Stanford To Offer Free CS and Robotics Courses

DeviceGuru writes "Stanford University will soon begin offering a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. Initial courses will provide an introduction to computer science and an introduction to field of robotics, among other topics. The courses, offered under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), are nearly identical to standard courses offered to registered Stanford students and will comprise downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. And get this: all the courses' materials are being released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license."

Comments

So what if you pass the courses?

[Anonymous Coward]

You WILL have to pay the Stanford price for the degree, right, LOL! What a clever marketing scheme. Ya almost got me there. Welcome to Costco! I love you.

Re:So what if you pass the courses?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Best. Reference. Ever.

Hmm....

[russotto]

Does this mean one can now pad one's resume with "Studied at Stanford" or some such verbiage, without (much) guilt? Not an issue for me but for those newer to the field, it just might help...

Re:Hmm....

[Antique Geekmeister]

It worked for both Presidents Bush.

Re:Hmm....

[TubeSteak]

Does this mean one can now pad one's resume with "Studied at Stanford" or some such verbiage, without (much) guilt? Not an issue for me but for those newer to the field, it just might help...

You can pad your resume with whatever you like, but the second someone checks your references, you're fucked.

Personally, I'd argue that you haven't "Studied at Stanford" unless Stanford can issue a transcript with your name & the courses you've taken.

Re:Hmm....

[Gerzel]

The first qualification to run for President or any high US office--and I suspect this goes for any current republic/democracy--is that the applicant have no capability to feel guilt what-so-ever.

Re:Hmm....

[TooMuchToDo]

So if I take the local community college welding classes levels 1-4 (which I am, just because I'd like to learn Mig/Tig/Oxyacetylene welding/cutting) but don't take the final examination where they rate my work, I can't say I've studied the material? If the material is online, you've studied it, and have it down cold, than just like in most cases, the degree/transcript doesn't matter.

Re:Hmm....

[wellingj]

True. But shouldn't you still tell the truth and just put down what you studied instead of trying to get some kind of second-hand recognition. If they quiz you a little bit on what you studied and what you've done with that knowledge it will become painfully evident if you know what you are talking about or not.

Re:Hmm....

[TwilightXaos]

Personally, I'd argue that you haven't "Studied at Stanford" unless Stanford can issue a transcript with your name & the courses you've taken.

From TFS and TFA:

Each course comprises downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts.

Emphasis mine. I guess, personally, you could say you've "Studied at Stanford" if you take one of these courses.

Re:Hmm....

[Nathrael]

Isn't that pretty much the qualification for every high position, regardless if it's a political one or in a company?

Re:Hmm....

[mrchaotica]

It means transcripts of the lecture (as in, where somebody wrote down what the professor said), not enrollment transcripts!

Re:Hmm....

[EdelFactor19]

no he got drunk... I mean his education, at Yale, wrong coast.

Re:Hmm....

[halcyon1234]

Bush studied electronics and robots? Crap, it's going to be RoboNixon all over again.

Re:Hmm....

[jbsjbs]

Sorry, is this referring to the Yale degree which Bush 41 completed in 2.5 years after deferring admission to fight in WWII? Or is it referring to the Yale undergrad or Harvard MBA of Bush 43. Oh, sorry, I forgot, they're both *dumb* right?

Re:Hmm....

[TooMuchToDo]

But shouldn't you still tell the truth and just put down what you studied instead of trying to get some kind of second-hand recognition.

What's the difference between "Graduated from Stanford" and "Studied at Stanford using freely available materials"? An interview is there to determine if you know what you're talking about, not a degree. Any moron can skate through 4 years of school and get a degree. It takes an intelligent person to read the material, understand it, and be able to demonstrate working knowledge of it during an interview with an employer.

Re:Hmm....

[Antique Geekmeister]

Nope, he studied 'not showing up and taking credit for it' from his National Guard duty.

Re:Hmm....

[Antique Geekmeister]

They're both wealthy children of privilege. If you don't believe that helps you get degrees from Ivy League schools, then you've never had to pay your own tuition out of your own pocket. And the younger Bush has a wonderful history of somehow avoiding any active duty while picking up his coke and alcohol habits. The younger, at least, is exactly who you don't want in a free remote course claiming college affiliations.

Re:Hmm....

[wellingj]

... Thanks for reading the first sentence of my post. I really appreciate your time and reading comprehension spent on it. I think you might find it more enjoyable if you read the second part of my post in which we agree. kthnxbye.

What a load of BS (CS)

[bugeaterr]

"The Fourier Transform and its Applications" WTF!!

My employer's lawyers protect us from the liabilities of open source and I don't see the in-house tools I'm forced to use *anywhere* on Stanford's course listing!
How *exactly* are we supposed to find people with expertise in our proprietary crap if no one out there is teaching it???
Universities are soooo out of touch.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Horar]

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Skapare]

You have to look in-house for proprietary crap. That's what proprietary means. Have fun.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[kaizokuace]

Universities are soooo out of touch.

Proprietary crap is sooooooo proprietary.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[temugen]

You are being sarcastic, right? Most universities are out of touch and producing run-of-the-mill CS students BECAUSE they are under the impression that proprietary tools are all the students will need in the real world. Well, fortunately, the older schools like MIT realize that there is more to computing than just the top level proprietary software. Schools that teach low level languages, along with strong math, physics, and UNIX (due to the nature that it's embedded in nearly every device!) get my utmost respect.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[calmofthestorm]

Wow. I almost got trolled by that. Guess I should keep my finger a bit farther from the reply key.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[dmitriy88]

Guess I should keep my finger a bit farther from the reply key.

looks like you failed

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Mikkeles]

'...because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.'

I dunno; how about phlogiston, phrenology, aether, for example?

(Just kidding; I am understanding you;^)

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[the_B0fh]

WTF?! Parent has no humor, and moderators mod him up?!

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Dishevel]

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.

Umm.... Whoosh...Really

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Duffy13]

Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.

In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.

I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.

In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[RockoTDF]

*cough* Java *cough*

rant: I hate Java so much. Don't waste my time with GUIs, 10 years from now swing won't frigging matter. Some of us aren't going to be software engineers dammit! MIT has been using Lisp in some form for ages, I wish every other school in the country would take a page out of their book. Even Caltech teaches Java as their main language, which is surprising. My ideal curriculum would start with a semester of Python just to get students familiar with how programming works without worrying about the intricacies of a specific language. Then after that do Lisp or C/C++. Anything but Java.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[syousef]

It's actually scary what the average slashdotter thinks makes a competent coder. When I suggested that I spent some spare time exploring and extrapolating FizzBuzz for fun (and testing!!! my solutions), I got called incompetent because it was an "uninteresting" problem. Instant gratification, instant results seem to be the flavour of the day...leading to poor untested code resulting from poor and/or incomplete analysis. I wonder how many "uninteresting" business problems some of these jokers would code poorly and/or incompletely without testing for the sake of saying they're quick and switched on.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[randomc0de]

Lisp and Scheme are useless for learning Computer Science. There is one topic they can be used for - functional programming. This is not a useless topic, but it is not Computer Science. Data structures, compiler design, operating system design - all of these require vastly different languages than purely functional ones.

C and Java are extremely powerful, robust languages. With just them you can do OOP, functional programming (what do you think the Lisp compiler is written in...), complex data structures, essentially anything. Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, and Erlang are domain-specific languages for domain-specific tasks. They should absolutely be taught, but only in certain courses. Computer Science departments must teach concepts, and those require languages flexible enough to express different paradigms.

Finally, I apologize for actually using "paradigm" in a sentence. It's just the only word that fits.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[pkaeding]

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lisp and Scheme are excellent languages for beginning computer science students. Functional languages in general are great for beginners. Mutation is a difficult thing to wrap your head around when you are starting out; functional programming is much easier when you have no other exposure to programming.

In high-school algebra, you learn that a function f(x) takes a single number as input, and returns another number. This idea of 'functions' translates perfectly to functional programming.

Functional programming also teaches kids who may have limited experience in other languages to think differently. If you are used to loops, you learn recursion. If you have never used loops, recursion makes sense as a way to simplify a complex problem.

I think that using C and Java to teach these concepts will introduce too much confusion, especially if these freshman students search Google when they get stuck with a problem. The solution on Google will be so much different that what they learned in class, and for a good reason.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Them dadgum newfangled languages are for the birds I tells ya. Why, back in my day, we would reach inside that computer and move those bits around by hand and we likesed it that way. Now get off my lawn!

There, fixed that for you.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[randomc0de]

In high-school algebra, you learn that a function f(x) takes a single number as input, and returns another number. This idea of 'functions' translates perfectly to functional programming.

Except you can't say "print f(x)" in a functional language. Try explaining monads and side-effects to a freshman. C and Java can do functions just fine... they can just also do other stuff. Like OOP.

Functional programming also teaches kids who may have limited experience in other languages to think differently. If you are used to loops, you learn recursion. If you have never used loops, recursion makes sense as a way to simplify a complex problem.

You can't be "used to loops" if you've never programmed before. Also, C and Java can do recursion just fine.

This is all stuff for maybe the sophomore or junior level. Before you can learn Scheme, you need to understand why you can implement a simple interpreter in Scheme in under an hour. It took me 2 hours of planning to write a simple Haskell program for one class. It was awesome just thinking for 2 hours, typing, and having it work, but for a freshman/sophomore, having "print x" not work is, quite frankly, bullshit.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[ultranova]

My ideal curriculum would start with a semester of Python just to get students familiar with how programming works without worrying about the intricacies of a specific language.

No. Start them up with Basic - and I mean the good old line-number one, not one of these new ones with procedures. Once their programs grow beyond the point where GOTO is practical, introduce the concepts of procedures and stack; then show how these can be managed automatically by the computer in, for example, C. Then wait again for the programs grow to spaghetti stage before introducing objects, automatic memory management, etc.

If you start with a modern language like Python, the students will never really understand why it has the features it has, because they've never run into the problems those features are intended to solve.

Then after that do Lisp or C/C++. Anything but Java.

Do you have some rational basis for your hatred for Java, or is it just a matter of taste ?

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[PunkOfLinux]

And crap. Don't forget crap!

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[mstahl]

Data structures, compiler design, operating system design - all of these require vastly different languages than purely functional ones.

Then why is the Glasgow Haskell Compiler written in Haskell? You can do absolutely anything that you can do in an imperative language in a functional language, oftentimes with far less code and sometimes running faster (YMMV). If you need definitive proof of this, such proof does exist.

Computer Science departments must teach concepts, and those require languages flexible enough to express different paradigms.

But functional languages use those very same concepts! Also, you can learn the nuts and bolts of programming without having to worry about segmentation faults and bus errors and java.lang.NullPointerExceptions. Newbies should be taught to program in a type-safe environment!

Seriously just check out the "Who's Using Haskell?" bit of the Haskell Wiki. You can't just disregard an entire style of programming just because it doesn't look like the languages you're used to.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to miss the joke.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, longcat is looooong.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[randomc0de]

I should clarify things. I love functional programming, particularly agent based-modeling concepts (objects that are purely accessed via functional message passing). But it took me 4 years to learn this. I think people learning programming need to "cut their teeth" on simpler, less oriented programming languages. Like I said, it took me 2 hours of thinking for one Haskell function. The extreme typing of Haskell in particular is irksome for learning.

That being said, beginners need to learn with something that will show them what everything is based on... i.e. the computer engineering side of things. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler was bootstrapped in the same manner every compiler is bootstrapped - it's written in C until it can compile itself.

I absolutely think every C.S. major should learn Haskell, Scheme, and Python. Just not at first. You need to crawl before you walk, and C is crawling. You bootstrap yourself up with languages in the same manner as the languages themselves.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[upside]

I blame Java courses. They all seem to push into GUI programming as quickly as possible. This put me off for a long time even though the rigour and wide range of applications of Java do appeal to me. I don't have much interest in GUI programming at the moment.

In fact many Java coders never do any GUI programming as it's used a lot in embedded and server side applications.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Timothy Brownawell]

Mutation is a difficult thing to wrap your head around when you are starting out; functional programming is much easier when you have no other exposure to programming.

Sure, if you grew up with only pens, and no pencils/erasers or etch-a-sketch or MS Paint or legos or ...

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[SQLGuru]

And that 2 hours of "thinking" is one of the reasons that languages such as Haskell will ever make it in the corporate world. If your boss comes by and you are just sitting there "thinking" you will seem unproductive. Project plans never have a "thinking" task. Languages where a developer can sit down and "just wing it" will always gain preference in the business world. But, that's also why half the code is pure crap...........too many developers just winging it (especially when they aren't really good at it).

Layne

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[NoisySplatter]

I believe the GP refers to an abacus. I hear they suffered from rounding errors.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[mstahl]

Yeah but most of the time that extra 10 or 15 minutes of thinking produces an elegantly simple function of only a few lines that replaces several dozen lines of equivalent C. And it's not that it requires tremendous amounts of thinking. Only when a problem has deviated from it's original mathematical basis does it become difficult to translate into functional style. Even the syntax of Haskell looks like math equations rendered into ASCII art. You can even have piecewise functions and write them in your code exactly how you'd see them in a math textbook.

When you're thinking of an algorithm imperatively already, though, it can be a little weird to translate all those loops into local recursive functions. Idioms like infinite lists and particularly complex list comprehensions can be tricky at first but really the style feels liberating once you've mastered it.

With languages like Ocaml that are type-strict I usually feel like what I've written is like the charcoal sketching I do under the paint on a canvas. The compiler just paints the actual painting over my expressive sketch.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[DuckDodgers]

I think it's possible that functional programming is not harder than procedural programming.

The problem is that we are taught procedural programming and shown procedural programming in all of our CS courses, and we become accustomed to thinking of our languages and the work we have to design in procedural language ways.

So when we're introduced to functional programming, we have years of very different thinking we have to fight through before we can wrap our head around functional stuff.

So those Haskell type headaches and puzzling ideas might be simplicity itself for a software developer who started with Haskell.

I could be wrong about this. I had six years as an (admittedly at best mediocre) C, C++ and Java developer under my belt before I tried to grasp Haskell. It seems really, really weird and difficult to me. But is my problem Haskell, or is my problem weird/bad/poor thinking because I automatically view everything through a C/C++/Java lense?

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[CrazedSanity]

When I first read the parent post, I laughed pretty hard (on the inside). After thinking about it for a few moments, I actually began to worry that the underlying sarcasm that had provided the initial humor might not really be there... it's scary to think that the parent post might actually be completely sarcasm-free.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[ThePhin]

When I suggested that I spent some spare time exploring and extrapolating FizzBuzz for fun (and testing!!! my solutions), I got called incompetent because it was an "uninteresting" problem.

I'm with you. Over on Stack Overflow, one of the launch topics was FizzBuzz, and the veritable jungle of solutions in everything from assembly to Ook! was a joy to behold (and learn from).

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Warbothong]

I hate Java so much. Don't waste my time with GUIs, 10 years from now swing won't frigging matter. Some of us aren't going to be software engineers dammit! ... My ideal curriculum would start with a semester of Python just to get students familiar with how programming works without worrying about the intricacies of a specific language. Then after that do Lisp or C/C++. Anything but Java.

Since when does Java==GUIs? Many server-side programs are written in Java, and writing commandline apps in Java is easier than writing GUI apps (as it should be).

Java is nice to teach with because it enforces a lot of things, like forcing every program to be at least some level of object oriented, enforcing types and enforcing exception handling. These are useful things when being taught object oriented programming, because the difficulty in introductory programs is not how to solve the given problem, but in getting one's head around what is happening at each point in the program. Types help with this, as does the forceful use of methods.

Using Python as an introductory language would result in a lot of programmers who have no concept of program structure, since a huge sequential program is completely valid in Python without any boilerplate syntax. Humans are hard-wired to find the easiest solution to a problem, which in the case of teaching examples is often a long list of operations, which forces students to learn functions, objects and such only when they're confronted with a large and complicated task, which is the hardest thing to learn a new style with.

I agree with the not-liking-Java opinion though, as that's all my University teaches in Computer Science (although I have learned C and C++ from the Physics department), but whilst I may use Python for all of my own projects I admit that Java was a useful tool to teach me some structuring principles.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Happycan is empty inside. Like the brains of a lot of so called 'programmers'.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[bryce4president]

GOTO? You've been drinking on the job again haven't you?

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[RockoTDF]

I don't necessarily think that Java == GUIs (sorry, it should be (Java.equals(GUIs));). I think my problem is that so many CS departments spend a lot of time teaching things that are Java specific or jump to crap like GUIs. Java has its own set of lingo (ie calling Functions methods, for instance) that does not carry over to other languages.

My problem with Java is that whenever I work with it, I find that my problems getting the job done are *rarely* a misunderstanding on my part as to what I am supposed to do, but understanding the rules and limitations of Java. Although the API is great, there are a lot of inconsistencies as to how to use different objects (ie Double versus Integer if I recall) that you would expect to be the same across the board. Generally speaking the language is SO object oriented that I find it to be amazingly convoluted. Case in point, ArrayLists. It took me ages to get to the point where I could just initialize one from my memory rather than have to look it up.

And as for Python, I mean it *only* for the very first semester of CS. Some schools have a CS course you have to take now before programming (and its not the "how to use MS office and shit" class) which is essentially a survey course of everything in CS, from programming to AI to CPU design, theory of computation, etc. It would be very useful in a course like that where you aren't too worried about *really* coding but don't have time to teach them the finer points of OOP. After this course, C/C++ would probably be the way to go in my book.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[RockoTDF]

see my post below for explanation.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[syousef]

Thanks for that. Interesting how there are different versions of the problem as well. The version I coded wrote out the word if the number was divisible by x or included the digit x. (Includes digit x is a bit more fun if you want to try to do it efficiently). The version that you pointed to only had the divisibility rule. Why anyone would call something with so varied a set of solutions uninteresting is what I don't understand.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[the_B0fh]

*snort* Yes, there are dumb moderators who have no humor.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[cultofmetatron]

the term "method" isn't necessarily limited to java. a method is mearly a function which exists as a an instance of a prototypical function and refers to instance level variables. IE: instance functions as for a first language, I subscribe to the "if you don't get t within the first week(I'd prefer to say day but I decided to be generous), you probably never will" school of cs education theory. call me crass but I've put in time trying to explain things as simple as variable asignment (visavie x = 6; java/c++ style, (I wouldn't even bother with asignment schemes in functional languages lke haskell or erlang)) and you know, it just does not click no matter how many diagrams and metaphors one uses.
now as far as those that do get the main ideas of procedural rogramming, object orientation tends to follow pretty smoothly regardless of weather you follow the smalltalk or simula approach to OOP .
I for one reccomed teaching c first nothing too complicated within that mix, but basic input and outut and the concept of pointers. then once they understand this, engage in the delightful journey into abstaction masturbation that is lisp and teach all the paradigms from there.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[RockoTDF]

The problem with the "if you don't get it in the fist day/week/semester" approach is that it assumes that the student is the only variable. It fails to take the language, quality and quantity of instruction, etc into account. Some people learn the basics very quickly but cannot perform high end, top quality work. Some of us take our time to learn, and do very well in the end. Having said this if someone cannot understand x=6; then they probably will never get it or for some odd reason never took math.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[MBGMorden]

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Well, the GP was obviously joking, but it's a hard world to survive in in some IT environments. I'm in an aging IT Department. I'm the youngest member of the department (only person under 30) and most everyone else is past 40 with a good number being past 50. I don't mean to push stereotypes and it's certainly not universal, but old IT folk are often scared of new stuff and concepts.

My organization for example, has seemingly gone absolutely ANTI open source. For one, there's the attitude that it's "junky". If a problem is brought up and I suggest a quick, easy, cheap open source solution, the looks I get is that I may well have suggested that we tape it up with duct tape. Then there's the "support" option. Not all open source applications offer commercial support, but even those that don't tend to have community support and/or mailing lists that are normally more useful. However, they always want "something with support". Doesn't matter how good that support is, or the fact that the thing breaks every other week requiring a call to that support - they just want to have a face and a name to blame when it won't work.

And of course, "support" is the first resort jumped to whenever a problem crops up. Actually UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM!?!?! Have some insight? Oh no, that's too complicated. IT personnel in their eyes are essentially the human equivalent of an RDP session where the support person is called for all problems and you relay their commands into the system via phone line and say whether or not it starts working right.

For a time we actually had a move (made by some in the department who were later overruled) to migrated most of our servers over to open source applications. It worked well, and was a huge cost savings. That's gone. We're now migrating BACK to Windows on the servers, to IIS for the web systems, etc. Active Directory instead of LDAP. Largely pushed because the open source stuff wouldn't work with some proprietary app or another that wanted the branded and stamped Microsoft technology to play nice - and the OSS app gets blamed as the one being uncooperative. One of the higher ups mentioned to me in the hall the other day that "I've been reading how so many places have been switching to Linux lately. I can't believe they're shooting themselves in the foot like that. It might be good for little offices but it just doesn't integrate well enough for big installations.".

It's tiring. Luckily I've been able to keep my platform agnostic applications running on Linux servers, but there have even been some rumblings there (I'm not being cooperative and wanting to "standardize"). If it weren't for the stability and benefits package that this position offers I'd be heading out the door.

I'd be pissed.

[supernova_hq]

I'm not a Stanford student (never have been, probably never will be), but I would be PISSED if I paid good money for a course, then found out a bunch of people were taking it for free!

Not only is it a financial piss-off, but it would lower the respect you would get for having taken the course.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[PuritySyrup]

No, no. Don't worry about it. To view the lecture video, you have to install Microsoft Silverlight. So in other words, the asking price is too high for many.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.

Their two different beasts.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Skapare]

RTFA! The freeloaders don't get Stanford credit for the free courses.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then just show them your bling.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[temugen]

You mean you're not required to have a relative who attended Stanford in order to watch the lectures?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[knewter]

I just can't imagine why you'd be pissed. People taking a course for free obv. don't have access to the professors (80% of the value of college). Been through college yet? A weekend of talking over particularly complex math with a professor >> a year of watching online videos. And this is coming from a guy who LOVES MIT's open courseware.

At any rate, sunk costs shouldn't affect decisions. You paid the money and got the education (hypothetically), so sound economic theory suggests you shouldn't care shit about what happens after that.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Molon Lave]

What's the problem? If you read it a little more thoroughly you would see that they don't give any credit with the free classes. It doesn't hurt the paying students or lower the value of the actual degrees that paying students receive. I'm severely physically disabled and was unable to finish my EE degree back in 1993 because of health reasons. I doubt I'll ever go back to school. This is a great chance for me to at least finish educating myself, degree or no degree.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[goldsaturn]

Nope, you can also get the video from YouTube, Itunes, Vyew (not working with Firefox 3.0), and WMV and MP4 video files that are being torrented. I feel like the bases are covered pretty well.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[William-Ely]

It's no different than auditing a course at a local college. I think this program is similar to MIT's open course-ware. You don't get credit for taking the class.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Dahamma]

Are you kidding? When I was at Stanford (a ways back now) most of the intro class lectures were big enough that non-students could easily sit in on any lectures if they wanted (and I would recognize several who did repeatedly - some of whom were clearly not "all there"). I bet you could even turn in the homework and take tests in many cases... and occasionally they'd probably be oblivious enough to grade it and give it back.

I looked at the courses, and (scarily?) I recognize a few of the profs/lectures from over 15 years ago - they definitely picked some of the best for this program (the CS106A lecturer was my CS106A TA back then, but he was a fantastic TA ;)

Anyway, as a former undergrad, I hope people do use this resource! The more quality education/teachers available to anyone who wants it the better.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Dr. Hellno]

Aside from all the other excellent points cited in this thread, I think everyone should understand that the idea of university is not to make you smarter than other people, but rather to obtain a piece of paper which says as much.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[gardyloo]

I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.

Their two different beasts.

Totally agreed. I see that someone learned his homonyms via an online course.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[torstenvl]

Economic theory is almost always wrong when it predicts individual human behavior.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[gardyloo]

Vyew is working fine with 3.0.1, at least for me.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[oldhack]

Kid, we don't pay the fortune for fancy college's teaching materials, we pay the fortune for their paper with their stamp on it. Welcome to the real life.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so university is about credits and not about *learning*!?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my college experience, homework itself is generally not graded, not to mention that talking with professors is not a given part of the class, only if you are motivated enough to go to office hours. Many don't.

Just Sayin.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[FTL]

Their two different beasts.

Totally agreed. I see that someone learned his homonyms via an online course.

I concur. Someone learned their vocabulary via an online course. Their/There/They're are homophones (same sound). Polish/polish and read/read are homographs (same spelling). Bank/bank and stalk/stalk are homonyms (same sound and same spelling). Homonyms are both homographs and homophones.

I attended my university linguistics courses in person.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[gardyloo]

Interesting how Merriam-Webster generally agrees with you, and the OED doesn't.

Luckily, I took no linguistics courses at university.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Metasquares]

Very much like life, there is a default purpose and a self-determined purpose to a university experience.

Going to a university solely for the degree is like living solely for the purpose of having kids: you'd fulfill the purpose the system set out for you, but you'd miss out on any chance at developing and expressing your own goals.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[TerranFury]

Trust me, this will in no way cheapen a Stanford degree. In fact, it will only generate more publicity for the school, and so increase its prestige (a little. It's up there to begin with.)

(IANAWSIAW = I am not affiliated with Stanford in any way.)

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. Someone learned their vocabulary via an online course. Their/There/They're are homophones (same sound). Polish/polish and read/read are homographs (same spelling). Bank/bank and stalk/stalk are homonyms (same sound and same spelling). Homonyms are both homographs and homophones.

I attended my university linguistics courses in person.

You might consider also attending your grammar courses in person.

Someone is a singular noun. Their is a plural possessive pronoun. "Someone learned their vocabulary..." should be "Someone learned his/her vocabulary..."

Re:I'd be pissed.

[johanatan]

Maybe he's saying that the online material and actual courses are two different beasts owned by the university (though yes, that's not a complete sentence).

Re:I'd be pissed.

[sysgeek01]

Their two different beasts.

Totally agreed. I see that someone learned his homonyms via an online course.

I concur. Someone learned their vocabulary via an online course. Their/There/They're are homophones (same sound). Polish/polish and read/read are homographs (same spelling). Bank/bank and stalk/stalk are homonyms (same sound and same spelling). Homonyms are both homographs and homophones.

I attended my university linguistics courses in person.

You're such a homophobe.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Same AC as before. I actually got modded +4 insightful as AC. woohoo! )
I actually know my their/they're/theres, and I'm usually quite picky about putting the write/right/rite one down, but as you know, slashdot doesn't allow you to edit your/you're posts after you've hit 'submit'. I caught that one right afterwards. :/ It's/its a mistake I expect even the most devout Nazis have made from time to thyme.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[MadKeithV]

Shouldn't it then be: "Their are a plural possessive pronoun" ?
(;-))

Re:I'd be pissed.

[houghi]

http://houghi.org/Fun/poem.txt

Read it out loud.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[oenone.ablaze]

Ah, all this hubbub makes me feel a bit guilty--as a Stanford undergrad I took a couple of these courses last year and didn't attend a single lecture. Only did the homework, showed up for the tests. Still got the credit and grade, though. Perhaps it's only fair that others will be able to learn more from these classes while not paying the $40K tuition that I had to suffer.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Myself being an academic, answering "yes" would be philosophically wrong.

However, answering "no" would mean we are no longer needed, since students can now get free lessons from an ivory league school.

So why not just give me cyanide instead so that I may die like Socrates, dignified.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Graywolf]

Awesome :)

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their/There/They're are homophones (same sound).

Depends on your accent. As far as I'm concerned, "their" and "there" are homophones, but "they're" is pronounced slightly differently.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a man that knows his homos!

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Timothy Brownawell]

Wait, so university is about credits and not about *learning*!?

I think it's more about verified learning. When they give you course credits or a degree, they're saying "we know that Anonymous Coward is at least somewhat competent at X". And while knowledge may be free, verifying someone's level of knowledge takes work (if done right), and is rather expensive (partly because they can, partly because they need money just like everyone else).

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like the bases are covered pretty well.

Nope......they all are belong to us.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[SilverJets]

The people paying get a degree. The people taking the free courses don't.

Do you get angry when you buy a book and then find out your local library loans the same title out for free?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[CrazedSanity]

I'd only be slightly irritated. The people that do the course for free aren't getting all the benefits of the students that actually paid for it... you know, like college credit?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Under which category does "pwned" fall?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[JesseMcDonald]

A consequence of group theory. You simply don't notice the vast majority of cases where people are clearly acting out of rational self-interest, because those cases are uninteresting. Those actions which draw attention are more likely to be difficult to predict.

Anyway, proper economics doesn't attempt to predict individual behavior with any degree of confidence. It is a basic economic principle that people's current preferences, which determine their future choices, are an internal and unobservable variable. One can only observe past preferences, and even then only to the extent that they have been revealed through action. Behavioral predictions presume a particular value scale as well as non-interference; any attempt to control the outcome turns it into a contest of wills with chaotic results, invalidating the prediction.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[gormanw]

I agree, in general. However, the real value is that advanced education is now becoming freely available. Sure, libraries have been around a long time, but to have instructor led, multi-sensory experience is a big leap forward. I would love to see other colleges follow suit and put up courses, following this model. The expansion of knowledge is a great thing!! Harvard could put up a business class, or law class etc.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Grishnakh]

Why? When you pay money to a college to take a course, you're not paying for the knowledge, you're paying for the certification that you learned it, and for the ability to talk to the professor, sit in a class with other students, etc. The knowledge is generally free. If you want to learn Calculus, it's easy to look it up on Wikipedia, get an old calculus textbook from a used bookstore, etc., and you may be able to learn it yourself. If you live near a college, it's usually possible to just sit it on classes for free and watch the lectures. But if you want to be able to consult with the professor, take the tests, and get a grade showing you learned the material, and then after many classes get a degree, you have to pay for the privilege.

I see no problem with Stanford offering this material for free. It only serves to enrich society, rather than keeping knowledge locked up in ivory towers.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Grishnakh]

And those others won't have a degree from Stanford on it, since they didn't pay the $40k. That means you'll look much better in a job interview than some guy who claims to know as much as a Stanford grad because he took the online courses (without any grading of course), but has nothing more than a high school diploma.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[supernova_hq]

If paid $200+ for a mandatory school book, then yes, I would be upset.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why my parents at my graduation committed a freudian slip and referred to the diploma as "the receipt".

Re:I'd be pissed.

[TheCage]

Mehran is great.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. Someone learned their vocabulary via an online course.
[snip]

I attended my university linguistics courses in person.

...but apparently the course taught nothing about noun/pronoun agreement.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would add that open-sourcing the courses is good for a student at a different university trying to learn something new about a particular topic. I am sure most of us here have referred to class notes taught at a different university in order to better understand topics that were not covered well at our own institutions.

Also open-sourcing might lead to curriculum standardization that will help everyone in the long run.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[TwistedSymmetry]

Wouldn't proficiency examinations of some sort accomplish the same thing, though? Just to verify proficiency in something does not require years of courses. For instance, the field of law has the bar exam.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Tolkien]

Um, the difference is that one you must return, the other you can keep as a reference. If it's a quality text book, I'd buy it over getting it from the library every time.

Worthless Credits

[WaHooCrazy7]

10 courses cant get you a degree, just a bunch of credits you'll probably never use. Guess I'm still stuck shelling out 16k a year to go to UB.

Re:Worthless Credits

[damn_registrars]

10 courses cant get you a degree, just a bunch of credits you'll probably never use. Guess I'm still stuck shelling out 16k a year to go to UB.

If you RTFA, you'll see that you don't receive Stanford credit for taking courses this way (even though you can access the exams).

Re:Worthless Credits

[WaHooCrazy7]

I post on /. its a given that I don't RTFA

Re:Worthless Credits

[damn_registrars]

I post on /. its a given that I don't RTFA

Naturally

But being as that was an obvious question, that was not addressed by the summary, one really should have chosen to RTFA before speculating wildly on it.

Re:Worthless Credits

[east coast]

It's still a better waste of time than watching TV.

OpenSource University?

[gsgriffin]

So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.

Re:OpenSource University?

[zappepcs]

I'm cheering it. There are quite a few folks in the world that can neither attend the school, or afford it if they could attend physically. That said, they would love to have Stanford class material to learn from as part of their hobby ambitions. Hobbyists notoriously have a zero dollar budget and a zest for learning stuff. Even if it seems unlikely that you'd see Starbucks' employees logging on for a lecture during their lunch break, it's possible.

Anything that educational institutes can do to generally raise the engineering awareness and savvy of the population is fulfilling their mission in a broad sense. I'm fully going to do these courses. I have more time than spare coin at the moment, and Stanford level courses are appreciated. Even if I got credit for them it would not affect my paycheck. What I know, and what I have accomplished do more to shape that number than anything I might have learned in school. When you are 24 that piece of paper is very important. When you put 10+ years on that, people are far more concerned with what you have done since graduation. Adding additional studies to your resume might sound hokey, but it shows what a lot of people want to see... effort, desire, and staying in-career with your interests.

You might be a Windows system admin, but you only get to be a hero when you can also work on that new machine that the marketing guy set up and is now not working. Oh, yeah, it runs Linux. Specialists are passe' and the more you know how to deal with, the better you will deal with any one part of it. Continuing education is not a joke, and even this counts.

Re:OpenSource University?

[PCM2]

So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.

To be fair to Stanford, it's not only the "rich and privileged" who have access to its degree programs. As of this year, Stanford no longer charges tuition for students whose family income is less than $100,000 per year. Most other "posh" American schools have similar programs -- Harvard, for example, waives tuition for families earning less than $60,000. In 2005, Yale announced that it would waive tuition for any musicians who wanted to pursue a Master's degree in music and were good enough to be accepted in the program. And so on.

Education really doesn't put up as many barriers in America as people think. It's the people who are rich who put up the barriers, whether they're going to university or not.

Re:OpenSource University?

[failedlogic]

Open source is a great benefit in other ways in this case too. Because of Open CourseWear I've been able to listen to lectures and guest speeches by some influential and important people in many fields of interest to me. Its an important step because I think it can have a lasting effect and eye changing experience. I know I have and have gain great respect for some of the speakers. Having gone to a sub-par institution (!!!) I am really starting to appreciate the different class room setting and opportunities to be had at the Ivy-league schools over other institutions. Feet firm on the ground does make it financially worthwhile.

Re:OpenSource University?

[moosesocks]

The problem is that, if your family makes $101,000, you're fucked. That's all, of course, assuming you can get past their impossibly-high admissions standards.

Higher Ed. in the US puts up huge barriers to middle-class students. These barriers all depend on where you live (in-state tuition, etc.), what you want to study, and whether or not you have parents who are willing to pony up the cash.

Hopefully things will improve, but for now, the middle classes are absolutely getting screwed.

Re:OpenSource University?

[Rakishi]

The problem is that, if your family makes $101,000, you're fucked.

No you're not, you simply have to pay more than zero but not much more.

That's all, of course, assuming you can get past their impossibly-high admissions standards.

It's an elite school and the requirements are far from impossible given that people get in. Just because you couldn't make it in doesn't make it impossible. There are plenty of other schools with lower requirements including state schools and so on (granted you'd amusingly enough possibly pay more at said state schools).

Re:OpenSource University?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that most \.ers

That's because you're logged into the wrong Web site again. This is Slashdot, not Backslashdot!

Re:OpenSource University?

[ciaran.mchale]

I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source

I'm cheering it, but it's not akin to open source. The open source definition explicitly states several conditions that must be satisfied for something to be called "open source". In this case, the license forbids commercial use of the material, so it's not open source.

Re:OpenSource University?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the american system (of having to paying for education) suspicious. In Sweden all university tuition is without charge and I believe that is the right way to go.

Re:OpenSource University?

[houghi]

Education really doesn't put up [...] barriers [...] It's the people who are rich who put up the barriers, [...]

It is still a barrier. Doesn't really matter who put it up.

Re:OpenSource University?

[QuantumG]

Yeah, you just have to pay for food.

Here, in Australia, the government will pay you to go to university, and provide assistance with rent (most students live off-campus).

The tuition is an interest free loan, which you pay back through your taxes once you've graduated and have got a job.

Re:OpenSource University?

[dkleinsc]

That is true for universities who can afford it. It's not so true of smaller or less well-funded colleges.

So if you're poor and make it into Harvard, you've done quite well and could, say, end up being President of the United States. If you're poor and don't get accepted at Harvard but do get accepted at West Bilgewater State, the cost will continue to be a barrier. That means there is still a barrier: If your family is poor, you have to be really really top-notch or you're outta luck. If your family is wealthier, and you are merely talented, you can go to the second-tier school and still do pretty well for yourself.

Re:OpenSource University?

[lilomar]

* S: (adj) akin, kindred (similar in quality or character) "a feeling akin to terror"; "kindred souls"; "the amateur is closely related to the collector"

The GP was right, this is definitely akin to open source. It may not be open source, but that's not what he said.

Re:OpenSource University?

[ciaran.mchale]

The GP was right, this is definitely akin to open source. It may not be open source, but that's not what he said.

I'll rephrase my comment to make it less ambiguous. The license used is not open source and neither is it akin to open source. Perhaps you think the restriction on commercial use is a minor issue but it is a very major issue for some people.

Aside from licensing, there is another reason why what Stanford is doing is not like open source: the lecture materials are provided in PDF format rather than in an editable (that is, "source") format. For example, when I did a quick browse of one of the courses, I didn't find, say, PowerPoint files for the slides. Instead, what I found was a video of the lecturer standing in from of projected slides and a PDF transcript of what was said during the lecture. I'm not knocking the utility of the video and PDF transcript, but neither allow me to edit the original slides so I can adapt them to my own needs.

If you want to compare this to software, it is akin to a free-as-in-beer pre-compiled application that is distributed without its source code. To refer to such a thing as akin to open source is incorrect.

Re:OpenSource University?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember thinking the same thing when the program was announced. "There are going to be an awful lot of people who make $105k/yr going to their boss and asking for a pay cut". I assumed that Stanford considered this "stairstep" problem too; but I haven't researched it. One would hope they've considered it... after all, they're a bunch of Stanford professors.

Re:OpenSource University?

[Shadowlore]

Dunno about \.ers but /.ers are likely to be pleased with it.

$chool

[Dgawld]

American Universities should be "open source", or at least 50% cheaper. Even then the average private school would still cost an average total of $80,000 USD (not including books, and the required spending money)

Re:$chool

[DrugCheese]

How are they going to fund all those babysitters?

Re:$chool

[Neoprofin]

So don't got to a private university? In state tuition shouldn't set you back more than $40,000 at least in my neck of the woods.

Re:$chool

[torstenvl]

hahahahahahahahahahahahahah
(breath)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

my flagship state university's tuition for my degree program is close to $40,000 a YEAR

Re:$chool

[Anonymous Coward]

how does the cost of tuition relate directly to the quality of education? I would love to know.

Re:$chool

[torstenvl]

I never said it did. In fact, one of the near-flagship state universities in my state has a lower tuition and cost of attendance than the school I went to, which was a lower-ranked school. (They gave me a scholarship.)

On the other hand, universities are usually not-for-profit organizations, which means that higher tuition money doesn't go to shareholders or the proprietor, it goes to improvements in facilities, or to higher salaries to lure away star professors, or to the endowment of the university.

Also, as a school gains reputation, they can afford to increase tuition, because the market will bear it. If that continues long enough, then the school can afford to charge better-off students full tuition while subsidizing the cost of attendance for low-income students. This pays off by attracting public-service types of all income levels to the school, which in return (as those students graduate) increases the school's standing in the eyes of secondary educators, college educators, and government, which of course results in ever higher-caliber students being directed toward that school.

That would be my hypothesis anyway.

Re:$chool

[Neoprofin]

That's wild, my friends out of state tuition to NYU was about that.

MIT has many more...

[fortapocalypse]

Good info on Stanford. In addition, don't forget that MIT has had many more courses available for a good while now:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

And many schools/universities have their material online. Try Google.

Those with thin wallets and empty pocketbooks can get a decent education as long as they have the time, the will, and with free access to a computer (via public library for example).

Re:MIT has many more...

[hax0r_this]

Yes, but no one goes to school for an education, they go to school for a degree. I'm not saying thats how it should be, but thats just the sad truth of this country. I can go through and learn that material, same as a student at Stanford, I could outscore them on the test, but in the end they will get the job and I will be on the street because they paid.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Man On Pink Corner]

I don't know. If I had a choice between hiring somebody who got a 4-year BSEE the usual way, versus somebody who couldn't afford school but who instead downloaded all the lectures and book .PDFs and absorbed equivalent knowledge from those, I'd take the autodidact any day of the week. That's how you hire the next Wozniak.

Re:MIT has many more...

[rgo]

But the lectures of Stanford are in Youtube, where many OCW courses only have handouts online and not even slides of the lectures.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Creepy Crawler]

Of course you'd hire them.... For peanuts.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Barradrewda]

Some people, me for example, thrive in situations where they are constantly tested and assessed. And I mean thrive as in retention, not just memorizing what's needed for an exam the night before. University isn't just about getting the degree, it's a chance (for me) to compare and discuss what is learned with other people under the careful tutelage of... wait, crap, I can do that on the interweb. I have wasted so much time!

Re:MIT has many more...

[TooMuchToDo]

I run a small business, and when I interview/hire people, I prefer people who know the material without a degree. Anyone can throw 4 years away at a "higher education institution". I want someone who learned how to run on their own. I also don't pay them peanuts.

Re:MIT has many more...

[TwistedSymmetry]

Maybe you would, but would most employers hire someone on that basis?

Re:MIT has many more...

[TwistedSymmetry]

It's sad because I'd rather teach myself a lot of this stuff (and I could). But I won't get any official recognition for it.

It's really kind of a monopolistic (or oligopolistic) system if you think about it.

Your statement, "this country". Does this imply that things are done differently elsewhere? Anyone care to enlighten me about this? Hey, I wouldn't mind moving to Europe (or elsewhere). ;-)

Re:MIT has many more...

[GuldKalle]

...And then he turns out to be a good asset, and he gets some experience for his resume.
Now you have the option of giving him a raise or letting your competitors have him. Yes, autodidact education forces you to take some alternative paths, but the point is that the paths are there.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Anonymous Coward]

You wasted $150000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library

      -Dr. Hunting

Re:MIT has many more...

[entrox]

No, it's way too risky.

If an autodidact without degree turns out to be problematic, the hiring manager gets in hot water and will probably need to justify his decision. He will have a much easier time if the new hire graduated from a prestigious school. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget that MIT has had many more courses available for a good while now

MIT and CMU too.

Measuring just by number of courses offered is a bit bogus though; some courses are just a stack of lecture slides which, without seeing the lecture they go with, are a less informative than a library book (example).

I applaud the universities running these projects, it's all good stuff. All I'm saying is 'number of courses offered' isn't the only measure of success; making the material complete and comprehensible is important too!

Re:MIT has many more...

[BotnetZombie]

This is not about your country only. I imagine things like this are a godsend for people in countries where the education system is not as advanced.

Re:MIT has many more...

[neumayr]

That's how you hire the next Wozniak.

<devil's advocate>Or hire some socially completely inept person into a position with a lot of power over your company. Any position gives the employee power over your company, one that you'd want an EE for even more so. And given that the guy's an autodidact, he'll be even harder to control.
You sure don't want to disgruntle that kind of employee.</devils advocate>

Re:MIT has many more...

[ffflala]

but in the end they will get the job and I will be on the street because they paid.

If you judge success by how much you get paid and job prestige then it does seem unfair and it's easy to feel cynical. Not that your point of view is way off, but it does "equivocate professional" success to just "success".

OTOH there are different ideas such as knowledge for its own sake, or that developing your own mind (and rest of your person) is what makes for success.

I think that the latter are the perspectives here, because if you think that is the sort of thing that comprises success, then free (or at least convenient) access to quality information makes it easier for anyone to succeed.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you don't hire him/her in as a CEO, you hire them into the same entry level test engineer/coffee technician position that a fresh BSEE would be qualified for.

If the person then works his/her way up to CEO, well, they're just emulating Gates, Jobs, Dell, and half the other non-degreed success stories out there.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Shadowlore]

The you went to the wrong employer. I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars knowing the material but not paying a university for the paper.

This is the way to go.. why?

[houbou]

If only all the topics one could find in a school, could be available like that, it would be great. Why? because at least, one could get to try it out and if they like it, they may or not complete the online course, but then, they would register for the actual course, or go for the exams. And let's face it, obviously, the exams would not be free. I would love to be able to see more of that type of service everywhere on academic topics.

Re:This is the way to go.. why?

[Metasquares]

That seems to be the direction it's going in. The open access movement in general is still somewhat young and is hitting opposition from more entrenched closed models, however.

I think you'll see what you mentioned within the next decade or so.

I do see the point of charging for credits, however. A university has to charge for something to remain financially solvent, unless it receives very large amounts of income from other sources (such as a huge endowment).

Not consequent.

[erlehmann]

To view the course material, you need proprietary software or patented codecs - Silverlight ? Check. Flash ? Check. Itunes ? Check. WMV, MP4 ? Yepp.

While this is truly an interesting development, I wish they would go the consequent route like Wikipedia (well, hopefully, (X)HTML5's video element will fix that).

Re:Not consequent.

[Steauengeglase]

Looking at the CC notice at the bottom of the page (to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and to Remix -- to make derivative works), I don't see why you can't re-encode it in an open format and redistribute it so long as you give credit where credit is deserved.

MIT OCW

[Anonymous Coward]

At least these are way more complete than MIT OCW.

did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[spiffmastercow]

if taking 1xx to mean "freshman", 2xx to mean "sophomore" and 3xx to mean "junior", as is the case in most universities, then apparently the course on natural language processing is a junior level (second year) course.. wow, I really didn't know they got THAT much better of an education there.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[Jophiel04]

As an actual Stanford student, I can shed some light on this. The official statement from http://www.stanford.edu/dept/registrar/bulletin/4447.htm#main is:

Stanford does not have a standard course catalog numbering system. Courses numbered from 1 through 99 are primarily for freshmen and sophomores. Courses numbered from 100 through 199 are primarily for juniors and seniors; some departments, however, offer courses numbered from 200 through 299 for juniors and seniors. Most courses numbered 200 and above are for graduate students; no graduate career course is numbered below 200, and all courses above 300 are for graduate students.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[Anonymous Coward]

Courses at Stanford are 1xx for undergraduates, 2xx for both undergraduate and 3xx for graduates only.
Now this is just a rough guide and most people take classes all over the spectrum.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[Anonymous Coward]

if taking 1xx to mean "freshman", 2xx to mean "sophomore" and 3xx to mean "junior", as is the case in most universities, then apparently the course on natural language processing is a junior level (second year) course.. wow, I really didn't know they got THAT much better of an education there.

As a Stanford student, It's typically XX is freshman, 1xx is sophomore, 2xx is junior/senior. 3xx and above are grad classes. These boundaries are all crossed a lot. I'm taking CS345A this year as a sophomore, so it's not like they mean a whole lot usually. You do get screwed in credit count for taking grad courses though...

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[Anonymous Coward]

At Stanford, 1xx refers to undergrad, 2xx to beginning grad/advanced undergrad, and 3xx to grad. (They go higher, but they stop meaning new things.)

Also, to respond to the "I'd be pissed" people, having open courseware-type material available doesn't hurt any of the students. You pay for the name on the diploma, not the education.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[johanatan]

Umm, isn't junior-level 3rd year? And, that seems entirely reasonable for an upper class-man course.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[spiffmastercow]

heh okay.. now i don't feel too lame for not having gone through a natural language processing course in my undergrad degree from a state school. i think i'll check that course out, it sounds fun.

Re:did anyone notice the levels of the course?

[spiffmastercow]

no, an unnatural language processing course (i.e. compiler design) is appropriate for a junior level degree. natural language is a very complex topic. if every third year CS student was cranking out a program that could pass the Turing test then.. well, then we'd have a much higher standard for CS students than we currently have.

IQ bell curve

[eagl]

As slashdotters go ape over this sort of thing, one fact should be kept in mind...

Slashdotters are largely made up of people on the far right side of the bell curve distribution of intelligence. Although our current federal government refuses to acknowledge that half of the people are "below average" and insists that everyone would benefit from a college education, the fact is that only a minority of people are actually capable of benefitting from the kind of advanced education Stanford can provide. The vast majority of people would be much better served with an education focused on practical application of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the last couple thousand years.

How many slashdotters actually associate on a daily basis with people who would have to stretch to achieve a 100 score on an IQ test? I would submit that very few of "us" associate regularly with "them", and therefore our attitudes towards the desirable nature of higher education is heavily biased by our own capabilities. A great number of people simply can not benefit by any level of exposure to a Stanford provided higher education, no matter what the cost or ease of access.

We need to temper our response to these programs, and especially temper our response to government programs that attempt to force higher education goals onto the masses, by the realization that an awful lot of people would get a lot more out of a more practical approach to education instead of the current myth that everyone can earn an advanced degree if they were only given a fair shot. The average person couldn't graduate from Stanford no matter how fair of a shot they were given... That's why Stanford graduates are expected to rise above the average and achieve beyond the norm.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Prisoner's Dilemma]

>> That's why Stanford graduates are expected to rise above the average and achieve beyond the norm.

Yea. How many average people could boast that their administration was able to take the most powerful country in the world in good financial position and reduce it to the current state of the US in just 8 years.

I certainly couldn't have done that.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Creepy Crawler]

And how do you say that one man, over the course of 8 years caused what the USA is today?

Bush didn't cause the mortgage crisis.
Bush didnt get companies to heavily finance subprime lending.
Bush didnt encourage or discourage manufacturing sector to leave the country.

Economically speaking, what is doing us in is the unspoken deal with China. Yes, Clinton did initiate it, but I believe he did in the best interests of the USA. We already had large portions of our manufacturing moving out of the country, so we needed cheaper goods to offset the lower average wages, China offered to make cheap goods (cheap in price and quality). We bought them up, and created a trade deficit. They hold our treasury bills in lien for our debt to China. If, they were to sell them on the open market... Well..

Educationally speaking, we were already in the hole. Most of Europe encourages advanced education and pays for it. Higher wages due to education equal more tax revenue. Instead, our public universities jack prices up higher and higher, in that poor and middle class cannot afford them. These are supposedly public... They sure dont serve the public like the rest of the 1'st world nations do. And there's NCLB act. Even though Bush passed that recently, we still will not know the effects of it until 10-15 years. Might as well call it guinea pig nation.

Structurally speaking, our roads are decrepit. We have the last remnants of a rail system that has been left in the dust for 30+ years. Our infrastructure to move things around are vehicles, and therefore petrol increases hurt everybody. We have no real public transportation, even in big cities. There is no transportation between cities. Our broadband and high speed interconnects are taken over by monopolies who wish nothing but to extract every cent without providing improvements.

And even recently, we're seeing mergers in the financial market.In other words, companies are going bankrupt and they're merging to stave off future bankruptcies. I would make the unasserted claim that our country runs off of credit. If credit somehow becomes very scarce, our country will slow. Also, if we lose any more jobs, our country will falter.

What country would want to come to a place with 3'rd world education, 3'rd world infrastructure, and a failing economics system?

Re:IQ bell curve

[daemonburrito]

We need to temper our response to these programs [...]

Why?

What a strange response. I've read your comment three times now, and I still don't get it. That is, I don't get it because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; it seems like you're advocating for long-dead Social Darwinist tripe. But that couldn't possibly be the case, as you are one of those on the "right" side of the curve, right?

You act as if this is your Harrison Bergeron fantasy (in which you are the protagonist, of course). This isn't the government forcing Stanford to admit cretins! It's just a school sharing part of their curricula on the web.

If "you" are a member of "us", count me as a member of "them".

Yay Stanford. Using the web to its potential for making civilization a little better for all of us. What's not to like? And what would we possibly have to gain by preventing people from learning?

Re:IQ bell curve

[goatherder23]

Slashdotters are largely made up of people on the far right side of the bell curve distribution of intelligence.

Have you actually read any of the comments on slashdot?

Re:IQ bell curve

[PCM2]

The vast majority of people would be much better served with an education focused on practical application of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the last couple thousand years.

Er, you mean like a bachelor's degree? Or are you seriously implying that everyone who graduates from four years at Stanford goes directly to independent research on some "impractical" topic?

Re:IQ bell curve

[eagl]

Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.

A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.

One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.

That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

There were probably people saying the same thing about high school diplomas 150 years ago.

Re:IQ bell curve

[mdfst13]

The reason why slashdotters go ape over this is that we might actually take a Stanford online course on robotics. That's why it's news for nerds. It's also worth noting that /. is probably heavy on Intuitive Thinkers, the kind of people who are good at math and not interested in teaching. As such, it is often hard for us to find good real world teachers (teachers tend to be Empiricals rather than Intuitives). Replacing teacher and book courses with online courses makes sense for us, since teachers are scarce in our subjects and we are online friendly.

Now, if you want to talk about how we could change the educational system to be more supportive of people who aren't going to go to college, let's start with making it easier to leave school earlier. The typical schooling in the US is 12 years of 180 days each. Move that around a bit, and you can get the same 2160 days in ten years of 216 days each. No more summer vacation to work the farm (and forget what was learned last year), but still about five weeks of vacation (which could be spread around the year in addition to the current four weeks of holidays).

For those who aren't going on to college, offer better apprenticeship programs. Companies will need to provide this, but the government can help with tax incentives and some adjustments to labor laws.

Re:IQ bell curve

[eagl]

I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level. We must recognize that 50% of students are below average, and the education we offer them must be applicable to their future, not some fairy-tale future where everyone can pass differential equations and get a degree in aero engineering if they only had a fair chance. Guess what - even really smart people fail out of engineering degrees, and it is grossly unfair to the 50% "below average" people to force them into college prep courses.

Our enthusiasm for the ability to audit Stanford courses for free is understandable, but we really should temper our response with the realization that there are a ton of people failing high school algebra right now that would benefit a lot more by being offered some technical courses that lead to jobs instead of online engineering or comp sci courses they can't possibly understand.

I'm trying to not point fingers here, but the "no child left behind" program explicitly ignores the fact that not all students are equally capable, and that 50% of students are below average. These kids need to be offered programs that give them the education they need to succeed in LIFE, not an education they can't understand in order to prepare them for a college education they can't possibly graduate or benefit from.

Those who go to Stanford with a reasonable expectation to graduate have already far surpassed the cut line - they are far on the right side of the bell curve, and it's very tough to imagine living life on the other side of the curve, let alone imagine what sort of education those people would benefit from. They need knowledge that leads to a JOB, not college prep courses or free Stanford engineering courses.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

How many slashdotters actually associate on a daily basis with people who would have to stretch to achieve a 100 score on an IQ test?

I work with plenty of them for all of us.

Re:IQ bell curve

[eagl]

To be honest, I plan on taking advantage of some of the computer courses at some point in the future. I got a bachelors degree in comp sci, but my career has taken an entirely different course so I'll need quite a bit of remedial education if I ever want to get back in the computer biz in any serious way. Still, I found myself wondering how my "below average" high school buddy would benefit from these courses, and the answer was not at all. He really could have used a course or two on various other subjects that would have led to jobs. Practical math, wood or metal working, auto shop, etc. would all have helped him out. As it worked out, he ended up as an insurance salesman, which is I suppose a fitting job for some guy who never learned in high school what he really needed to know.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Rayban]

The solution is obvious: we need to work hard to increase the number of students above average!

Re:IQ bell curve

[johanatan]

I agree completely with your two posts. If these systems were more widely in place, I think that not only the below average students would benefit, but so would the above average ones (by not having to wade through slow paced material).

Re:IQ bell curve

[daemonburrito]

I bet you say that to all the nerds... ;)

I share some of your opinions, but I arrived at them from a different place. I've never feared greater access, but I have been saddened by our system's failures. I think these failures are more complex than the paradox of Lake Wobegon's test scores, though. Whatever the failures are, and whatever the details of the failures, it seems to me like putting material on the web is an excellent bypass.

I think that the missing great students are still a bigger problem than an abundance of under-equipped students. Coping with some more of the latter is worth it to catch more of the former. In any case, putting this material on the web can feed the lonely minds of those that didn't make it, for reasons other than lack of intelligence.

I totally agree with you about providing more of what you called application-level education; both for the lives of those who just need to learn a trade, and for the institutions who could put more effort into theoretical considerations. But I also get serious warm-and-fuzzies thinking about all humanity being able to access stuff like this someday.

Re:IQ bell curve

[TooMuchToDo]

Your posts, they have earned you a beer from me.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

Several errors in your argument I can spot right away:

1. IQ = Learning capacity. Obviously false, IQ only measures capability to solve problems, specially mathematical problems.
2. Below-average = hopeless idiot. Depends on where the average is.
3. Geeks are the only that will benefit from such material. Again obviously false. Anybody with a bit of curiosity can learn a thing or two. And this is also excellent reference material that writers or journalists can use.
4. There's a need for tempering. Why? It's a good thing that may help people, be happy with it.

Re:IQ bell curve

[WetFreud]

What??? I'm not exited because we can finally force graduate level engineering courses on the American masses. I'm exited because there may be someone in rural Sir Lanka or Cameroon or wherever else who can use this to make me a flying car. And I'm excited because in a few minutes I'll start watching my third Stanford CS course on the bus on my way to work. And I live in Norway.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Rakishi]

This pertains to this topic how exactly? You're just as bad as the law makers because you seem to think that focusing on multiple issues is somehow inherently bad or impossible. Hyper focusing on whatever issue the "people" care about is how we end up in these cluster fucks to begin with. Not everything is supposed to be some sort of idiot one size fits all solution that in the end results in more damage than it solves. It seems that to you "we need to help the below average" == "fuck over many other people by ignoring their problems." These are separate discussion with separate problems and solutions, with very little real overlap.

No one expects this to help the poor mentally disabled idiot who failed out of high school. It's not supposed to but there are many OTHER people who will benefit from them. If you want to help that idiot then go and post in some other discussion or what not.

Re:IQ bell curve

[DerCed]

Of course you are right, but also consider people like me. I work in IT, but having not studied CS and living in Europe, the courses offered by a MIT and now Harvard enables me to learn and understand the theoretical underpinnings of CS from the comfort of my home. And I don't need a "certificate" afterwards, the personal and professional advantages I will gain from these courses will be reflected in my work skills.

And I'm sure there are lots of others with a similar story like mine. For us, such courses are a gift from - insert any paradise-like place here - and I don't care if the "vast majority" does not have a chance in understanding it.

Re:IQ bell curve

[DNS-and-BIND]

Us and them. How wonderful! You know, I have another word for "them" - Americans.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
--Nietzsche

Re:IQ bell curve

[neumayr]

Things that come to my mind when reading your viewpoint:
- People grow with the challenges they're given, or they're giving themselves. A lot.
- The environment people grow up in has a lot of influence on their aspirations.
- Maximizing the portion of the population with access to an higher education changes the environment younger people grow up in.

Of course not everyone will be able to graduate from high profile schools overnight, but the more people have a chance to, the more do. Changing the environment, increasing the number who will at least try.

Taken to its extreme, what you're advocating is the style of education common in Europe of the 19th century. Didn't work out so well, even though it was better than what has been before - no public education at all.

Re:IQ bell curve

[borcharc]

I agree with your sentiment but would like to point out that spelling has nothing to do with intelligence and is quite an ignorant position to take. It may be a indication of a successful English education, but I wouldn't pin that on intelligence either.

Take those with Dyslexia for example, they almost always have IQ's in excess of 150, comprise some of he best Scientific, Political, Business, Art, and Military minds to have ever exist and all will struggle with spelling.

Re:IQ bell curve

[dkleinsc]

Although I'm not the OP, my impression of his point is that the world needs good plumbers, mechanics, welders, electricians, janitors, secretaries, cooks, etc, and that "college degree->better job" for each individual does not equate to "college degree for everyone->better jobs for everyone". All that everyone getting a college degree does is means that you have college-educated people pushing brooms.

And to be clear, my own view on this issue is that open access to knowledge and education is great, but don't see it as a substitute for treating janitors badly.

Re:IQ bell curve

[dkleinsc]

Sorry, my last sentence should obviously read "...don't see it as a substitute for treating janitors like decent people."

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you that the majority of people are too stupid to take a difficult major in college, and should probably be offered something more practical.

However, I ALSO think you're acting like an elitist swine.

I've met other guys like you; the archetypal quote they repeat is "society needs ditch diggers too". They feel comfortable saying such a wretched thing because they know THEY will never be a ditch digger, and consequently they don't care about such people's failed dreams. The terrible thing about your point of view is that you conceal it beneath a feigned concern for the happiness of the people you're trying to force to "seek their level".

What you're advocating is forced social stratification, with you up in the lofty privileged sector.

I'll wrap up this edition of "the riot act" by informing you that not only does every American have access to college, they have access to well equipped trade schools as well. For example, here in New York, one can go to the state funded BOCES, which offers classes almost everywhere, or you can go to a private tech school like ITT (there are thousands of them).

If your friend ended up working in fast food, it's his OWN fault. He should have retrained as an auto mechanic or something; it's not as though such schools aren't in VIRTUALLY EVERY CITY NATIONWIDE.

Finish your Tom Collins; the ice cubes are melting.

 

Re:IQ bell curve

[Peter La Casse]

I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level.

I agree, but...

We must recognize that 50% of students are below average

This oversimplifies. Most of the population is clustered around the average (in a normal distribution bell curve), and there's little functional difference between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile.

A case can certainly be made that there's no need to force "average" people (within one standard deviation of the mean?) into college. We need smart (functional) people in the skilled trades too.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comments would make sense if this were a discussion about the government forcing everyone to go to college. However, this is about Stanford making the course material for 10 courses available for free. One really has nothing to do with the other.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Dracolytch]

And yet... I'm a counter-case.

All through high-school, I did miserably. The system and I failed each other. I barely graduated with a 2.1 GPA. I hated school, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my future. However, I was one of those students who went to college anyway, and started as a CS major.

Guess what: I loved it. First semester I got a 3.5 GPA. I had finally found my calling. I've since gone to grad school, and I have a good job, which enables me to support myself and my family at a comfortable quality of life.

So, college was a huge shift in my life. I never saw it coming, neither the high schools nor the college saw it coming (I think my parents were the only ones who had an inkling).

The only thing I can take from my life experience is this: There is no "system of education" that will work for everyone. There are no cut-offs or barriers that can effectively shape people effectively: it's always an internal process.

I'm also left with the realization that my calling could have just as easily been repairing cars, making pottery, or driving tanks. How long would it have been before I found those? Would I have ever?

Fearless exploration into diffrent paths is the only direction I can honestly give anybody. Remove barriers (both up and down) to allow people to find the route best for them.

Be critical of your education (Not only the process, but your response to that process). If you don't enjoy what you're learning then it's time for a different path.

~D

Re:IQ bell curve

[thepotoo]

I agree with you about the benefits of a technical school education for the masses, but you seem to have missed the point of this wonderful opportunity for people to learn.

This move isn't targeted at the 50% "below average" types, it's for the enthusiast: the people who have an interest in this stuff but no means to actually learn it on their own.

I can see something like this, combined with the OLPC, really hitting it big in third world countries. There are "above average" people there who are forced into a technical careers due to political reasons.

No question do we need an educational system reform in America, but this isn't trying to be that. Besides, in some European countries they give you a test in 8th grade to determine the track you will take throughout high school and college - this fucks over the guy who was a slacker in 8th grade but decided to pull his stuff together later. Is that the sort of system you want? Is there any perfect education system we can adopt? Sorry, but I must disagree that we should "temper our response". This is simply wonderful news.

Still, your post(s) really made me think, and that's probably the single greatest thing I can say about a Slashdot comment.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so smart because I just posted on /.

Re:IQ bell curve

[mandelbr0t]

Riight. Because intelligence is the only factor in determining how a person will do in university. You're the kind of guy that causes the knee-jerk anti-intellectual response because you can't see the value in other human traits.

A person who is sociable, works well in a group and has a number of contacts from whom they can get help from is equally likely to succeed, and in fact this student will probably be more successful in a corporate environment as this sort of group work and dependence on your co-workers is the norm.

Yes, there are those who truly do have learning disabilities which would prevent them from gaining any benefit from higher education. But to simply look at a bell-curve distribution of intelligence and then claim that 50% of the population don't have what it takes to make it in university is absurd.

Kudos to Stanford for making information free. That's a big step from a big name in higher education.

Re:IQ bell curve

[PCM2]

Guess what - even really smart people fail out of engineering degrees

Yeah, but most people with that problem switch majors to English or Psychology. Seriously -- did you even go to college?

Think about it: A bachelor's degree in the sciences gets you ... nothing. With a B.S. in Organic Chemistry -- as goddamn hard as undergraduate organic chemistry classes may be -- you're qualified to get a job rinsing test tubes with acetone, and that's about it. Likewise, with a B.S. in Engineering you are not going to be designing any major components for Boeing. Fortunately, the first two years of college leave students with a lot of flexibility. If it turns out that you're not equipped to go all the way with a certain course of study, taking a broad range of classes (as students are generally forced to do by general-education requirements) enables you to better judge the courses that you can succeed in.

Besides, as has been pointed out elsewhere, these free Stanford classes don't confer credit. They are not for people who dream of getting a degree from Stanford. Mostly they are for private individuals who wish to further their own understanding -- people who don't see the purpose of education as "getting a job," because they already have jobs.

Re:IQ bell curve

[PCM2]

we really should temper our response with the realization that there are a ton of people failing high school algebra right now that would benefit a lot more by being offered some technical courses that lead to jobs

And BTW -- sorry to reply twice -- here I totally disagree. Have you looked around lately? What kind of jobs are there going to be in the United States for people who can't pass "high school algebra"? I'm not saying everybody needs to learn Trigonometry and up, but algebra is REALLY basic and REALLY essential to numeracy (which equals common sense in things like, oh, making the best of a low-paying job).

And the reason I put "high school algebra" in quotes is because my state, California, disagrees with you also. Beginning this year, California students must pass algebra to graduate from the eighth grade. Of course, the requirement is being challenged in court, and will probably fall -- and even I think 8th grade might be early -- but clearly there are a lot of people in California who do not think it's acceptable to give up on educating kids because don't like doing algebra homework when they're 14.

Kids go through a ton of crap when they're school age. What happens at that age, however, shouldn't determine their destinies for the rest of their lives just because some school board paper-pusher decides they should be fast-tracked to trade school instead of being challenged to learn.

Bottom line, I do not believe in closing doors to education at any level. There is no reason we should "temper our response" to what is an entirely altruistic gesture from Stanford. None at all. It should be applauded wholeheartedly.

Re:IQ bell curve

[Shados]

Man I love Nietzsche. Didn't read enough of his stuff though, as shown by the fact that I had never heard that quote. Epic.

Re:IQ bell curve

[TrebleMaker]

"I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon!"

Re:IQ bell curve

[TwistedSymmetry]

So, you intend to give the distribution a leftward skew? That would have the intended effect. (Median greater than mean). I'm not sure what sort of educational policy that would entail, but it's mathematically possible.

Re:IQ bell curve

[cultofmetatron]

as I am going to "rural" srilanka in 2 months, I'll be sure to tell em to send you the prototype when its done. theres not much in the way of raw materials so they've designed a manufacturing process using bamboo and stones. cheers

Re:IQ bell curve

[acheron12]

You can have more than half a population above average if the distribution is skewed. (Average being the mean, not the median).

Re:IQ bell curve

[Viperpete]

Seems to me that you are an intellectual elitist snob. Intelligence is a characteristic just like strength or beauty or good health, just because someone does not measure up to your standard in a particular characteristic does not mean that person should be discounted. Loyalty, temperance, persistence, courage and social conscience are better measures of character than intelligence.

'Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential'

- Winston Churchill

Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried to bring up a lecture video and it asked me to install Silverlight.

What is missing?

[v4vijayakumar]

an affordable e-reader.

Cause it's not like CA has a budget crisis...

[Windows Breaker G4]

... or anything right? Honestly i support this but when the govenor is sueing your comptroller to make it so state workers get paid minimum wage, i don't know, just seems like the timing might be just a tad off. But that's just me

Re:Cause it's not like CA has a budget crisis...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Cause it's not like Stanford is a private university or anything. Fail.

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[DiegoBravo]

Yes, Firefox+Linux is not supported.

From the Silverlight installation page:

Compatible Operating Systems and Browsers

Operating System        WinIE7  WinIE6     FF 1.5  FF 2   Safari
Windows Vista           Yes      -      Yes     Yes      -
Windows XP SP2          Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes      -
Windows 2000              -     Yes     No      No       -
Win Server 2003 (ex IA-64)Yes   Yes     Yes     Yes      -
Mac OS 10.4.8 (PowerPC)   -     -       Yes    Yes      Yes
Mac OS 10.4.8 (Intel-based)-    -       Yes    Yes    Yes

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[TerranFury]

Just a few lines lower on any page, there are links to view the same video in other formats including,

1. Youtube

2. iTunes

3. Vyew

4. WMV Torrent

5. MP4 Torrent

for instance, this MP4 torrent available from this page.

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[TerranFury]

Stanford offers many, many more formats than just Silverlight; e.g., MP4 torrents (which you can certainly play in Linux!). See my previous post, or TFA.

Spirit of a true university

[engun]

This is in the spirit of a true university. A university is "supposed" to be a place for learning and furthering the knowledge acquired by humanity, not a money making scam or a means of positioning yourself in the dominance hierarchy.

I'm glad that whatever the motivation, education is being opened up to bright, eager people who can't get access to the same quality of teaching as in Stanford/MIT etc. ADUni was also an attempt to do this same thing and really deserves kudos.

Hope more comprehensive lecture material (including video lectures) are released eventually for other subjects too. Why fleece students when good universities can always earn money via grants and patents.

35!

[commodoresloat]

They also have to be 35.

Re:35!

[archkittens]

They also have to have an IQ of 35.

fixed

Re:35!

[BigGar']

Actually you have to be over 35 to hold the office of President, not to run for the office. Anyone can file the paper work and run for office.

The Statement of Candidacy is a very simple form with a minimal amount of information on it:
http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm2.pdf
The directions provided the guidance you'd expect for such a simple form:
http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm2i.pdf

There doesn't seem to be anything about not meeting the requirements of actually preventing you from running for office, at least for the House, Senate & for President. The form doesn't ask for age, or even if you're a citizen, just that the information as provided is correct.

Main FEC page with links to all the forms:
http://www.fec.gov/info/forms.shtml

Its a bigger hurdle to get your name printed on the ballot in the state or states, otherwise you're a write-in candidate.

I might have missed something but this seems pretty straight forward, anyone can run, not anyone can actually hold office.

Re:35!

[Yremogtnom]

I'm confused? You said nothing about 35 factorial.

odd definition of middle class

[Trepidity]

A household income of $101,000 puts you in the top 15% of households---i.e. 85% make less.

The people actually in the middle---even at the upper end of middle, say, 80th percentile---fall within Stanford's free tuition program.

DOH!

[Windows Breaker G4]

Damn it! Not being from CA i always forget that. My ship of fail has arrived! That being said i would still bet they do get funding from the state so if that is true my statement still holds a (be it small) amount of water.

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[Rakishi]

Not all the classes offer all the options, the natural language one is silverlight only.

Eff Stanfurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Stanfurd. Go BEARS.

Re:Eff Stanfurd

[mako1138]

You forgot the links.

http://berkeley.edu/multimedia/index.php

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html

Re:Eff Stanfurd

[istartedi]

There are a lot of posts on this thread criticising Stanford. This is the first one that makes any sense.

Silverlight keeps some in the dark

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, good, they're using Silverlight. It would be unconscionable to let the Linux geeks become even more computer-savvy by giving them access to this material, and I'm glad to see Stanford has done the brave thing and taken a stand against them.

Hmm not as good as it looks.

[CountBrass]

Comp sci/programming methodology is just java programming course :-(

Comp sci/programing abstractions is a C++ programming course, ok that's a bit unfair, but why they chose C++ rather than C I don't know. They've got "OO" covered by the Java programming course, there doesn't seem to be any advantage to using C++ rather than C given the material covered (eg linked lists) and C++ is "nastier" than C.

Comp sci/programming paradigms. Hooray! What appears to be a proper comp sci course at last.

So, Stanford, drop the Java programming course, switch the abstractions course to use mostly C with a touch of C++ to cover OO and keep the paradigms course and you'll have a proper comp sci course.

Attribution license

[Lawand]

On the courses home-page, it seems that the courses are actually licensed under an "Attribution Creative Commons" license, not the "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" license...

Learn German

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn... big deal. The majority of lectures of German universities (of sciency subjects anyways) is on the web. Maybe no videos of lectures, but brilliant lecture notes. Also the German science books are much cheaper, due to the "Buchpreisbindung" (price fixing) which seems to work against all economic theory. The access to science knowledge is a field where the states are pretty much behind.
But it doesn't matter. Unfortunately having the knowledge doesn't give you degrees. And this is where Universities monopolize, where they play the universal judges of aptitude and gatekeepers of funds. The Ivy league is far ahead in science's attention market, which makes the US science community stronger than any other , but the number of people who profit from it is tiny.

AC

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[Anonymous Coward]

And even for those where an mp4 version should be available, some torrents are unseeded; for example, the first 5 ee261 lectures.

This is a good idea, but I guess it's not completely implemented yet.

Shopping the curve

[Ostracus]

OK, so were can I go for online "shop class"?

Berkeley too...

[tbischel]

UC Berkeley has their archived webcasts also... http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

best part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

there are *transcripts* of the lectures so you don't have to waste an hour at video speed listening to some dude lecture.

lol: \.ers

[__aajbyc7391]

... must be a Windows guy ;-)

Transcripts...

[Anonymous Coward]

These 'courses' (from my review of the site) are nothing more than a series of downloadable educational materials. You don't have to register, you don't get any form of credit, and therefore you won't be receiving any transcripts, as the article states.

Furthermore, your assignments aren't reviewed (you have to grade them yourself), and there doesn't appear to be any sort of 'classroom-esque' environment (communication systems, etc.).

This doesn't seem like much more than glorified self-study, under an indictment of philanthropy.

What a load of instant gratification.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's actually scary what the average slashdotter thinks makes a competent coder. When I suggested that I spent some spare time exploring and extrapolating FizzBuzz for fun (and testing!!! my solutions), I got called incompetent because it was an "uninteresting" problem. Instant gratification, instant results seem to be the flavour of the day...leading to poor untested code resulting from poor and/or incomplete analysis."

And this is a surprise why?

$chool

[Dgawld]

I attended Sacred Heart University for one semester and it cost me $20,000. The dorms were crap, and the rules were overly strict. American catholic schools are no place for learning. The most ridiculous thing is how they treat students like 8 year olds.

A latter day Open University, minus the degree

[fiannaFailMan]

Anyone here remember the old Open University broadcasts on the BBC? Apparently they ceased in 2006, but I remember watching them right up to 2001 when I left the UK. My sister learned to speak Spanish from a young age by watching those low-budget but highly informative shows on a Saturday morning. I got into engineering by watching OU material, 50% of which I had no idea what it was about, but my appetite was whetted for knowledge, the pursuit thereof, and I was aware of the level of mathematics needed to get your head around it all. Even though it looked like gibberish at the time, I couldn't help but wonder how cool it would be to be able to make sense of all those funnily-placed numbers and squiggles. I hope this material from Stanford will go on and inspire more people in the same way.

Re:Viewing a lecture requires installing Silverlig

[Anonymous Coward]

We can only hope that someone will take advantage of the unrestrictive licensing of these videos and convert them for me and everyone else who can't/won't use Silverlight.

Free CS isn't new

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden you get a free CS-education by default.
Ofcourse this means that you will pay that off during your lige through taxes, but that in turn means that Academia isn't exclusive for the priviledged.

immersion with 140-IQ people

[peter303]

Residential college education is about 24/7 being with people as smart or smarter than you are. You can pick up a lot from online courseware and textbooks, but its not quite the same stimulus and personal networking. Then too, I dont know if its worth $200K for such an education. This is a "list price" because I only paid 1/2 of my MIT degree costs and Stanford paid me for grad school.

IITs already offer some of their courses online

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/iit

free courses missing mailing lists, forums

[life atom]

Free online courses are missing mailing lists, forums for the non-students to exchange questions and answers without requiring the resources of the schools. Why not offer forums and mailing lists? Are they afraid of quiz answers being posted?