On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:54 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > This is bullshit and they know it. > > An "elite" eduction is a scarce good. Otherwise, it's not "elite." > > It's not about what you learn; it's about who is sitting next to you in > class and who his parents are. > > At the point where millions of students can get an elite degree by way of > the internet, the elite degree will be worthless.
All of this is true, but beneath all this hype there is some substance which I think really is interesting and potentially revolutionary. The Harvard/MIT EdX initiative really is exciting. Already the open courseware initiatives of various institutions have created a treasure trove of very high quality educational content, which really has the potential to benefit the whole world. I personally have enormously enjoyed various UC Berkeley lectures especially a couple of exceptional classes on the History of Physics by historian Cathryn Carson and Natural Resources and Population by geographer Nathan Sayre: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=354823453 There will always be elite institutions and elite degrees of course, but these institutions are doing a very, very good thing with their online efforts. We can only hope that some idiot Goldman Sachs partner does not ruin it all with some hare-brained "business plan". -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
