Ex-Stanford Professor Starts A Free Online College (w/ Video)

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQHMLD9bwq4[/youtube]

This isn’t the first time Computer Science professor Sebastian Thrun has offered free college classes, but now he’s breaking off from Stanford to start up his own free online school, Udacity. This guy turned down tenure to teach young nerds across the country how to code, so you better be thankful.

 

This all started after Thrun taught an online class on Artificial Intelligence through Stanford. 160,000 students around the world enrolled, and 23,000 graduated the course with a Stanford University certificate – 248 of whom had a perfect score. That experience changed his perspective on teaching forever: “Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It’s like a drug. I won’t be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.”

 

Right now he’s offering two courses – CS 101: Building a Search Engine (in which he hopes to enroll 500,000 students) and CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car. This could possibly change the way our education system works. Teachers want to teach, students want to learn, and no one has to shell out six figures in order to do it. So if you’re interested in learning some computer science and keeping your money, maybe you should sign up.

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