I had a whole post in startupschool.com about this. I was unable to find anybody agreeing with me. Glad you made me feel less alone in this world. And TBH from all the excitement of being in SuS, I think one might launch a startup with this idea

Most self-taught people I have met have come up with their own projects, or at least played with Kaggle, as people are usually advised to do. MOOCs are only a small part of the options people can and do exercise.

Self driven education has always existed. At least as long as you could check out books in the library. The Internet made it more convenient, but it didn't make it any easier. Most people thrive in a structured environment with superiors and peers. That's why universities are so much more successful than libraries.

There's also the problem of knowing what you don't know. If an expert in the field is educating you they will give you a full picture of the field and what's important in it. But if you're self taught you can miss entire areas and never realize their importance from reading academic sources.

I'm not against self teaching or MOOCs at all. I just think they need more structure and require more commitment to be as useful as university is to society. They're a bit too casual, requiring much more self drive which is harder than just setting deadlines and exams.