...or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Not Hate the Udacity Pivot

Of course it’s hagiography; it’s in Fast Company, and Sebastian Thrun is in Silicon Valley. Of course he screwed the kids at San Jose State (though more on the virtue of what Cottom does with that conclusion below); that’s what privatized higher education does when “students from difficult neighborhoods” turn out to be unprofitable. And of course he wasn’t making any money; that’s the Silicon Valley business model spoofed so well by South Park. Now if we’re all done doing our best Claude Rains impressions, I want to take a more pragmatic look at the Udacity “pivot” (which admittedly sounds like a chess strategy rather than pedagogy).