But then we need another layer of catwalks to watch the watchers.

Hey look- the exact same links I said in my above post, in a slightly different order. Likely because I hit a different google server today. Wow you are an utter idiot aren't you.

Feynman's statement is one of the most misapplied quotes of our lifetime. You can give the 10000 foot view of a subject in simple terms, usually. And that's what he meant. That's not the purpose of a college course- the purpose is to give you all the details, so you can apply them in new and novel ways. That requires lots of facts being thrown at you, lots of math, and lots of detail. Any attempt to do it otherwise IS being simplistic.

A nice comprimise might be if coursera and edx moved to monthly instead of semesterly courses, running several instances shifted in parallel.

Its kind of hard to list all the prerequisites for everything. Especially since by the time you'd hit AI in any college course, you'd have taken probability and calculus years ago. Do I need to list understanding of the scientific method as a prerequisite for chem 300? The ability to read and write? There is a baseline knowledge you just have to assume- that's why you generally need to take the baseline courses like calc first in college.

What you can't do is take the math out- doing so waters down the course and makes it less usable for those who do have the knowledge, and gives you an incomplete understanding. Far better to have a few drop do to not understanding the math than to not provide the knowledge the course needs to in order to pass them.

Your metric needs improvement too. Cut off the employer part. No employer needs someone to take a MOOC in history, music theory, etc. Yet they exist and people love them. The real metric for success is how many people are able to learn about a field that under other circumstances they never could. Whether they ever use that knowledge, professionally or personally, isn't relevant.

Depends on how you define success. If you define success as being a replacement for college, you're right. They aren't, and likely never will be that. If by success you mean a place where motivated adults can learn about a subject without the costs and commitment of a degree program then they're a rousing success. And that's where the people who start MOOCs went wrong- they were thinking of them as college replacements. Think of them as adult learning at a university level for people who don't plan on making a career out of the knowledge, or for people who want to study a subfield they didn't in college. At that level they work very well. And if someone drops the course its no big deal- they just decided they didn't need it/want it after all.

It's not a conspiracy, coward. It's published policy. Your decision to trot out ad hominem in place of addressing the basic facts of the matter shows you know I'm right. That you're posting as a coward makes it even more clear. But keep propping up your pet administration, man. The documents they publish - you know, the ones that have been amply covered in both aviation news and general media of all sorts - make this all very clear. The agency has just been sued by multiple parties over the 'interpretation' document and policy position in question. But please, don't trouble yourself to keep up with the news - that would take the fun out of your shrill, drooling Obama fanboyism.

You actually need a citation to believe that the director of the FAA is a political appointee? You are that unaware of how federal agencies are run by the executive branch of the government? You don't need a citation, you need a remedial course in basic civics. Please return to the conversation when you understand the basic structure of the government.