Prof. Ng's class wasn't watered down. CS229A(http://cs229a.stanford.edu/) is the Stanford equivalent of the online ml-class. Ng also teaches another machine learning course at stanford(CS229) which focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of ML.
Having taken the online course, I'm not sure I understand you - the programming assignments in some cases required 1 line of code be written (in the middle of a more complex program). I find it really hard to believe that students who pay tuition would be given the same assignments.
CS229A is a course taken by people from different backgrounds not just CS. It basically deals with the practical aspects of machine learning, implementation issues etc. In addition to the lectures and the assignments, stanford students also had an additional course project.
