While data is not the plural of anecdote, I've found the same things with friends who have taken MooCs or previously have followed along MIT OCW -- for some it

While data is not the plural of anecdote, I've found the same things with friends who have taken MooCs or previously have followed along MIT OCW -- for some it has worked out very well, for others they fell prey to procrastination and taking easier routes. I've also noticed similar things in community colleges: I attended a community college and then transferred to a university; this saved me a great deal of money. My community college (De Anza) has been known as a "federal school" for UC Berkeley and UCLA, yet very few of my classmates took that route. I wondered why, but came to the same conclusion: unless you're strongly motivated and self-disciplined, it's too easy to fall through the cracks in a community college (no requirement to graduate by a certain date, no financial pressure, no residential learning, no exam study sessions, etc...). To me the desire to study upper division math/physics/EE/CS is what drove me; was already used to working independently and learning from textbooks. On the other hand, those who have always studied in groups, who didn't have quite a clear educational or career goals in mind tended, or who were not used to having clearly spelled out requirements ("you complete these classes in four years with this GPA, otherwise you can't get in" vs. "these sets of universities demand these classes and usually accept students these with these GPAs") would languish, either dropping out without transferring, transferring only after 4+ (3 years was very common), or doing poorly once they've transferred. As is think MOOCs and any other high-autonomy self-structured educational programs are of great benefit[1] to autodidacts with great motivation and self-discipline. However, nothing says they can't be combined with traditional teaching environment. As an example, consider the case of Calculus -- it's the foundation of all modern mathematics; you have to get it to study all even slightly quantitative disciplines from Computer Science to Political Science. Yet, we entrust its teaching to high-school AP (or IB for rest of the English speaking courses) teaches or graduate TAs. With MooCs we could have these classes taught by professors distinguished for their teaching ability, but conducted with the structure of a regular high-school/lower-division college environment. ... or take the case of a machine learning, a specialized and quickly evolving discipline. A small university might only have a single professor who specialized in it, but she may not have the resources to teach the class (or teach enough sections of the class). She would, however, likely have the resources to organize an experience around a MOOCs and assist the MOOC students.