to money, time or location, but to make it much more widely available. Sebastian's quote from the end of the article: "It's the beginning of higher education for everybody."

Corvus 14y ago

A perfect example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines): “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'”

nickc1188 14y ago

Udemy is closer than Udacity to being the future of education but both are far too narrow.