The fact that Udacity offers no formal credentialing puts a very interesting twist on some age-old questions about the deepest purposes of education: does the fact that Udacity students will gain knowledge but no formal credit for completing these courses suggest that it offers a purer educational experience than what they get at a traditional institution of higher education? Granted, the courses currently offered by Udacity are all in technical and applied areas of computer science, as are all those announced for the coming year – future plans include courses in computer security, operating systems, and software engineering. (Thrun sees the challenges of using this kind of structure to teach humanistic topics as a “hurdle,” one to be overcome in the future.) But the question remains: is Udacity not an example of learning for the sake of learning, and perhaps a better example of that exalted endeavor than what we increasingly see in the traditional university?