I think a lot of this is stemming from the deeper issue that kids are just tired of being charged absurd amounts of money for a cookie cutter syllabus based on a text book, and then tested on it, while the college shoves as many kids in classrooms and labs as possible and praising their "% of grads that find jobs immediately after graduating!"
As a reaction to that, yes I agree. However, we will be fooling ourselves if you think that anything compares being next to a real teacher. Someone who has intimate knowledge of the subject. Someone who truly cares about teaching and guiding. I can think of all the MIT OpenCourseWare lectures I watched where my mouth dropped to the floor and I said to myself "Gosh I really wish I could of had a teacher like that at my University" And I can only imagine being able to actually go up to their office and get personal 1 on 1 time with them, or work along side some of them in research...crazy, but getting that experience at some state college in middle america somewhere is just a rarity, a needle in a haystack.
I've been lucky enough to get that experience with a Udacity course. The first time Peter Norvig taught Design of Computer Programs, he was very active in the forums and in Google Hangouts. I got the chance to study from one of the best out there, and it didn't cost me a dime.
As a reaction to that, yes I agree. However, we will be fooling ourselves if you think that anything compares being next to a real teacher. Someone who has intimate knowledge of the subject. Someone who truly cares about teaching and guiding. I can think of all the MIT OpenCourseWare lectures I watched where my mouth dropped to the floor and I said to myself "Gosh I really wish I could of had a teacher like that at my University" And I can only imagine being able to actually go up to their office and get personal 1 on 1 time with them, or work along side some of them in research...crazy, but getting that experience at some state college in middle america somewhere is just a rarity, a needle in a haystack.