Scott Young who set out to teach himself the entire Computer Science curriculum at MIT online. Within one year.
Over the next 12 months, I’m going to learn the entire 4-year MIT curriculum for computer science, without taking any classes.
There are just a few things I have problem with that plan…
Read his blog: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/
Sure, he admits on his website that it might be an arrogant thing to try, and there is room for failure. He’s trying to prove that the thousands of dollars you spend to attend universities are not correlated with the amount of learning you receive from whatever said university (he has however, gone to university himself and does not vouch for foregoing college education altogether).
But what I have a problem with is his idea of how to go through an entire MIT curriculum.
First he uses MIT’s opencourseware site, which is a public use site with video lectures, course notes, and final exam questions from actual classes. Then he figures out how many classes and which ones you’ll have to take to finish an MIT curriculum in Computer Science (33 approximately…excluding parts of the humanities requirement and some other things which aren’t a huge deal). He’ll study and take the practice final examination questions posted on the website and pass the class if he scores higher than a 50%
However, he completely foregoes laboratory classes and all projects…things that are completely inherent to receiving a comprehensive education in Computer Science at MIT. Lab classes and projects are a better indicator of performance and mastery of a class than many final examinations, as many an MIT student would attest to.
Furthermore, merely giving oneself a 50% as passing is not a full completion of a single course. Certain courses may have a stricter passing limit placed on what is acceptable as a passing grade.
Among other things that one would miss out without attending MIT are the connections, the undergraduate research positions, and of course the camaraderie of others who will help you out when you don’t understand a problem.
But given with all those flaws, it’s still a very bold attempt and an interesting statement. If he even gets 70% toward completion within one year, it’s still a very incredible achievement. He’s proven himself so far to be extremely intelligent and is also a speed-reader as well (which probably helps out that finishing college 4x as fast kind of thing). He’s also finished 8/33 courses already and seems to be competent. And so to him, I say good luck. I’ll await the results of his challenge.
