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I think people dramatically overestimate the value of CMU social connections. The value of a CMU Comp Sci degree is that you've proven (to yourself and everyone else) that you can get one. The program is essentially one "weeder" course after another to identify the people who don't belong (21-127 Concepts of Mathematics, 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science, 15-213 Introduction to Compute Systems, 15-410 Operating Systems, 15-451 Design and Analysis of Algorithms). Every course is the "hard" version of ever other course (e.g. "Welcome to Operating Systems, you'll be writing a kernel that runs on an X86_64 processor. Your hint is 'pusha/popa.' Go."). While it was horrifying the whole way through, I think that it built a resiliency in me that wouldn't exist otherwise. It's incredibly hard to replicate that through online classes.

The PPP[1] networking opportunities are pretty big if you're interested in security. Similar network at RPI.

1. https://pwning.net/

I remember my first day of "Intro to Operating Systems". Prof said "You will write a simple OS for x86 in Modula-2. I know none of you have ever touched Modula-2, but there's a recommended book and a TA session once a week. We will not be doing any M2 tutorial work in class. Now Lession 1...". Most people figured it out.

> In the public's mind one goes to an elite institution for access to elite education

This is one area in which the public’s mind is (for the most part) very, very wrong.

While there are certainly some excellent courses at elite schools, the general quality of instruction is quite low. Professors are not rewarded for good instruction and are not punished for relatively poor instruction. Class-oriented work takes time away from research work, and that’s the stuff that counts.

For students, elite schools offer the following (imho):

- incredible access to research resources

- access to top tier work and research opportunities during school and after graduating

- access to nationally and internationally powerful social networks

- a highly motivated peer group who often (re)define how high the high bar can be set

Note that some (perhaps many or most) students don’t avail themselves of any of these unique offerings, but some certainly do.

It's worth noting that there are elite schools with uniformly excellent undergraduate instruction quality, but they are not doctoral granting institutions. Williams, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, etc.

They aren't "elite", but regional R2s also can be really well respected (CSU campuses come to mind), and I'm not sure where to file excellent schools with a narrower scope like Rose-Hulman either.

Very true.

I should have specified HYPS (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford). I think these are the schools that the “public mind” think of as elite. I would personally add a few more to the list, but I think that the “public mind” probably wouldn’t understand why I included them.

Williams and similar schools are colleges. I always tell people to go to colleges if they want great instruction. There are many amazing colleges in the US.

This isn’t CMU’s curriculum. It’s a much simpler one made by CMU students and targeted at middle and high school students.

Made by CMU students _and faculty_.

David Kosbie and Mark Stehlik are two of our most celebrated teachers, and the course creation has extensively involved veteran TAs from our intro undergrad courses. This is not a random unsupported student project.

It's still not the curriculum that CMU teaches its students. Self-studying through it will not give the learner anything remotely similar to the knowledge a CMU student majoring in CS gets.

For ambitious autodidacts hoping to do something like Scott Young's MIT challenge, this is crucial information to have.

no, of course it's not, it's targeted to high school students, which is very clearly stated in the page: "WHO IS IT FOR? 8th + 9th grade [...]".

It's designed to be a high school curriculum that doesn't suck. Many US high schools do an incredibly poor job of teaching computer science, if they even try at all.

Now, that said, the AP part of it is based upon our intro course, 15-112, and if you take the full year of it through CS academy, you're getting a big chunk of what we teach our students in one (often first-semester) course - and we'll give you CMU course credit for it. But that's a first-year course that's designed to prepare you for the rest of the CS curriculum, not .. what we teach you in the other 7.5 semesters.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2023/cs-academy-credit-by-exam

(In case it's not obvious, I'm a CS professor at CMU. I've taught the course I'm discussing above, 15-112, together with David Kosbie, one of the creators of CS academy.)

> and we'll give you CMU course credit for it

This is the part that I bet a lot of prospective students will like!

Do you think the program will eventually get extended to cover some of those remaining 7.5 semesters or remain focused on the initial half semester?

Not this one. The core focus of cs academy is and will remain trying to lift up high school cs education.

That seemed like the future ten years ago, but my impression is that the trend has gone the other way. There were a lot of really buzzy courses back then, but the communities don't seem motivated in the same way any more, with a large portion of the students now in pursuit of a certificate rather than intellectually curious. I also think that the reason that many of the popular early courses disappeared, wasn't just that they wee out of date, but that university administrations began to worry that they were giving too much away.

It's also possible that online learning during the pandemic has ended up making online learning in general seem unpleasant.

> but that university administrations began to worry that they were giving too much away.

Personally: in industry, in various software companies I've met about 10-15 grads from Harvard, MIT, and CMU. From meeting them, I assure you that they're just average people, just as dumb as you or I, and that the administration has no great secrets to give away.

At least, not to give away to the average student. Maybe I only met the rejects...

>It's also possible that online learning during the pandemic has ended up making online learning in general seem unpleasant.

MOOCs seemed to have outlived their novelty value since before the pandemic rolled around. The fact that paywalls were added to some content and schools probably lost a certain amount of interest as well didn't help.

But of course the pandemic did add a huge amount of (mostly uncurated) video content to the commons.

Definitely most universities are making their lectures available. For example IITs have this huge collection of all kinds of Engineering courses, https://nptel.ac.in/courses

And now they are expanding to medical sciences too! Imagine becoming a self taught doctor :/ https://dth.ac.in/medical/course.php

But yes, the value of attending a top university is not at all limited to these study materials. It is so much more.

Fantastic, the fundamentals of electrical engineering is exactly what I've been looking for.

Hasn’t that already been the case for a decade? How many prestigious universities have had their courses online for free?

It’s been an artificially limited social club ever since distribution of the content reached roughly infinity. It’s also a test to see if you can keep up, on time.

Universities still require students to go through their own, potentially worse, material.

The education at CMU is quite good FWIW. The faculty care a lot. Would not call it a gated access club.

The thing that would make a difference would be the emergence of a reputable open examination. As in: here's a math test, it's written by xyz professors at famous institutions, everyone can see the paper after the test, these x% of people passed. The test itself might be invigilated in-person, but all the materials are free, the syllabus is open for all to view, and crucially everyone thinks it's actually difficult.

Alternatively, the big name universities could open up their exams. People will be able to say they passed the actual MIT CS exam, they just didn't go there. Of course I'm aware this might not fly with these institutions...

I think it would help a lot of people who don't have the means to move somewhere and not work a job for 4 years.

High school exams are already more or less like this, everyone takes the same test. Why not uni?

I partially agree, but also somewhat disagree with this. In theory it makes sense, but a lot of my education was also from the relationships with classmates where we could bounce ideas off of each other, and the help from TAs and professors when I got stuck.

If all of what I learned came from sitting in a lecture hall, then sure. And that’s how I learned the basic ideas. But a lot of how I learned to apply concepts was from making friends and studying together, or group projects, etc. Learning the different ways that other people see the concepts can help solidify them to you. Things that happen spontaneously by being in close proximity to people in your same class.

Learning together is part of the learning process that can multiply the classroom side. But it’s basically impossibly to have a casual spontaneous connection on slack or zoom.

Absolutely right. The value of a university is no more than it’s initial filtering system. It’s the one status symbol that can’t be bought (well, I know what you are thinking but let’s not digress ). I’ve always thought it would be a great idea for people to apply to college and once accepted - you have an elite college club that they join, and they just don’t attend college. It would be a $200 application fee well spent. Then you take $50,000 and spend it on 5 international and 5 local trips over a 3 year period and boom - you got a great network!