I would caution against this approach. First, he is aiming to pass all the course requirements for a CS degree from MIT in only 1 year (including the non-CS requirements). His definition of passing is getting a passing grade on the final if the grade distribution is known, and a 50% or more if it's not known. No projects, no problem sets, nothing else.

Now, I'm sure he's a smart guy, but I would be surprised if he retains the material long after he takes the final. I highly doubt you can deeply internalize, say the upper level algorithms course in a few weeks (I've taken it) without doing the (difficult) problem sets, or taking the infamous take-home midterm that often has open problems in disguise.

It's difficult to see this as an attempt at truly learning the material he claims to be learning.

He had me right up until he revealed (at the very end) that the whole thing is about getting a degree from a completely unknown mail-order University. Brand matters in higher education. UConn degree > what he got. He does a very good job of selling himself and his degree so he may be able to overcome it, but it's self-delusion if he actually thinks he's better off with the degree he has. If he applied those same salesmanship skills to the UConn degree and making himself stand out with that, he'd be better off than he is now - speaking strictly in terms of academic pedigree and how he is perceived by potential employers.

I'm not sure how you attribute "unknown mail-order University" to Excelsior. I'm willing to guess that a fair number of HR managers and several million U.S. service members(and obviously their families as well) and veterans might know very well the name of this institution. Look up Regents College if you're interested to know the history.

Yes that bit was anticlimactic. Its still useful info though.