The cost of an American university education is ridiculously more than its value. It should be crystal clear that most of what you are paying for is the credential, not the education. The first elite university to break up the monolithic credential into an a la carte system of finer-grained credentials, with high standards backed by the reputation of the institution but open to all, regardless of how they learned the material, will change the world of education forever. Each narrow credential will move independently to its true market value (sorry, lit crit professors), people will pay much less by paying only for what they need, yet people who would never go back to get another whole degree will frequently go back for additional narrower credentials over the course of a career. Elite institutions can stay elite by keeping their standards high and may end up making more money than they ever did under today's absurd system.<p>The article made it clear that MIT was desperate to avoid diluting their own brand equity ("we'll grant certifications using a subsidiary with some other name so there's NO confusion"), but it looks to me as though the industry is heading in the direction I'm talking about one way or another.
I really get the feeling, first from OCW, and now this, that MIT really just does want to promote knowledge.<p>This is seriously one of the coolest things I've heard about in a while.<p>(I wonder how much "mastery" in some of these classes could play into applying to the school, proper?)<p>MIT is one of my favorite <i>things</i>, period.
Under the FAQ for MITx:<p><i>If credentials are awarded, will they be awarded by MIT?
As online learning and assessment evolve and improve, online learners who demonstrate mastery of subjects could earn a certificate of completion, but any such credential would not be issued under the name MIT. Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the Institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.</i><p>The true paradigm shift in education will happen when a student takes an "independent certification exam" related to a specific subject and is recognized as proficient regardless of how it was learned.<p>MITx is taking one more step in this direction.<p>The CollegeBoard's Advanced Placement Program does this now. High school students are allowed to take an AP exam whether they have taken an AP course or not. Their score on the exam (1 - 5) is a "recommendation" value that colleges agree to use to grant course credit.<p>It costs AP students $80 to take an exam. What would happen if MIT adopted this approach and charged $99 to "take the final?" Or consider the Machine Learning course at Stanford with 100,000 registrants. Were 1/3 of them to pay $99 to take the final, the benefit to Stanford would be north of $3.2M dollars! One course. They posted 20 new courses in November alone.<p>Compare that to what universities make by offering a residential class and the model gets clearer.
<i>All of the teaching on the platform will be free of charge. Those who have the ability and motivation to demonstrate mastery of content can receive a credential for a modest fee</i><p>At last, the final piece of the puzzle. With a fee structure in place they can afford employees to grade more intensive assignments. It looks like we might finally get a viable competitor to traditional degrees.<p>You need to hire a programmer, well look, this guy took intro CS, algorithms, compilers, software engineering, Java etc... from MITx.
I am currently a CS student at MIT and heard that one of my classmates is actually not a student, but paid just to take one course while working full time at a big tech company. If efforts like MITx become very legitimate, it could be a good way to formalize training for employees and educating them on specific subjects. e.g CS generalist takes a graphics course to help in a new endeavor at his/her company.
Interesting that as US institutions are ramping up their online education offerings, the UK government is cutting funding for the Open University (open.ac.uk) which is probably one of the pioneers in the area.
A microcosm of the UK's involvement in technology in general I think.
Stanford experimented and seemed to have found a right balance for effective online-learning, now MIT is fine tuning OCW. Exciting news.<p><pre><code> Keys needed:
* quality teaching and teachers
* highly relevant courses
* learners in batch
* online office hour weekly
* feedback mechanism, sense of connection
* discussion forums - e.g. reddit
</code></pre>
Image MIT's 10-year OCW content.<p>e.g. Engineering and Computer Science: <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-computer-science" rel="nofollow">http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-compu...</a><p>Awesome.
Another addition to the edu|tech disruption brewing.<p>Will be exciting to see whether the disruption comes top-down from the institutions or bottom-up from startups like codecademy/khanacademy.<p>I'm bullish on the startups at this point, but happy to see the institutions giving it a go.
Theses online courses are the way of the future. In times when governments look to try and get better results for investments made in education they just make a lot more sense. Rather than giving 100 students a solid base in say AI you are giving 20000+ a level of learning almost as good a similar amount of academic time spent.
I am going to ask a really selfish question here.<p>I've begun working on something in my spare time that is extraordinarily similar to this MITx. It's not exactly the same, but the model essentially is; all content is free and always will be. Paying for certifying that it was you is the only optional cost. Considering it's so similar, though ideally my version is more open in a number of ways, what does a lowly student trying to build something like this do in light of this news?<p>Even though this is good news for education overall, I'm literally sitting here, somewhat devastated, hearing that this precise model and idea I've been obsessing over for months is gaining so much talk as 'the final piece to the puzzle,' etc. Do I continue with it and make it better than theirs?<p>Any advice would be awesome.
<i>OCW provides course material for nearly all MIT classes. Will MITx offer interactive online courses at that same scale?</i><p><i>No. MITx will begin by offering a portfolio of selected courses, which will grow over time. The selection of courses will depend on the interests of MIT faculty and online learners and will be determined on a course-by-course basis.</i><p>I'm guessing that 6.00 will be one of those classes, but Stanford started with AI/ML/DB so I might be wrong. In any event, the prototype should pretty much correspond with Stanford's new batch of online classes.
I guess this is a response to the classes some Stanford professors have been teaching:<p><a href="http://www.ai-class.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ai-class.org/</a><p><a href="http://www.ml-class.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ml-class.org/</a><p><a href="http://www.db-class.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.db-class.org/</a>
and more to come in January.<p>I took part in two of them and it was a great experience, so I welcome the competition :-)
Hmm.. Think it is a good idea indeed... But does remind me of Stanford's online courses effort. <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-computer-science-081611.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-computer-sc...</a>
Probably a response to the Stanford courses. I took the course Introduction to Databases, and it was really great. I wrote about the experience here: <a href="http://henrikwarne.com" rel="nofollow">http://henrikwarne.com</a>