What's the next step from here to replacing "a college education" all together? Of course I can't walk into a job offer and explain to them how I watched coursera videos online, but I'm wondering what the path from A to B will be.
On another front, the first traditional school has decided to award credit for a Udacity class, if the student takes a proctored test. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/education/colorado-state-t...
We're just about a year out from that first Thrun/Norvig Stanford AI class. Things have moved very quickly when you put it in that perspective.
Yes you can. I would put you very close to the front of the line for my group (data science) if you told me you self-taught yourself ML using Ng's classes and could show me some samples on GitHub.
But a good portion of the courses (that frequently happen to be taught by TAs, not professors, anyways) belong online. One finicky part at the moment is testing, which relies on honor code, so there might be a move towards professional-level testing, the type you see for major exams (GRE, TOEFL) as well as professional certifications. Since most of the testing facilities charge money, it will probably provide a good reason for universities to charge for credits as well - you can still view the course for free, but to pass a series of tests and get credit you would have to pay.
If the result is good , it'll warm some workplaces to online courses.
Another path is using the fact that graduates of online courses can achieve a specific learning goal much cheaper and much shorter(in some jobs people don't need a full degree , only some courses). This opens a path for cheaper employees for companies and a solution for the talent crunch. Maybe some more venturesome companies will start using it. And the word will get out and it will become more common.