Could Udemy give a Stanford level of education to anyone with a laptop and wifi connection?

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Bill Gates recently said: ‘In 5 years the best education will come from the web’. And if Gates is right then Udemy could be the Stanford of online education institutions. If fact, Udemy could be better than Stanford because instead of being for an elite few that can afford it, Udemy could provide anyone with a laptop and internet connection with a Stanford level of education.

This is because Udemy aims to provide anyone with the tools necessary to sell education in a structured way, meaning Stanford professors can use Udemy’s tools to sell direct to the pupil, cutting out te middle man- the institution- and making education affordable for the masses.

Co-founder Gagan Biyani tells me they want Udemy to ‘disrupt education in the same way blogging disrupted publishing’ and I see his vision. The problem currently with online learning,  is that there is so much great content out there, but it’s not presented in a structured way. Yes you can find out how iPhone apps are coded on YouTube, but what if you want to really learn and understand Javascript for yourself so you can build your own iPhone app?

You would need a structured program and a teacher to guide you through the different stages of learning, just like classes you would go through at university. Udemy aims to bring the university experience online through pulling together various file sharing and presentation tools in one place. So what does democratizing education mean for the future of the world? I’ll let Gagan give you his take on it.