There was a big story in MOOC-world last week, which the mainstream press has surprisingly yet to pick up on; namely, that Udacity, one of the
three big corporate MOOC players, has just left the building.
Udacity, if you recall, was created by one Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist at Stanford. It was he who kicked off the current MOOC craze
by opening up one of his computer science classes to the world, and then finding out that 160,000 people around the world had signed up. Thrun left Stanford to start Udacity which, along with Coursera and EdX, has been part of the Holy Trinity of the MOOC
revolution.
Last Thursday, Fast Company Magazine put out a story (hagiography?)
on Thrun, which contained some staggering statements from the man himself, including:
(on looking at data on drop-outs) "We don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished.
We have a lousy product".
(on providing remedial education) "These were students from difficult neighborhoods, without
good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in their lives... it's a group for which this medium is not a good fit".
(on the value of Udacity courses) "We're not doing anything as rich and powerful as what
a traditional liberal-arts education would offer you".
From a guy who cockily said he was on the verge of finding a "magic formula" for education, and that by 2060, thanks to MOOCs, there would only
be 10 universities, this is some funny stuff.
