A BEAUTIFUL
MIND
mostly 20-somethings in jeans,
are gathered in a semi circle
around him leaning on desks,
squished onto couches, or sitting cross-legged on the floor. His
two co-founders, David Stavens
and Mike Sokolsky, former members of Stanford’s self-driving car
team, have also joined.
“The purpose of this week
has been for me to think about
where the focus is and I know all
of you have been asking me for
this and it’s obviously something
I’ve been slacking to do and not
doing really well, so score me
on the performance review and
make sure that you put a check
mark on ‘Sebastian is not particularly fast,’” he tells his staff.
Since Udacity launched in
2011, first under the name Know
Labs, over 730,000 students
have enrolled in classes—including the 160,000 that registered
for Thrun’s first online course,
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence—and 150,000 of them are
actively taking Udacity courses.
Enrollment is down, Thrun acknowledges, though he doesn’t
say by how much.
But Thrun is undaunted.
“If we do a really good job here,
then we’re going to shape society,
HUFFINGTON
8.19.12
together with our partners and
other entities in the space, to really, really redefine education,”
he says. “That’s pretty cool for a
mission. That’s much better than
being Instagram.”
Thrun predicts education will
radically transform in the next
ten years. Like blockbuster films,
blockbuster online classes will
command huge audiences and cost
millions of dollars to produce.
Many alma maters will shutter
their doors as low-cost, highquality online courses put second-tier schools out of business.
Learning won’t stop the moment
careers begin, and instead co-exist
with work throughout life. He
hopes to see teens start working
earlier. Books will play a reduced
role in teaching and short-butcomprehensive, quiz-intensive
lessons will replace them.
Udacity marks Thrun’s effort to
make all of the above come true.
He’s after an audience of people
from 18 to 80 years old, from Sacremento to Shanghai, from novice to
knowledgeable. Thrun calls Udacity
the “Twitter of education,” in keeping with his vision that universities
“will go from mammoth degrees to
140-character education.”
Shorter, more digestible units
created by professors concerned
with teaching, not tenure, will
seamlessly “fit” in students’ lives.