Posted on 01/07/2012 3:23:43 PM PST by Sprite518
For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
They do not accrue towards an MIT degree (thus far), however, making them worth what you pay for them in the eyes of degree consumers.
For the last time, I’m not voting for Mitt.
Oh..., nevermind.
Sooner or later major institutions are going to be forced to offer online courses leading to degrees – even if it messes up their brick and mortar job protection plans.
That is a strong move
But with the course outlines and a person’s willingness to buy the textbooks and self-study, you could challenge the exams and just pay the fee for the exams and get credit for the course.
There are really only a few courses overall that you’d actually have to participate because of the real need to do labs and other hands-on.
“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.”
At any rate, I think any paper from M.I.T. if valid is a plus on the resume. Granted a degree is desired, but I don't see how this could hurt a job resume.
What's important though is that perhaps it will interest enough people to become scientist and engineers.
LOL!
Agree with you that this might just be a “back door” or a final outcome if this gains traction world wide.
You can take the classes but you won’t get a degree. So can someone explain to me how this a “game changer”?
It is right now. That could change.
I’ve been saying this for a long time. The state of California should put all coarses that can be put online up free of charge. If education is of a benefit to society than put it online for free. You could then go to the campus for testing for a reasonable fee. You could get all your classes that don’t require a physical presence out of the way before you go off to college. The problem is that would take the big money out of it.
Right now you can’t..... However, even if they never happens. Any further education is always a big plus on the resume. It tell employers that not only are you trainable, but that a candidate is self motivated and has a desire to learn and grow. That’s just one example. Another would be say you have an engineer and he wants to understand a different part of engineering he did not study. For instance, the engineer is a civil engineer and that he wants understand what an electronics engineer understands. This is one way he can do it. I do not see how this is a bad thing at all.
It’s great too because we do not need any more degrees in Sociology or Basket weaving. It’s a waste of time and paper IMHO.
Thanks!
In several ways, it is a game changer.
A person could take these on-line classes to understand the material, then take the class for credit. Or, after having taken the class for credit, a student can than take the online courses to strengthen his understanding of the material. No need to pay for classes twice.
By creating non-credited courses now, it could eventually lead to taking online courses for credit, as educators figure an effective means to teaching the course online.
If you have a hobby interest, it also means you don’t have to pay for courses of your interest, since you’re only doing it for a hobby.
If it becomes the preferred method of teaching, MIT or whomever, could pay world class teachers to produce videos that would be accessible for everybody. In otherwords, it would allow everybody to have the same level of elite education and everybody’s ability to become educated becomes less of a matter of how wealthy or connected you are, but more on your personal motivation and ability.
That’s just off the top of my head.
Obviously nothing is “free.” Somebody is paying for it, which I assume is the students who are taking classes at MIT for their actual degrees. MIT isn’t going to undercut itself, so there will always have to be students paying the big bucks for the big degrees. And those students will demand that their degrees are worth much much more than the free online courses.
Obviously nothing is “free.” Somebody is paying for it, which I assume is the students who are taking classes at MIT for their actual degrees. MIT isn’t going to undercut itself, so there will always have to be students paying the big bucks for the big degrees. And those students will demand that their degrees are worth much much more than the free online courses.
ping
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