rs
Dagobah Resident
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/02/giving_educatio.html
Check out http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htmlFiled under: Open Source
The WSJ is running an interesting story a rising trend in elite universities: free education. MIT's OpenCourseWare Project was the first of the bunch, but others (like Berkeley, Yale, Bryn Mawr, etc.) are following suit:
Following the lead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other highly competitive schools, more institutions are posting online everything from lecture notes to sample tests, and even making audio and video files of actual lectures publicly available. The sites attract anywhere from thousands to more than one million unique visitors each month.
The moves -- which differ from the "distance learning" courses that many schools offer for credit and charge for -- come as colleges and universities say they want to democratize education, making the best resources available to more people....
MIT's pioneering "OpenCourseWare" program, which was launched in 2003, posts the syllabus and class notes for more than 1,500 courses online for anyone who wants them. By this November, it aims to publish materials from virtually all 1,800 of its courses across all its schools.
Democratization and altruistic motives aside (though I believe these are legitimate), what can these schools be thinking? That giving away the education is a net positive for them, financially and in many other ways:
An MIT survey of users showed that about a third of freshmen who were aware of the site before attending the university said it made a significant impact on their decision to enroll.
Universities say they don't worry about losing applicants by giving away materials online. "From Yale's point of view, there still is nothing more important than direct interaction between students and teachers," says Diana E.E. Kleiner, an art-history professor and director of the Yale project. "Putting a selection of our courses online doesn't change that."
Fascinating stuff, and hugely interesting for those of us in the open source world. There is much more to the software business than bits and bytes. Arguably, these are not nearly as important as services that make the software useful, just as the articles a professor has published don't necessarily make a particular class more informative. (News flash: Professors get paid to publish, not to teach, which sometimes results in really brilliant professors that are really abysmal teachers.)
The value of a Stanford education over, say, a X State University education is not predominately in the quality of teaching that goes on, but rather in the pedigree it offers, as well as (possibly) the quality of students one meets with. (As for my own Stanford education, I should have done it online, as I was working full-time for Lineo throughout most of my time there. I'm not sure any of my fellow students would even remember me.The universities realize this, so they're not giving up anything by giving away the education.
Now consider this if you're an ISV: are you really giving away your livelihood by giving away (completely) your software? (Hint: The answer is "No." It just requires a leap of faith.)
