I didn't really say that, nor did I imply it. I said I'm for high quality, free educational materials at all levels.

There's an entirely different rant about textbook sales in schools, more to do with corruption, greed, and sweetheart deals than trying to provide quality materials for learning. I definitely believe those materials (the ones marketed at the expense of students) are entirely bad, no doubt.

I don't believe that "high quality, free educational materials" is something that is easily attainable. I will say that the "free" part will exist but "high quality" may not be there. I don't think we can equate educational materials as the same level and quality of open-source software.

If you look at Khan Academy, really the forefront in this area, you quickly realize that someone is absorbing the cost. In this case, Bill Gate's foundation and others. As a result, you have someone with the calibre of John Resig working for the organization and they are putting out job postings.

I really like Coursera. I like the open-course offerings from MIT, Harvard, etc. Someone is definitely paying for these as it is not cheap. In this case, the universities are paying (and implicitly the students).

So, I definitely agree with your sentiments but I do believe we will get high-quality when there is a profit motive. I am not saying free and high-quality cannot co-exist with educational materials but I don't believe its very common.

In addition, my hope is that there is enough traction that the subscription plans stay low for these learning companies. One of the benefits in this area is that it has become very competitive and hence costs are coming down. Just take a look at what Pluralsight was charging five years versus now (or even Tekpub). There is a definate downwards pressure on how much these companies can charge.

I agree. Anyone can make educational materials. Making a relevant curriculum is hard. Making a relevant curriculum for teenagers is very hard. The amount of preparation that goes into just 1 hour of class time is often overlooked by those who haven't spent any time teaching.

The problem with your comparison is that a textbook does not claim to somehow fast-track you to $100/year. It only claims to help you with the current step in your learning which Treehouse doesn't even do effectively.

I tried the Treehouse lectures when I started learning how to code and found them long-winded and basic. A friend of mine also came to the same conclusion independently; he even called to warn me to avoid Treehouse if i hadn't tried it a already... I already had.

In their marketing, Treehouse makes a lot of promises their material is unable to deliver which for me is the big problem here.

Their "perceived value" comes from the fact that they package their basic content very well in a pretty wrapper but these kids would be better off with code-academy, code-school and then the django book or Hartl's Rails tutorial.

That would put them on a path to 100k/year, not Treehouse but as usual, the school officials wont do their research well so they'll just pick the shiniest option.

The only winner here is Treehouse; good for them.

Because its better to write a long wall of text where you describe things in detail than it is to write a one sentence statement that doesn't accurately summarize your position...?

Textbooks should be free too. It doesn't make you crazy to say so.

It doesn't make you crazy, it just means your thought lacks substance. "Textbooks should be free too" is so vague and ambiguous that it has no useful meaning.

just2n already provided plenty of substance. Don't expect me to repeat what he's already written.