How well does the MIT system work?

It should work pretty well. We have some of the best and most energetic lecturers in the US.

Lectures are generally kept to 50 minutes (more than double the limit established by education researchers). The lectures are demanding; if you tune out for 5 minutes, you will have a lot of trouble catching up. Professors do not put up PowerPoints and read them bullet by bullet. Homework assignments are weekly in most courses and are extremely demanding.

The students are among the most able and best-prepared in the US. Yet when you ask graduates in CS what percentage of their classmates are capable of programming and what percentage they would enjoy working with, the answer is usually 25-30 percent.

People who studied poetry, physics, or civil engineering are often better software engineers than an MIT CS graduate (contrast with medicine; not too many good doctors out there who skipped med school).

A MIT student graduates ready to work for an engineer, not to be an engineer. Not too impressive considering the near-$200,000 cost and the abilities of the incoming students. (And the problem is not always fixed on the first job; companies tend to give junior engineers a tiny piece of a big problem, not a small problem to solve by themselves).