Why Didn’t More People Take the MIT Challenge 

I think you hit it with the 3rd point. The social proof that institutions provide is a lot more useful in the job market than we'd like to believe. Full, online, ultralearning projects seem to be undertaken as hobbies or by folks that are maniacally focused on self-improvement.

I think the MIT challenge is a bold and attractive way of self-educating, but only few can actually do it. Another reason I would add for the limited adoption is the time commitment. It is not possible or realistic for most people to dedicate themselves full time to study for a year, or longer, for financial and other reasons. It's also really difficult to stay committed, without peers or a support system that you would have with a brick and mortar education.

I was going to take on the challenge a few years back. I even sent you an e-mail about it (which you kindly replied to). The intention was to complete it in 2 years, instead, but the reasons I ended up not completing it were as follows: 1 - It was going to be longer than that since I had significant catching up to do, such as pre-calculus (my country's high school education wasn't enough for me to take classes right away) 2 - After completing the theory content of several subjects, about 3 months in, I realized many of the courses were much more basic than the M.I.T versions. For example, I took a physics course in coursera, but they only ever gave us super basic formulas, and seemed to be a "physics of everyday life" kind of thing rather than a proper intro to physics course. 3 - The ability to support myself while completing the challenge proved tricky 4 - I realized after about 6 months that I didn't want to do this and then go and find a 9-5 job with what I learned. In the end, I thought I'd rather learn the things that I was really passionate about and try to go *do* something with that instead of trying to complete a college education just for the sake of it, while taking subjects I wasn't really connecting with, and without the social benefits of actually going to college. Your challenge DID point me to online education, however, and ever since then I've been picking up all sorts of fascinating stuff that I was interested in, but weren't related so as to be part of a college curriculum (graphic design, languages, music production, 3d modeling, and programming, to name a few). I've since used a lot of the stuff I've learned to become my own boss and do what I like instead. I still have a studying time assigned to my daily routine to keep learning stuff and improving myself. Your challenge definitely made an impact on my life, just not to go and do the exact same, but rather to use similar discipline to do what felt right for me at the time.

i think your mit challenge was all about the focus and resilience one could cultivate to pull something off that challenging, not having received a good education especially in math, i recently put together a few online courses to learn math from the very basics to college material and i am hoping to get it done in about a year.

Its been 10 years? Wow, been subscribed since, was fun and motivating to follow

I really liked Scott's explanation. Simple, clear & to the point. Thank you for this video. :)

I read your book and I was actually looking for a way to learn from MIT EECS curriculum. I am a second year CS student and looking for premium materials about CS subjects.Thank you for the ebooks.

God may bless you Scott you are a huge inspiration for me, I dropped university because I am doing robotics/ai/3d/software/hardware/multimedial werid stuff and there is no career teaching this so I am learning multiple careers on my own, and I am planning that one of those would be the MIT Challenge and follow your steps. So thank you so much for making the road easier really I appreciate that so much. And as a personal answer for your question because I lived it is in my case that I didn't have a good reason to make put all that effort and maybe as a non native english speaker it increments the difficulty more, but when I found my passion of this strange combination I was so drive that I don't care learning the most stressful and dificult thing, but it is because emotionally I have a good reason to keep going

Hey Scott, can you make a video about the OSSU computer science curriculum and what do you think about it. Thank you

Please create a textbook on how to learn from kinder to high school

well bc idk what textbooks i needed to but to try it.

my goal is to eventually have something equivalent to to an MIT degree in computer science, but to do it in a year is insane, you need a very strong background in math and science to read the subjects quickly. I would need several months to get through the calculus sequence alone. the reason more people are not doing it is because society does not value this type of education. however, for IT jobs there are more opportunities for people who are self-taught, but they expect you to know the practical skills more than anything else, having a good portfolio will open more doors than having read through a ton of math, physics and engineering textbooks. that being said, as long as we self taught developers don't go through something as the MIT challenge, we will feel like we are second rate engineers, one always has this feeling that one should know the theory behind everything. kudos to mr. Scott.

Hi. Do you have a book were I can lean your technics?

You were an inspiration back then, Scott. Every year since then, I've done three months of learning challenges. I never posted it because it felt like bragging, and I didn't have any incentive to make it public. At the same time, Coursera and Udacity grew massively. Many of the paths can take up to one year to complete if you want to go from 0 to hero in one specific area; which is similar to the idea of having an "MIT project".

Do you know whether your project was discussed higher up at MIT? I assume there was no public comment from their side as it shook the status quo of gatekept and institutionalized education.

We have programming boot camps that get people Jr Dev jobs in 8-12 weeks.

As noble as your intentions were, you self graded and self evaluation might satisfy you but it’s not good enough for some professions or academia. Harvard Extension School has been doing distance learning since the days of VHS and it’s getting more and more popular. UPenn’s LPS program for adults have now allowed 100% online learning also… Georgetown university and University of Washington at St. Louis also have their own 100% online degree programs. The prices of these schools is far more than what you invested in the MIT challenge BUT students are graduated formally and they get regionally accredited undergrad and graduate level degrees that can be used to get into medical school, law school etc.

The object of teaching a child is to enable the child to get along without a teacher

You mentioned on your “challenge completed” video that you should have a certain and specific aim before taking on a journey. What if instead of having the aim to “completing the course” was something that had actual consequences/significance for your future, like “I want to go to the moon single handedly”. That way, your journey won’t be the fixed recommendations of a curriculum that doesn’t take into account your goal, but instead you have the flexibility of doing and figuring out everything that is necessary towards achieving that dream as soon as possible. I believe that this is the key difference between what makes a common person, and the stuff of people like Elon Musk. (You mentioned that you’re not as ‘bold’ as you were in the past. Maybe it’s because you’re feeling a little aimless? I’d have to say the same for myself honestly, but I have an Ideal that I am devoted towards embodying, so a sense of certainty is just around the corner.)

How many Phrases do you think someone would need to memorise to speak a language fluently? (Even if this number is impossible)

Mr. Scott Young, i need your help with studying like this. I saw that u did a lecture of 30 hours in just 2 days!! I try that, but the problem is that i get stuck Often i dont understand something and i spend hours trying to find a good explanation on the internet. And so i take way more than 2 days to finish the lectures What would u do in this situation? To never get stuck? Thank u for making this. Happy new year sir!!

I think the main reason why online learning seemed to struggle so much during the pandemic is that comparing the learning styles of a 6-yo, a 16-yo, and a 26-yo is inherently flawed. Even a well-behaved 6-yo isn't going to have the same level of self-discipline that an adult has when it comes to learning, and they won't have the same study, research, and self-reflection skills that even a 16-yo has. So I think, up until at least the teen years, in-person instruction is necessary for effective learning. Certainly, there's exceptions to this, but most of the time when a young child studies subjects outside of class, it's focused in on a single area (computers, dinosaurs, history, etc.) and not applied to all fundamental skills.

Did you even gor a CS job? Or you did it because of a book contract?

2:00 I am propably not more clever than the average MIT student... Me: leaving the chat 😅

Complete an entire MIT “degree” online is waste of time, getting a job internship or job actually only need to studied a small group of courses that offered online like CS61ABC and other tech specific specialization.

The main thing is that you're assuming people WANT to learn. They don't. They want Jobs. An institution is simply a structured and pushy way to quickly (as in, with minimal effort) getting to their Job. Which self-learning isn't

Because studying is hard and you’re only hyping it to be easy because you’re selling a book

Scott I would like to discuss an issue with you your website says 403 forbidden nginx