Internet Opens Doors to Elite Colleges

Have you ever wondered what it's like to sit in a class at MIT or Yale and listen to a lecture? Wonder no more. Thanks to the internet and the participating schools, you can actually watch the lectures on your computer. Now, understanding what they are talking about is another thing, though.

The top universities have finally opened their doors to the world of online education. And mostly, they are giving it away for free.

An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free — lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Prof. Gilbert Strang's Math 18.06 course is among the most popular, with visitors downloading his lectures more than 1.3 million times since June 2007 alone.

MIT's initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.
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