For the past years, people have been shouting for a solution to the education crisis in the United States and entrepreneurs of all types have proposed them. But it was not until Salman Khan (see below for recommended videos) threw the first stone, that inspired other influencers to start the snowball effect.
Inspired by Salman Khan from Khan Academy, professor Sebastian Thrun along with fellow artificial intelligence superstar Peter Norvig, created an online version of their Stanford class this past semester, offering it free to the world. The homework assignments and exams were to be the same as the ones given to the Stanford students, and they would be graded in the same way so online students could see how they compared to some of the brightest students in the world.
What started out as an experiment, ended in a course with 160,000 enrolled students from all over the world, with 2,000 volunteer translators to translate the classes to 44 different languages. Soon, Thrun realized that he was teaching more students than all the students at Stanford. So why teach 200 when you can teach 160,000 and do so much good for the world? At the same time, Machine Learning professor Andrew Ng also took the same steps to start Coursera. Watch the video, you will be surprised by his final decision: “You can take the blue pill and go back to Stanford…but I’ve taken the red pill and I’ve seen Wonderland.”
We also recommend watching: "Salman Khan: Let’s Use Video To Reinvent Education", and "Sebastian Thrun: Google's Driverless Car".
Udacity: Sebastian Thrun Aims to Revolutionize University Education