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Thursday, March 06, 2008
Internet gives everyone access to elite colleges - Justin Pope, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Today, the Internet has indeed transformed higher education. A multibillion-dollar industry, both for-profit and nonprofit, has sprung up offering online training and degrees. Figures from the Sloan Consortium, an online learning group, report that about 3.5 million students are signed up for at least one online course — or about 20 percent of all students at degree-granting institutions. But it hasn’t been as clear what role — if any — elite universities would play in what experts call the “massification” of higher education. Their finances are based on prestige, which means turning students away, not enrolling more. How could they teach the masses without diminishing the value of their degree? But MIT’s 2001 debut of OpenCourseWare epitomized a key insight: Elite universities can separate their credential from their teaching — and give at least parts of their teaching away as a public service. They aren’t diminishing their reputations at all. In fact, they are expanding their reach and reputation.
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