oh sure. for years, big name, private unis have offered the community ways to take their courses cheaply thru "university colleges" and non-credit courses. so, what MIT is doing is nothing new. indeed, the costs of protecting the course material is probably greater than the so-called costs of letting anyone have access to it. that is, profs have to set up their courses on line, then they have to password protect it or insist that it only be accessed on university accounts, yadda. a bigger headache than it is worth. there's no ROI after all, since it's not like some slob is going to sit down and go through the equivalent of 128 credit hours and declare, I'm an autodidact who's taken courses for free at MIT, therefore i'm the equivalent of an MIT grad, and actually expect to get taken seriously!
instead, turn it into a publicity stunt in a competitive market.
it is an utterly meaningless gesture on their part because the kind of learning they're offering has _always_ been available to anyone with access to a library.
ferchrisakes, i went to a nontrad school and used to unofficially audit cornell classes. i worked out deals with some of the profs, too. they would actually grade my work as if i were a real student and then act as a "tutor" with my uni. most of them did it for free, since the lousy $25/credit hour they got from my uni wasn't worth the paper work. they were just happy to have an eager student participating in their seminars.
but does my telling anyone i took courses about 1/5 from cornell profs do anything for me? (actually it was probably more since most of my paid tutors were cornell and binghamton grad students--i'd consider them "cornell" quality, whatever that is) did i get something from cornell profs that i didn't get from cortland state profs or binghamton state? no.
so, when i went to apply to the history program at cornell, guess what it did for me? nada. i learned that they automatically looked down on my nontrad college and wouldn't give my app a second glance were it not for active advocacy on the part of people in the dept.
kelley