As far as I could tell, his main concern was for the curiosity and motivation of the students, not their ability to communicate via the written word.
Typos may detract from his post, and nitpicking is fine, but your first sentence is illogical, incorrect (it's not a spelling error), and unnecessarily negative. Take it easy with the attitude, man.
But I don't think my point is illogical at all. Statements like "College is broken" (the original submission title) are counterintuitive (outside of HN, anyway) enough that they strain credibility. Sloppiness strains it further.
You're right on the unnecessary negativity. It would have been more helpful to note specific typos in a friendly manner. What was posted, however, was just my knee-jerk reaction upon opening the link. That said, though it doesn't serve as a good excuse, I doubt I'm the only one who might react as such.
http://www.olinprojects.com/tag/principles-of-engineering/
It seems that we learn in class a lot like how you originally did. Agreed that it is way better and more fun.
Definitely alumni going back and helping their schools should be encouraged, and hopefully most dept's are humble enough to accept that help. But I worry it's a small thing that doesn't scale, have you thought about the growing online education movement as a vector?
I've long thought that there should be a 'maker scholarship', giving small amounts of funding to people/students building real things. I found small amounts of this in the form of sponsorships from companies, but I really had to hustle for it. Whereas I randomly (literally just showed up in my mail) received a scholarship simply because my grades were above a certain mark. The 'Maker Scholarship' idea is definitely scalable.
As far as a new kind of school, I'm not sure the best way to do that. Certainly interested in all the online activity but I do like the social feel of a 'real life' school.