This makes a great deal of sense to me. If it's demonstratably effective I'd love to see higher education incorporate it.
As a side note, I'm thinking about pursuing an MSc at Georgia Tech OMSC. I wonder if the online nature of it takes into account this kind of skill tree, or if it's more traditional.
OMSCS is composed of multiple courses with no hard prerequisite requirements (except for one course, and you can skip it if you can persuade the professor). Within each course, they're conventional. If the material lends itself to this form (not all graduate courses do) then they may be in a similar form to this just like any other college course that has a clear progression of "You need to know X before you can produce/study Y".
OMSCS is basically a normal university structure, except for requiring you to do some foundational courses first (which essentially act as a competency check for the rest of the program).
As a side note, I'm thinking about pursuing an MSc at Georgia Tech OMSC. I wonder if the online nature of it takes into account this kind of skill tree, or if it's more traditional.