David Hill: Can MIT’s Learning Platform for Online Education Address the US Higher Education Problem?
David Hill of Singularity Hub reports that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s new OpenCourseWare program will provide nearly all MIT courses for free on the web, and allow students to study online and earn a certificate of completion. A prototype of the system will be launched this spring.
As government funding has been cut to some schools and others struggle with donations and endowments, institutions are desperate for tuition dollars to cover their expenses, so they are left with little choice but to raise tuition rates (a trend called out by President Obama in his State of the Union address). As the country slowly pulls itself out of a recession and looks to the future for financial stability, it is a crucial time for something big to happen in the educational world.
