I think the real failure here is the belief that the majority of people need to pass for something to be worthwhile. It doesn't seem likely that online learnin

I think the real failure here is the belief that the majority of people need to pass for something to be worthwhile. It doesn't seem likely that online learning will work better for everyone, but I strongly suspect that it will work better for some subset of people. In the long run, personalization will be extremely important in education. Have you ever had a great teacher you really engaged with, but also heard from other people that they didn't really like the teacher? For myself, I'd say that I've found that only about 5% of teachers are actually engaging, with depressingly few of those before college. Imagine if you had a personal learning profile built up over your education, so that over time you were matched with the best possible (world-class) instructor for your learning style for every class. I'd bet most of the people here were near the top of their class; imagine never having to slow down for anyone, and automatically skipping reinforcement you don't need, so you can learn and advance as quickly as you are able. I think some people respond best to coursera style lectures, others respond better to Udacity-style continuous socratic method lessons, while others respond better to group work and discussion. Why bother trying one-size-fits-all solutions, when technology can allow for direct personalization. My Netflix experience isn't like anyone else's, why should my education. I think there is actually a great opportunity to build a platform business in this space, where different instructors can design and build different types of courses. Imagine 20 different calculus courses, but the student only sees one. The best lessons are cherry-picked for them, and the curriculum and delivery is tailored to the rate that they are learning. I'd really like to build something like that, if anybody else wants to give it a shot, shoot me an email.