Recently Stanford has started a new initiative to bring free classes to the public. From what I’ve seen from statistics, this venture has been extraordinarily successful with over 100,000 sign ups. Most likely only a fraction went through with the class, but that’s still a lot of people, especially for the first time. There has been quite a lot of press about these classes, but none seem to take into account the effects it has on the students that attend Stanford. Despite the success and the raves of great reviews, I was not at all satisfied by the CS229a: Applied Machine Learning, one of the three courses offered to the public fall quarter. Before I begin though, I want to say that I completely agree that education should not be locked up for only a few to use and I also agree that since education, in my mind, is a right, then it should be provided for free. Thus the Stanford initiative to do this is a great thing. However, there are quite a few things that hopefully Stanford will change in the future.
Rigor
First and foremost, the academic rigor of Stanford classes should be upheld. Going into CS229a, I knew it was going to be easier than its counterpart, CS229, since 229a focused on the applied side of machine learning and thus we didn’t have to learn the nasty mathematical part. In case you’re not familiar, the format of the class is such: watch 5-6 online vidoes (~10 minutes each), complete some review questions, complete a programming assignment for each week.
Since the video lectures were excellent in the class, I’ll start with the programming exercises. At the beginning, some of the programming assignments were challenging since I wasn’t used to matlab/octave programming or machine learning. However, the level of difficulty dropped off drastically as the quarter progressed. At its worst, I completed a few programming assignments without even knowing that the corresponding lectures had been released (I have never done machine learning in the past). This is not a tribute to a stroke of brilliance I had, but rather how worthless the assignments became. I completed the program without even knowing what I was doing. The pdfs and comments associated with the programming assignments became so informative and gave so many hints that almost no critical thinking was needed. After talking to a TA (teaching assistant), it seemed that the programming assignments were tailored to fit the needs of the public (apparently large streams of questions came in after the first assignment was released). It’s definitely fair that there would be a lot of questions, people come from all kinds of different backgrounds, but to sacrifice critical thinking so that there are less questions is not something I’m OK with.
Next, there were the review questions. These were simple from the beginning to the end. I don’t have as much of a tiff against these as sometimes it’s good to just refresh what you learned in the lectures, but the questions hardly ever asked anything that the lecture didn’t explicitly state. A little thinking would have made these more interesting.
If these classes are going to be labeled as Stanford classes, then they should be taught as such. CS229a has by far been my easiest CS class (besides maybe the final project) I’ve taken at Stanford. Normally, I wouldn’t have had a problem with this, except now that Winter quarter registration has opened and I have found that half of my classes are now open to the public in the online format, I’m worried that the rest of the classes will follow this trend. If all of my classes suddenly become as easy 229a, I will be seriously disappointed. I came primarily to Stanford to learn and study – classes like CS229a don’t satiate that desire. Perhaps it’s a fluke and the other online classes will be much more difficult, but it is still worrisome. Stanford needs to keep rigor even in their online courses – it’s useless to lower the bar so low that it only takes a small step to get over.
Separation
In the future, I think it’d be best for Stanford to separate the students from the public for a few reasons.
Online lectures suck. Sure, they’re great for rainy days or people learning at a distance or people that don’t go to Stanford. However, these new classes are getting rid of in-person lectures completely. I met barely anyone in my CS229a class. Everything was done alone in my room, which is kind of crappy especially when there is such a nice campus right outside. If Stanford is going to offer these classes, then by all means offer them, but don’t make students take them as well. Have the professors teach as many students as they can in-person and the rest can watch online.
Stanford “free” classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to have to pay $50,000 a year to go to Stanford then the classes should be tailored to fit the students – not a working professional who wants to learn a little machine learning on the side. That is why I propose that they should separate the classes. Then if the assignments aren’t clear enough or whatever, the online public version can tailor to suit their needs and the in-person version can tailor to suit the students.
If all of Stanford’s classes are to be open to the public, then all those classes will quickly lose their value. By establishing a separation between the students and the public, Stanford will maintain the value of the classes for its students and the public will still be able to learn about a variety of topics.
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The initiative that Stanford has taken to open up education is great. However, God help me if all my classes become 2 hour weekly online lectures with review questions and auto-graded programming exercises. Stanford can expect a letter from me asking to get a cut in my tuition if the classes begin to go the way of CS229a.
even as a working professional wanting to learn a little machine learning on the side, I actually prefer watching a lecture directed at a class rather short 10 minute segments.
Stanford (and others) should made all the materials available online, for free, for the rest of the world. As for certification or any other formal document – that’s not important.
I was under the impression that cs229 proper was still being taught at Stanford. That’s very bad news because the class was nowhere near the difficulty of similar courses. It was even more troubling the lengths they went to avoid discussing calculus and statistics. Maybe once the online curriculum is well established they can enforce things like prerequisites and things will be more interesting.
I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Either the quality and challenge of the online lectures will go up substantially, the classes will be kept entirely separate, or the program will be scrapped.
Aside I got the impression that cs229a was the least rigorous of the three courses offered, but I only skimmed through the content of the other ones.
I agree with you 100%. I’m a CS student in Ontario and would hate to see our program become less challenging due to an external source such as that. Can’t think of anything else to say without repeating what you have already mentioned… Good luck, I hope Stanford can maintain their standard of education.
How can you say education should be a right when you feel it is unjust that you have to pay f
ok, so the Stanford students also had to watch the online lectures but were there no actual classes where you could discuss your doubts or problems with the Professor in person ?
I thought this was the whole point of online classes, saving the class room time for actual discussion rather than lecturing where students simply listen to the professor.
There was one optional discussion once a week for an hour and very few students attended. In regular classes there is usually 3 times a week class with a mandatory discussion section.
Ah, I feel then there should have been more discussion based classes for the Stanford students taking this class, where perhaps time could be spent on harder problems. The quality of lectures was great, there is no doubt about that.
I had the same experience with the Machine Learning class. After getting up to speed with Octave the homework assignments were mostly a joke. I thought the lectures were great and I learned a lot, but it is disappointing that they dumbed the class down to accommodate people who could have just switched to the track that didn’t include the homework and tried it on their own time.
Happy to hear this class is not representative of actual classes at Stanford or I would suggest you invest your $50000 a year somewhere else…
As someone who earned an MS in CS from Stanford 25 years ago, I am somewhat surprised at your comments. Was CS229 in its regular format no longer offered? Then you have a point. I would advise you to take the rigorous courses offered in CS, EE,Math, Statistics, Physics, etc., to satisfy your needs. For me, this was a wonderful course, for a number of reasons. It allowed me, while working full time, while being a primary caregiver for my sick spouse, to upgrade and update my knowledge at my own pace. No, I don’t need a certificate. No, I didn’t complete the course – yet. Yet I gained invaluable knowledge. Wish I could have sat in on a real class on the Farm, but life is about priorities, and I am grateful to Stanford and its professors for providing such a wonderful opportunity. As for your 50K paying for my course, thank you. But I don’t think 50K pays for YOUR courses either. Rather it’s the rich endowment made possible by many Silicon Valley luminaries who have gone on to great success. So let me wish you that you succeed immensely in your career and that you make a large contribution to the endowment.
CS229 was offered in its regular format, and I guess my point is more the future of Stanford CS classes rather than CS229a itself. The fact that it was perfect for you is great, but I’m a full time student. 229a is OK cause it has an alternative 229, but now classes like CS124 (natural language processing), CS228 (probabilistic graphical models) and CS161 (design and analysis of algorithms) have all switched to the online format and it would be sad see them all become easier because of it. These are great classes and they shouldn’t be changed.
When Stanford started taping its classes on SUNet in the 80s there was one class where Jeff Ullman instead of teaching it had a TA show tapes of his previously recorded classes. It sucked big time. So I do understand you. You should talk to John Hennessy about keeping the classes separate. Good luck.
Don’t you think the professors know what they are doing, they have been teaching for a lot of years and know what is best. Why does it have to revolve around *you*. Also why does it have to be difficult , Shouldn’t you take the time to go deeper if you wish ?
I took Machine Learning class online, and I agree that it was rather easy. I enjoyed that fact, as it made learning fun rather than a chore, but I agree that real Stanford classes designed for students who wish to go into that field should not be dumbed down to the level of the free machine learning class. (I only had time to complete the first several programming assignment, so perhaps I’ll be dismayed by the rest when I have a chance to get to them.) I’d hazard a guess that you don’t really need to worry about Stanford classes being dumbed down in general. I doubt that Stanford is likely to remove critical thinking from the curriculum. One piece of evidence for this is that I also took the database class, and it was not easy at all. Not that it was brutally difficult, but it was more difficult than some classes I took at MIT. (That’s where I went to school.) It was far below the difficulty level of the most brutally difficult classes I took at MIT, but you wouldn’t expect an intro database class to be brutally difficult, nor do I think that there is any good reason to make it particularly more difficult than the free class offered. I think it was precisely at the right level. I suspect that the free database class is the way that it is because it is also intended to be a large component of the real class for Stanford students.
My worry would be (as you also expressed) more along the lines of you being able to complete classes in the privacy of your dorm room. That would seem to negate many of the advantages of being on a thriving campus. When I was a student, I may have skipped many lectures, but I still interacted with many fellow students in the computer lab. I guess computer labs have gone the way of the dodo, so if I had gone to MIT in modern times, I might have suffered the same risk. Perhaps requiring group projects is one possible remedy to this?
I neglected to mention in my previous comment that I think that the free online Machine Learning class is a huge contribution to the world. It has made a difficult subject completely approachable to any computer programmer. So much so that any programmer should be able to make effective use of machine learning techniques, should they want to. It’s not necessarily easy to make difficult material crystal clear. You should be proud that Stanford is being so forward thinking, and that at least some Stanford professors (e.g., Prof. Ng) are able to make the difficult easy.
I am one of those in the category of “working professional wanting to learn a little machine learning on the side.” While I stand to benefit from these free courses, I wholeheartedly agree with you that Stanford should separate the student courses from the community courses. First, why should I get something for free that is costing you $50K per year? Secondly, if all I want is a cursory review, then the free online lectures are probably sufficient. However, if I want to learn the material in depth, then I should pay for the more complete (student) course. I’m a supporter of the open university concept. However, the material should continue to represent the high standards of an institution such as Stanford.
I’m a CS undergrad and I completely agree. This past year I transferred to a different school because I knew it would be more rigorous.
“if I’m going to have to pay $50,000 a year to go to Stanford then the classes should be tailored to fit the students – not a working professional who wants to learn a little machine learning on the side”
That sums it up. You earned entrance to Stanford, so you’ve earned one of the best CS educations in the world; you’re paying $50,000, so you deserve the full rigor and reward.
As another person who took the recently finished online ML class, I have to agree with your experience with assignments. This might be due to feedback class organizers received as the class progressed but I have to agree with the approach they took.
As a graduate student in math stream I’d like to see more rigorous assignments just to feel the excitement of solving something difficult. But the idea behind these assignments seemed to be making students understand how to apply the theory they learnt and not about passing an exam. So rather than stopping some students’ progress just because he was stuck with a difficult problem, the idea seemed to be making the student go through the whole exercise and understanding the content
But I sincerely hope the original courses won’t be discontinued and someday they will be also released to public like in the case of CS229 – http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1
Wish you best!
as i see , most of you are like … yeah i like the idea of open university, but only if it sucks, because i dont like the feeling that i am wasting 50k a year
why are you so afraid of that it is easy ? i am junior developer and i can assure you that real life project verify your knowledge realy fast and at the end it doesnt matter what courses or uni you graduated – your knowledge and intelligence does
btw, i really dont know any uni been worth 50k a year heh, US people are living in funny bubble
I wish they had put CS229 online: I would have preferred to better understand the math and know how to implement my own numerical optimization algorithms.
I also noticed the pace suddenly slowed after neural networks, which was a shame for everyone, students at Stanford included. Perhaps it would be better to encourage more tracks (basic, intermediate, and advanced) with the advanced one not pulling any punches.
As to the programming exercises, I agree. I often found the explanations in the pdfs more unhelpful than helpful and mostly ignored them.
I was less bothered by the review questions than you… They’re just there to make sure you were paying attention. Implementing things is far more important to me.
Nevertheless I found this a very good class, and truly appreciated the tricks of the trade you don’t usually find in books (such as learning rates).
In fact the whole CS229 lecture series is online which I’m currently going through after finishing the online ML course- http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1
Also Prof. Tom Mitchell’s CMU ML course is available public and looks great – http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/10701_sp11/lectures.shtml
Interesting. I’ll have a look. Thanks!
Thanks a lot!!! from a very far away place
I completed CS229a. I found the lectures entertaining and informative, but I, too, felt that programming exercises and review questions were designed so that it was pretty much impossible for you not to get 100%.
My first thought was “man, kids have it easy these days” (I got a CS degree from the University of Michigan almost 20 years ago). Then I figured that it was just simplified for the working, non-credit-earning public, and that Stanford students took a similar, but more rigorous in-person class. I’m pretty surprised to hear that you could take 229a for credit.
I’m with you in that Stanford should separate these classes. As a working professional, and someone with a family, I appreciated that I could learn something like this without getting stressed out about grades, exams, or big projects. But as a full-time student, Stanford should be living up to its reputation and pushing you (or helping to push you) to your limits.
I took the ML class as well. Reading the description of it:
The advanced track is intended to be an undergraduate or early graduate level course, and you should plan on spending around ten hours a week or more on it. It will involve watching video lectures, weekly review questions and programming exercises.
originally made me think it was going to be moderately challenging. It wasn’t even close. I put in ~ 3 hours/week, mostly spent watching the lectures and forcing myself to take notes so that I had something to show for the work. The programming assignments were very cookie-cutter, and if this is truly the level that the coordinators thought qualified as “early graduate”, they’re sadly, sadly mistaken.
I just spent the last four months *teaching* an early graduate class in statistics, and I can assure you that my students did an order of magnitude more work than this online offering. They also learned a lot more. If I had to place this course relative to my undergraduate courses completed a few years ago, it was roughly equivalent to a first-year (freshman) course, but with less work load.
You paid ZERO. You got SOMETHING > 0.
You lost me with “…I also agree that since education, in my mind, is a right, then it should be provided for free”
Nothing scarce can be declared a ‘right’, without inherently violating the rights of others.
Skip college, go directly to real life.
The ability to recplicate information is hardly scare. Skip the 1900s, go directly to 2011.
Education is not mere replication of information. But even that takes time, money, and manpower. Actual teaching (e.g., lesson preparation, student-teacher interaction, grading, etc.) takes a lot more time, money, and manpower.
Put another way: What do you do for a living? Would you think it fair if someone else–anyone, complete strangers– demanded that you spend your time and energy imparting the information and experience you now possess?
I’m a former CS & Stats student and I also wished the ML course was a bit more challenging and delved into more of the mathematical theory behind the “magic”.
But I seriously feel like we’ve seen the next frontier in education. There were two things about this format that I loved.
1. I can watch lectures on my own time. There’s isn’t some guy at the front of the class that steals the lecture on a side topic and takes the prof down a rabbit hole for 5 minutes. I don’t have to wake up at 8am to make my 9am lecture.
2. Each video can be as long as it wants to be. Commenters were saying they would prefer a traditional 60+ minute lecture. Those 60 minute lectures only exist because you have to file people in and out of a building with a strict schedule and make room for the next class unrelated class. I think we should be admiring how this format gives the prof the freedom to make lectures the appropriate length.
Looking forward to the courses in the new year.
you can dedicate your entire day but for a working professional like me, i actually learned something from those watered down classes, and planning to see the original lectures on iTunesU.
if the classes were made of same difficulty as Stanford, 99.9% would have lost passion to finish it.
take my word for it, it is working and hope all the other courses plan it in the same manner, less consideration on keeping the difficulty at par with stanford, and more to deliver useful knowledge.
Exactly why the students and the public should take separate courses. I have a lot more time to devote so I would like to see more thorough and challenging classes in the future – not watered down versions.
Well AFAIK, the campus classes for ML were on as usual, if that is not the case and the regular students are also adviced/forced to take the online class, thats not good and I support the separation.
Just that it will put more stress on the professors preparing for an additional class, but I think their duty is first towards their regular students, and instead of profs lecturing, TAs can deliver those lectures with guidelines from profs.
Yeah, it was on the easy side, especially the programming assignments, but the hard one is CS229 so, you made your choice =)
Regarding CS228 (probabilistic graphical models), taking into account Prof. Daphne Koller’s “fame” I hope she doesn’t dumb it down.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As a “a working professional who wants to learn a little machine learning on the side” I must say my experience personally with ML class have been very positive. Very few things have had such a wonderful educational impact on me, but I did it with plenty of supplementation, mainly digging into the mathematical details left out in the class by using other means. I had to force the rigor upon myself.
I share many of the same complaints about the difficulty level, especially with the programming assignments, however. They were clearly too simple and too much a template for the solution. That not only detracted from the capacity to meat the goal of learning the course material, but also matlab/octave itself. Doing my own implementations in other languages from scratch really drilled the concepts home for me personally.
I’m confident that problem can be solved, however, without destroying the medium.
Also, I agree that the two student bodies should be separated and the course material decoupled to keep the integrity of the education you’re paying very, very good money for.
I would certainly understand you feeling slighted that your money went to educate anonymous bums like myself (even though you don’t seem to feel that way) with or without a drop in quality of the course material. I do ask some patience, though. It’s helped many people. Personally, I’d like to thank you, the rest of the student body and the faculty for that. It’s sparked an interest and opened a door for me that would have likely not happened otherwise. Thank you!
I started late and am only up to Logistic Regression for CS229. I agree the programming assignments are too easy and require no real understanding.
For this reason I’m implementing everything in R, which is giving me a way deeper understanding. If anyone wants to work on this together, ping me @idrisraja
As someone who finished college more than 15 years ago and has had some time to get perspective on the whole college experience, let me give some condescending advice
Take advantage of the time you have!
Expending your time with challenging assignments is mostly a waste of time. It might make you fill good now, but it will not carry over once you are done with college. Assignments should be just hard enough to help you understand the material covered.
Instead use that time challenging yourself. Figure out what you have learn and figure out how you could apply that knowledge in new and interesting ways (even if it doesn’t lead to credits or higher scores that make you feel good). Find people that are interested in the same things and work with them on interesting side projects that challenge you. Ideally try to combine what you learn in different courses.
Believe it or not, once you have finished college and you go into the workforce, the time available for exploration or taking on your own challenges is severely reduced. Even if you become an entrepreneur or a researcher, your research/work will be guided by external other forces (markets, cash-flow, grants, etc…).
If you are in college, any college, to do challenging homework, you are wasting $50,000. And more importantly, time that you will never get back.
P.S. Since I think this is the type of advice I would give to myself if I could go into the past, let me add this note to self: going to those parties is not that important, nobody other than your parents are going to care about your final score as long as you finish, don’t waste time playing cards and instead finish that crazy internet side project you have. Really, finish it!
I whole heartedly agree 1000% I want the classes offered to those outside Stanford to be of the same academic rigor, do not water it down. Since it is after all a Stanford class I would expect nothing less than an absolute challenge.
I left university 20 years ago (trained as an EE) and took the online class. I was amazed that it was taught at a very ‘simple’ level. I thought that this was simply an indication of the continual slide in academic standards.
Universities should challenge the academically strong – not appeal to the lowest common denominator in mass, online classes. I hope that Stanford will work out how to serve these two constituency while maintaining its elite status.
I did not realize that classes at Stanford (and their expanded equivalents at MIT, which I think was the first place to offer lectures online for free) were influenced by those watching for free! How bizarre. The socialization at universities is really where the value lays because you are meeting key decisionmakers of the future, however $50,000 in tuition not offset by the free component of the class is simply unethical.
I have long said that the best model is to obtain syllabi of courses and then formulate teams with partners of different skill sets, and then go about projects and lessons in real work settings.
Pretty similar experience: I had actually listened to the original CS229 lectures that had been put up on Youtube (long before these classes began). I immensely loved them because of their mathematical rigor and depth – which the online classes seemed to be avoiding. The online classes seemed half-baked in that respect – they seem to touch upon a lot of stuff without going deep into them;
Frankly, this left me a little disappointed and after some lectures I lost any enthusiasm to follow up with the rest of them.
“It’s definitely fair that there would be a lot of questions, people come from all kinds of different backgrounds, but to sacrifice critical thinking so that there are less questions is not something I’m OK with.”
Before you start criticizing others for their lack of critical thinking, you might want to make sure you understand the basics first. It’s fewer, not less.
On a different note, I understand where you’re coming from, but upholding academic standards is a challenge with or without online course influence. I’m constantly aggravated by the lack of critical thinking skills by my peers at another well regarded university. I’m sure it’s accelerated by open online courses, but it’s happening everywhere.
Good thing I’m a CS major and not an English one.
All I’m saying is that there was a noticeable drop in rigor in this new online format which has never been an issue in any other CS class that I’ve taken.
“If all of Stanford’s classes are to be open to the public, then all those classes will quickly lose their value. By establishing a separation between the students and the public, Stanford will maintain the value of the classes for its students and the public will still be able to learn about a variety of topics.”
Anyone with sufficient motivation and time could learn any subjects on their own. Schools simply make learning easier, provide cutting edge teachers, and *certify* that you actually obtained some level of proficiency!
The value of Stanford Degree isn’t the separation between then haves (students) and have-nots (public). It is in the certification of the knowledge!
If you truly only cared about learning, you should probably just audit the classes…. school would be cheaper that way!
I agree with you 99%
the rigor of the online class was quite less. I know it is possible to make a class really fun while remaining high standard and with moderate “hardness”. It is Stanford after all… the fact that someone from the public registered to do the course a sign that I want a level of advancement in my career and not a cherry-sprinkled course with a million hints and no “critical thinking” in place. In my part time, I teach folks to write code, but when I teach, I never give them everything they need. I just give them directions, references, etc. I’m sorry to say this, but in the programming assignments and review questions there weren’t any references for more advanced works.
It is great that SU has offered course for free to the world, rigor and critical thought will forever be important. cheers!!!
First of all, online classes require certain kind of discipline. I think that talking bad about online classes is not good specially in Computer Science since we are actually pure online learners.
Second, these were introductory classes. We were suppose to assist to one introductory course in Machine Learning. It wasn’t a whole PHd research in Machine Learning. That’s a big difference.
Third, it’s very obvious that many are upset about the concept of free classes because of the money. Don’t worry at all, Stanford is not giving away free degrees, but your 50K will give you one to you for sure. Plus, it will give you social connections and a 500 fortune company where to work.
Finally, if all of you think the class was very easy, I suppose you took the extra step of making it challenging. Why build a house, when you can actually build a whole city.
I think all of you should meditate about what you have expressed because it’s certainly erroneous.Then, move on to be a better person and Computer Scientist.
I don’t think you really understood what this was for. When I studied everything I learned at the beginning was obsolete when I was about to finish. If you take a break from work your knowledge is obsolete after 6 months in medicine or technology. You won’t find another job then, unless you take another break to study again or take the the hard way from the bottom.
In the next decade studying for a period of time and then getting a job will be obsolete for technology jobs. It will persist for other fields of study but then follow. People will understand education as “upgrades” or “patches” and online courses will do the job. And people will use this wherever and whenever they need. Studying the whole is increasingly becoming impossible due to the flood and spam of publications on research and development.
I went to Stanford and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!
Ben, I’m not familiar with teaching system at Stanford (or in US at all). Do you have to choose some number of courses to take? Do you receive the same credit for (for instance) CS229 and CS229a? By the way, did Stanford students taking CS229a have the same programming assignments and review questions and nothing more?
Students choose a number of courses to take with a maximum of 20 units, and yes CS229 and CS229a received the same amount of credit. 229a students had to complete a open ended project for the final exam in addition to the programming assignments and review questions.
I have a PhD in engineering and ML class was one of the best classes I have taken in my academic life.
I realy can’t comprehend all the complaining about easy PRG assgingments or watered down lecture materials. First of all, you can take CS229 if you want more regiourous treatment of the subject. Secondly, there are lots of ML materials online that you can read and advance your knowledge once you understand the basics very well.
However, I do understand the argument that why you should pay 50k tuition for courses that are free for everyone to take. My guess is that Stanford online classes are in the experimental stage and once they are well established, they will no longer be free.
Th bigger picture is that the future of higher education has just begun with these online classes and we can only imagine how it will be like five/ten years from now.
Enjoyed the post. Only read about half the comments, but my experience was pretty close to Douglas Alan’s above. I’ll add that I’m a linguist (not an engineer) interested in how ML gets utilized by computational linguists and NLPers, so this course was at the perfect level for me. I have a full time job, so I wouldn’t have been able to handle any rigorous programming assignments. But, I also agree that this class should not count as an actual Stanford course as is. The separation idea is a good one.
There are plenty of difficult books on ML. This course is a jewel – it makes a difficult subject accessible. Andrew’s style is great. My only wish is that we get more hands-on “dumbed down” lectures + tests + homework assignment courses on specific tools in use in ML (Weka, Mahout, etc).
I am a “working professional” since a few years now, but I would have prefer more “difficult” classes. Or maybe not “more difficult”, but as you say, the homework could have been a little less “do step 1, step 2, …”, because I think I don’t remember everything now, as the “step” where too much detailled.
I’m still happy to have learn some stuff, but I agree, for an University class, it’s probably too easy (I’ve studied in belgian universities and in french “grandes écoles”, and the level was high above the level from the three stanford class. This give me the impression that either the level in USA is low or that the course have been to much lowered. Your blog post confirm me that the second possibility is probably the good one.)
I hope that the level of the following classes will be higher, even if it means that I can’t follow all in the next semester.
Hi Ben,
Here is my open answer – I would like to hear your thoughts.
http://www.aiqus.com/questions/34489/why-online-classes-are-good-for-the-economy
The problem with information systems is that there is always a modern version available every 10 years – so trust me – education is your baseline and not a end-all, so when you start working you would see the value of online education as a great supplement. I am not discounting a graduate degree in person in college/university and everyone is not a Bill Gates to jump ship and do it all, but adaption to modern times is key here.
I also agree with your blog here and I wanted to hear the Stanford student side of things and I sincerely appreciate you taking the time in putting this down. You have nailed and articulated most of the gripes I would have, had I been in your shoes.
Education costs are highly overpriced in US and hence we see the second downturn within 5 years of the earlier one and the only way out of this mess of very close cyclic downturns is to educate the masses – USA was number 1 in the list of students who signed up for Stanford’s free online courses.
Think of it this way – if everyone is aware of the basics and you have the Stanford knowledge – you naturally become the expert and you have ready Venture Capitalists who understand the need of Machine Learning products and who are ready to spin off start ups to employ you or vice versa and you have locally available talent for your new start up.
So its a win-win, otherwise the scientific world sits in a closed loop and that can lead to downturn after downturn because being scientifically intelligent doesn’t automatically translate to jobs unless there are new companies out there.
Also there are the plus points of having a wider access to students – a cheaper learning environment and finally the courses become cheaper as the time goes on and not the other way around.
So Good Luck and trust me – Stanford is watching your back and the online education is a big plus for you too.
While better than nothing, the online classes would be more interesting to me if they were at a Stanford level. Of course I’m very thankful to Stanford for this initiative and am very looking forward to more advanced classes. Also, while interactive online learning is a good alternative to traditional classes and the online community is pretty cool, they definitely lack the excitement (and the push) one can have being around and working with the most interesting researchers in the field.
Good luck with that, Ben
Ipso Facto » Blog Archive » Stanford free classes review: “Online lectures suck”
yup, someone feels his/her situational advantage is threatened
Situational advantage? You mean the fact that he was smart enough to get into Stanford?
“especially when there’s such a nice campus outside”
You could always walk to a coffee shop and do your work there, if you like company.
I’m glad to know these classes are for real. I just signed up for an anatomy course; other than a Stanford logo on the webpage, it looks like some kind of make-shift site. The web address is not a Stanford address, etc. Made me wonder if it was for real.
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Debating the 'Flipped Classroom' at Stanford - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education
You are right. and wrong. those classes are used as a pretext to learn. as a schedule to keep track to.
you obviously have to dig further to make it meaningful, apply your own critical thinking to it and iron out the math, investigate frechet derivative or whatnot yourself.
It is interesting to hear about stanford student opinion on it, thanks for your text.
That being said, I obviously would await more interaction, stimulus, challenge, from an on-campus version of these lessons.
Stanford ought to strive for the highest quality (which to me is not incompatible with online and/or introductory classes)
Debating the ‘Flipped Classroom’ at Stanford – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education « TLT at Franklin & Marshall
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Debating the ‘Flipped Classroom’ at Stanford at newlearningonline
Who makes other people provide you this “right” for free? Learning is free, but for someone to educate you that seems to presuppose effort on their end also.
Interesting article, BUT…
Stanford, like many universities, is always looking to enhance revenues. If the university offers a “loss leader” or two to those outside the university, some may sign up to take other courses and pay actual money.
The “rigor” or courses at Stanford and other top flight universities has dissipated over the years because of left wing faculty inroads. The same is true for the SAT’s for which there has been score inflation.
The bottom line is that elite universities have inflated their tuitions enormously over the years. They recruit the best secondary school students, then offer them discounts so that they can maintain their high “standards” for admission. The faculty don’t work all that hard and what do they care if the students all get A’s? And on and on.
Charles
Yale B.A.
Stanford M.A.
Tufts M.D.
I wonder how long before universities starting these online programs start to close them as well. Every school has a basket weaving course and perhaps this was it? I’ve earned an undergraduate in accounting and and MBA over the last half decade and now I’m looking to get into the systems side, I hope that these online courses help me to learn the skills that are necessary to do it. Having said that, I’ve noticed that a lot of smart people, myself included, get into highly regarded programs after buying into the marketing and are disappointed. Large schools are only going to be as challenging as their populations can actually perform. Just because they got in to the program doesn’t mean they can all perform.
Besides, in all honesty, I’ve not seen 100 or 200 level class that was worth anything. I didn’t start seeing interesting concepts and ideas until 400 and 500 levels.
Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: A student on Stanford Free Classes. “Stanford ‘free’ classes aren’t fre…
I am interested in a different aspect of your thinking. You say that education is a “right” and it therefore should be free.
Where does this “right” to education come from? What does that even mean? Is there some (John Dewey in the sky)
entity that grants that “right”? Can the same entity on whim withdraw it?
And whose responsibility is it to guarantee and pay for the delivery of that right?
Does every one get to name the stuff they want to have a “right” to which should therefore be free?
Ben, thanks for the review – I’m one of those professionals who wanted to get some ML on the side. It was perfect for me.
If I went to Stanford I’d feel ripped off.
But Ben let me clue you in – your $50K isn’t buying you an education. It’s buying you a credential.
Likewise, that credential isn’t an asset, it’s an option. Just like it’s up to you to teach yourself, you’ll have to exercise that option yourself.
Without that self help, that expensive credential will expire like most options – worthless.
Word to the wise. It’s all you, dude. Get used to it.
Education is not a RIGHT, but it is a public good, and there is a profound difference between these two things. (There is an even greater difference between a right and a private good.)
Education improves the ability of those who are capable of benefitting from it to produce goods and services that will be of value to others. Hence it is a public good, but not one without costs associated with it. It costs money to pay teachers to instruct students. There are opportunity costs in the form of students learning in school instead of working to produce something. These costs have to be paid for by someone. In the case of public education, those costs are borne by the taxpayers. But because the benefits of an educated public far outweigh these costs, the American people concluded long ago that a free and public education should be provided to all.
A right is a very different animal indeed. A right is something that you possess innately and which no one can deprive you of morally. Life, liberty, property, the pursuite of happiness. These things are rights. Something that can only exist for you if someone else provides you with it is NOT a right.
The reason why is simple. To say that you have the right to something that I have to bear the cost for is the same as saying that you have a right to my labor, in effect that I am your slave. Not only is this morally reprehensible, but is a direct violation of the 13th amendment against involuntary servitude.
Now there are of course things like education, or life-saving emergency medical treatment despite ability to pay for it, that all of us have come to rely upon to the point that we assume they are rights. But really they are not. They are examples of things that we would (usually) choose to provide to others in need despite the costs to ourselves, safe in the knowledge that such generosity would be repaid in kind. This can make them seem like rights, and in some small way perhaps they are — to the degree to which we live in a functional society.
But to think of them explicitly as rights is to put onself in a dangerous frame of mind where every everything that can be construed as being good can be categorized as a right. Food, clothing, housing, television, internet access, etc, etc, etc. All of which cannot be treated as rights since doing so shifts the costs of providing them onto someone other than the one who receives them, which brings us back to the problem of slavery.
Son, any education that is “free” is going to suck. Big time. Rule of economics. You need to think more about that.
It depends upon the nature of the marginal costs involved and the severity of the free rider problem.
Course delivery through the internet, complete with video lectures, automated grading of most assignments, and other such goodies — costs almost nothing once that class has been created.
What does cost is the time, money and effort required to create such a class in the first place. These are considerable. Devoting such resources to classes that will be offered for free makes no sense economically. It does make sense however when there are paying students whose sheepskins at the end of their degree program offer a critical value that free-riders do not recieve.
The education in this case is not free, it is simply that the costs associated with creating and delivering it are only being borne by those who will receive official recognition for their scholarship.
But then this is always how things have been when it comes to education, at least within living memory. Students who are self-taught or whose knowledge and learning are otherwise not officially certified by an instittute of higher learning are treated as if they do not possess that knowledge in the first place.
It has always been possible to purchase textbooks and read them, or spend ones days in the library, yet no one is rewarded for doing so socially in the form of a job, even though the performance advantages possessed by someone who would take the time to do this sort of thing may be considerable.
In a very real sense schools, colleges, and universities do not sell education as much as they sell recognition of education.
As long as this recognition is valuable, there will always be students willing to pay for it. When the marginal costs associated with delivering the education to be officially recognized are essentially zero, it costs nothing to allow non-recognized students to receive the same materials.
“since education, in my mind, is a right, then it should be provided for free”
Oh, so you don’t want to pay for it — you think I should. Because, you know, it can’t be provided for “free”.
Ben,
“education, in my mind, is a right, then it should be provided for free….
If all of Stanford’s classes are to be open to the public, then all those classes will quickly lose their value.”
You are a victim of your own ideology, but thanks for paying for it all the same. Note: see k-12 public education as an example.
As someone who is signed up to take a couple of the free online classes this semester, I really hope that the academic rigor is brought closer to the Stanford level, it’s why I signed up for them.
As to some commenters arguement that Ben can always put in more time on his own if he doesn’t think the course is difficult enough: there is a reason he is going to Stanford and not a community college. While you only get out of an education what you put into it, some schools push you to put more into it in much the same way that good coaches push their players to excel.
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What I hope is that the range of free online courses offered continues to be fleshed out so that it is possible to get online the mathematics background necessary for the rigorous version of a class like ML. The prerequisites would need to be clearly stated. To fulfill the ambitious goals often claimed for online learning it must be possible to get a truly high quality education. If the institution then chooses to also offer a ‘ML appreciation’ course (clearly labelled as such) to those only looking for a cursory treatment, that is fine.
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