Udacity, free online university created by Stanford teacher.

[El Mano]

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/stanford-professor-gives-up-teaching-position-hopes-to-reach-500000-students-at-online-start-up/35135

The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial-intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his teaching position to aim for an even bigger audience.

Sebastian Thrun, a research professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he had given up his teaching role at the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital–Life–Design conference, in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters.

During his talk, Mr. Thrun explored the origins of...

http://www.udacity.com/

Very interesting, I'll be following this.

[nascasho]

Nice, I signed up for the search engine class, hope it's cool stuff.

[labs23]

Their upcoming courses are very interesting too..

[Otis11]

Here's hoping it's useful and gets more people into the field.

[OutSider]

I signed too

[Scorpio[pt]]

i will give it a go

[sin0822]

yea ill sign up for the building a search engine, its free anyways. I really don't like this kind of stuff but the syllabus looked interesting.

[alpha0ne]

Signed up, looks interesting and I wonder how far this will go in the next few years

[PatRaceTin]

wow good idea

[Tao~]

i had signed up for a machine learning class (which was similar to that by Mr Thrun's ai-class - thats how i got the link ) and that got cancelled, and when i checked their site all other such classes were cancelled - seems there was a fallout between the concerned universities and faculty over this ? i mean, what good would it do to stanford and mit if all their lectures were videotaped and available on youtube.com ? probably the reason why most of them are missing and never updated.

[ChaosMinionX]

i had signed up for a machine learning class (which was similar to that by Mr Thrun's ai-class - thats how i got the link ) and that got cancelled, and when i checked their site all other such classes were cancelled - seems there was a fallout between the concerned universities and faculty over this ? i mean, what good would it do to stanford and mit if all their lectures were videotaped and available on youtube.com ? probably the reason why most of them are missing and never updated.

Largely what is wrong with our College/University system.. they are all money making schemes and have little interest in furthering the public's education; it just happens to be a side effect that they do further education while inhaling large amounts of money.

[Aten-Ra]

Nice

[my87csx481]

Largely what is wrong with our College/University system.. they are all money making schemes and have little interest in furthering the public's education; it just happens to be a side effect that they do further education while inhaling large amounts of money.

So very true. I might have to quote that in my sig.

[ChaosMinionX]

So very true. I might have to quote that in my sig.

Have at it!

“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. “And you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.” - Sebastian Thrun

I can only hope this mans dream becomes a reality, and we get one step closer to reform of these greedy institutions. Funny how you can be a kid these days, or even an adult for that matter; go to school for 2/4/6/8 years+ and still potentially come out with no job, no hope of a job and yet you have a loan for 100,000+ that you have to pay interest on over 10 or 20 years and hope that you get a job to pay it all back.

The whole system is a mess, under-qualified people that got the magic piece of paper (degree) are in jobs that there are much more qualified people out there that possibly don't have a degree, and will never be looked at because on their resume it doesnt have Bachelors, Masters, etc in whatever field. This isn't always the case, but there's quite a bit of this happening.. Remember C's get degrees and its the truth.

The whole fact you have to take electives and this other "renaissance" thinking universities like to hold on to is ridiculous. Sure be well rounded, but that comes with living life and experience.

It should not be up to a university to make you take a course that for the most part is BS and completely unrelated to your primary education. (IE- An electrical engineer having to take a course in enlightenment literature, just to fill the mandated curriculum) and if they are going to hold onto this archaic system, then don't charge for these courses. They are another way to suck more money out of you by making it a requirement to your primary education.

I can see why our country is heading the way it is; good ideas start with education, bad ideas start with ignorance and there is not enough people getting educated for one reason or another. I believe a large majority of this would change if education was more accessible, more cost efficient, and better tailored to what you want to do in life.

EDIT: Nuff said'.. Clearly this person has no idea, but the fact of the matter the following holds so much truth to the matter even in its poorly written state.

"Methinks the prof has taken too many pills. Using technology to enhance learning is one thing. Crass commercialization of teaching through for profit certificate mills is another. Stanford should sue the startup for stealing the course materials that the professor developed while he was on Stanford payroll." -Feynman007

This is something a University would do too, because they didn't get their cut of the pie; yet they operate under the guise of furthering education.. but only the education they provide, and attack all other sources of the once free "knowledge" they have learned to commercialize.

[BrowncoatGR]

I'm wondering how they intend to make money. Requiring a fee to get a certificate maybe?

[Stukov]

Knowledge and ideas are free.

[01Lude]

this is hilarious. i see parallels between this and SOPA. in both cases people are trying to claim "ownership" of ideas and knowledge.

[DarthShader]

i see parallels between this and SOPA.

And I see parallels between Google's new Privacy pollicies and the fact the first course is "Build your own search engine".

[Kingcarcas]

Sounds pretty sweet as someone who always has trouble getting into a class

[gatecrasherlok]

This is very nice indeed. I just signed up too.