(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I’m not sure why Thrun is wearing a Borg occular implant, but if his point about about 85% of his Stanford students ditching traditional class in favor of watching him on video could be the canary dying in the higher education status-quo coal mine. Well worth watching:
Chronicle of Higher Education weighs in here.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Thanks. I posted it to FB and tagged my Stanford alum friends – I’ll let you know what they think!
If this model eventually displaces the current one, I’ll be curious to see how grading systems adapt. An onslaught of students gaining access to quality education, even the capacity to rewind and repeat lectures, will translate into a larger proportion of students able to score near the top on exams. Shifting the grading curve could either just require tougher exams, or perhaps different measurements altogether in order to measure learning and ability meaningfully. It may even call into question our overall grading paradigm. In any case, the implications are far reaching.
Indeed- I thought the point made about not giving kids a D- in bike riding before just moving on to unicycle riding was quite provocative.