Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his tenured position to aim for an even bigger audience. Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital – Life – Design conference in Munich, Germany...."