But can it replace Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University?

The quote in the article further reinforces my opinion of Elon Musk as a total arsehole.

This sounds like vo-tech for geeks. Like learning to weld or change oil in cars. You get specific skills. Do you get the basis to be a well-rounded person, a critical thinker, and do you get exposed to ideas and concepts that are outside your specific track?

In college, I took a course on Pushkin that was offered either for credit in Russian Literature or in Philosophy (or was it Psychology?). Each half of the class got a totally different perspective than the other half. Do you get that kind of cross-pollination from the guugle thing?

And I ended up taking one semester of Chinese (after Russian, Polish, and Slavonic) by a fluke of scheduling. It was one of the hardest, but most rewarding classes I took.

Even the computer programming classes I took spent a lot of time discussing underlying principles, not just how to code. I will say that I had a number of duds teaching those classes -- either professionals in the field or grad students who knew the material sort of okay, but had no teaching skills.

I also grew up a lot in college.


Anyway, maybe it's just my prejudice since I came up through traditional education, but I think something is seriously missing here.

Those "graduates" may alter work as we know it. Doubt it will be in a good way.
Employers will probably pay them less.