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Get a Free MIT Education
dhollm writes "Well, at least the course materials will be online, for free, for all.
The article gives a brief description of the program (evidently costing MIT $100M over 10 years) and the key drivers behind it. So start reading up!"
Where was this when I went to college?
I had to settle for CUNY instead.
This was annouced about a year ago.
becuse they are saying that its not the meterials that you are shelling out many K's for, its the teachers who explain it. A few other schools have been doing this for a while, St. Thomas Aquanis school (though I could be wrong, but I know a school like this exists) has had their entire 4 year ciriculam based on the Birtainca Great Book Series for a while. Any one can pick up a set for about 200$, but the other 28,800$ a year is for the teachers to explain it.
I supose this would be interesting if I'm interested in a certen subject and want a bibliogaphy or some slids on it, but only an idot would try to get a real education by only reading the course meterial
Sleep is for the weak!
It is wonderful that a motivated person could actually learn high-quality usefull stuff ( I assume ), but will it count with any potential employers ? It is very difficult to break through the "paper culture" which exists to support the requirement of expen$ive educations. No matter how clever one might be - as demonstrated by actual past performance, there is always that suspicion of anyone undocumented as a fraud.
enough is too much
Actually, it may be interesting to find out how many "prominent" intellectuals over the next 10 years gather much of their knowledge from this instead of actually going to school.
Many of the smart people I know found school was not for them and ended up learning what they know on their own. Also, that 12 year old prodigy down the block may not have $100 or more for college level coursebooks, but he sure has internet access...
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Get a Free MIT Education!!!!
:)
j/k...
MIT OpenCourseWare. I love to learn and if this pans out it could be a real boon to self educated people around the world!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I like it... I can't wait for the Linguistics curriculum to go up.
--brian
This is a nice effort, but I don't know where they come up with the $100 million price tag. Most of the work is already done by professors who want to save themselves the hassle of making sure students get all of the handouts, problem sets, answers, etc. MIT doesn't block access to that stuff now and I guess they won't in the future.
My guess is the $100 million figure was dreamed up to shake some cash out of alumni. They're probably hoping that someone will come forward and endow the effort. Perhaps they're targeting Michael Saylor, the MIT graduate who once talked about starting a free university with the cash he was making from MicroStrategy. The dot bomb crash has slowed that dream and perhaps MIT's as well.
Of course, I don't mean to denigrate the entire idea. It just seems like they're taking credit for something they already do. Did I mention that each week, I take out the trash? That's keeping the world cleaner! Call me Mr. Environmentalist!
Actually, student tuition is probably the -last- place the money is going to come from.
MIT ranks right up there with Harvard and other Ivy League schools when it comes to endowments. Basically, alumni give the school lots of money, which gets reinvested in all sorts of things - including projects of strategic importance like this.
Interestingly, MIT also derives significant revenue from the pseudo-business ventures and inventions created there. Inventions that turn out to be revenue-generators, created on-campus using their facilities, must pay a percentage of those revenues right back to the school.
I remember this causing quite a flap with a guy whose last name was Bose - son of the guy of Bose audio fame - who had an invention and was fighting with MIT over these fees.
At big-name schools like MIT, and Ivy League schools, student tuition is just one tiny piece of the financial machine.
I'm finishing my degree from the University of Maryland right now, and I see this as a great potential for supplemental information for my coursework. I take a large majority of my classes over the Web so I can work full-time in addition to taking 12-15 credits a semester. Despite the extreme convience of taking my courses on-line, I feel as though I don't recieve as comprehensive instruction as I did in the classroom. These course materials, while certainly not identical, could certainly provide me with another point of view, and quite possibly giving me a better grasp of the material.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
I look for a reissue of the DVD "Updated for new technology" anytime now.
cause here in Europe (at least in my country, which is Sweden), you don't have to pay for education. You pay for books (or lend them frome someone), and you pay for your apt and food, but not for your education as such. And there's a student loan with kinda nice repay-plan (at least partly based on your income) you can get for paying your rent and food. You don't need to be rich, only smart, to get a good education...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
There's a few people in here who will need to first take remedial English lessons.
I find it a little bit disconcerting that I, as an MIT student, am paying tuition to help devalue the very education that I am paying for. The cost will ultimately fall on me to make these materials available to everyone else.
Hey, it could be worse, you're paying a premium to attend a quality university *and* to share knowledge with the rest of the world helping inch us closer to Utopia.
I'm at Michigan State where tax money and students tuition are paying a premium to provide a Big Ten athletics program.
I think I'd rather be improving the world.
Anyway:
The other story
Check out some of the information/comments from that...
-- Josh
MIT is careful to point out that the OpenCourseWare project is not a distance-learning initiative. Indeed, according to Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science and engineering who served on the committee that developed the idea, OpenCourseWare represents a repudiation of distance learning. "It's a large effort at MIT that says, 'We're not going to do distance education,'" says Abelson. "It really is making a statement about what the university is about and what it's not about."
Also, the government isn't paying for this, since MIT is private.
I am amazed that you think that professions that don't need lab environments don't need campus based training. Would you want to pursue a history/English/law/religion degree without spending actual classroom time with your teacher and fellow students?
I took advantage of the fact that for many of the university courses I took were on-line. Not only were all the course materials on-line, but the lectures were too. So I would often sleep in and then catch class on my Mac Performa while eating lunch. Guess what? I really regret doing that. I wish I could go back and kick myself in the head and make myself go to class. I did fine in my classes but I missed out on lots of interaction, and the ability to ask a question in lecture.
Besides, Prof. Nick Parlante would always wear plaid to screw with the video compression. :)
Lasers Controlled Games!
If it WERE the same thing, then putting this information out there would instantly put MIT out of business.
Assuming that you read the material and, most importantly, actually understand it and can utilise the knowledge, then I don't see why it can't count.
When I interview people, I certainly look to see if they have a degree, but frankly, as long as they have the right attitude (the dominating factor really), and can answer the majority of my technical questions, then they have an excellent chance of getting employed.
If reading the online material from MIT lets you answer my technical questions, well then that's good enough for me.
But really, they're just formalising and advertising a process that is already well under way. Online course materials are already an important web resource. When I need to teach myself some algorithmic trick, I no longer search for some hard-to-find, hard-to-browse, hard-to-read textbook. I go to Google. If I choose my keywords properly, I'm sure to find somebody's carefully written, example-laden lecture notes, aimed at all the thick-headed freshmen who forgot to come to class.
God, I love the web. For all its flaws, it's an indispensible resource. I know I used to do technical research without it, but I'm damned if I can remember how.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said "A University needs a football program as much as a fish needs a bicycle." That says it all. I honestly don't have references to back this up, but as far as I know most athletic programs *lose* money for the school (I'm certain at UNR, where I attend, they do) but nonetheless they give a name for the school that helps attracts quality professors. At least one would hope.
Places like MIT, Caltech, and Harvard are the few places with incredible academic programs but virtually nonexistant athletic programs (the popular stuff I mean, that makes it to ESPN) that can charge large sums of money because the education itself is so good. How many times do you hear about a company spinning off of an MIT research program. Meanwhile, UNLV had an incredible basketball program which most likely attracted students and professors to the school. However, last I check, the Computer Science program isn't even Accredited there!
I thought I had a point somewhere in there...
Cheers,
jw
"Has anything you've done made your life better?" - American History X
This program will not be all that useful in the long run to end-users. At MIT, I have learned very little from the course material. Most of the learning comes from being exposed to the really cool professors and the other self-motivated learners on campus.
This is not to say that the program will be useless; the people who really benefit are professors at other institutions who are looking for innovative approaches to college level education. Because this is the primary benefit to a program like this, it will in no way replace an MIT education with a self-taught system.
(at lael (dot mit edu))
MIT Mechanical Engineering '03
As it stands MIT has a great endowment and they can easily fund this project without dipping into the funds you donated to graduate work.
The link to the article on degree.net really sucks. Why? Linkrot. When people try to get to this information in the future, it probably won't be there because other news will come along to replace it.
The solution is to put the information on both the "news" page and the archive. That is something all web sites posting news should do. The user should then be responsible for finding the news article in the archive, as an individual page, so that it will last when people go back at a later time.
While degree.net does not have the MIT degree news in their archive right now, I hope they place it there soon. Better still would be an indvidual page dedicated to the MIT degree news, so that it could be directly linked, rather than using the news page or the archive.
Linkrot sucks. Understand what it is, and understand how to prevent it. If you are a webmaster or publisher, make it easy to find information and set up permanent URLs. To do otherwise is poor practice. And users, look for permanent URLs. Use them when you find them. Try to prevent spreading linkrot.
Thanks.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Pick a subject that you are interested in. Something like a foreign language, art history, anthropology, topology, operating system design; anything that you are interested in but don't know much about. Get a good textbook on the subject. Commit to reading the text, working the examples, and solving the exercises in it.
How long would you last in doing that? When would you lose interest? When would other, more pressing issues, take priority and push your self study aside?
Having all of the courses on line is a nice idea. However, without the pressure of deadlines, grades, and competition, most people would have a hard time following such self study through to completion.
The middle mind speaks!
Just the other night I was looking to signup for some online courses. I'm one of those people that had been programming since the age of 12 and just jumped right into the industry after high school. I'm glad to be here, but now I'm getting bored with computer science which is fairly simple. The more advanced sciences seem pretty interesting to me right now, such as physics and chemistry and even some mathematical theory.
MIT's OpenCourseWare sounds great for me, since I'm looking to learn the information, I don't care about the degree. However, their new system won't be online for several months or longer. Are there any good sites out there that provide good online resources for learning the topics I've mentioned? Pay sites are fine. Please don't say SmartPlanet or About.com
Its not just about setting up a web site - its the cost of migrating the practices of an entire institution around a new model of information dispersal. This will definitely erode the value of journals as graduate work starts filtering in to the system.
MIT may even be attempting somehting more daunting by trying to productize the process to be sold to other institutions, I'm not sure, but that would raise costs even higher.
Tom.
(Account 190939, having difficulty logging in)
Oh arse
MIT doesn't think so.
MIT's stuff is really cool by virtue of its name. MIT is respected, well known, etc. All the course materials are also a great store of knowledge. But...
I've been working on a community educational system called Oomind. The great thing about oomind is that people are not just passive recipients of knowledge. You can also contribute your knowledge, and evaluate the quality of others' contributions. And, you can answer quiz questions to develop an academic record which is cumulative rather than percentage based.
You can find more about the philosophy of Oomind, and an introduction to how Oomind works. The basic idea is that educational material is in the form of courselets. These courselets have scores in ten different attributes including practicality, creativity, and beauty. The scores are based on a weighted average of user's evaluations of the courselet. These scores help in two ways: searching for information, and determining dynamically the academic value of the knowledge. Each courselet can have quiz questions submitted by any user. The questions also have a weight based on users' evaluations. When you answer a question correctly, the weight is used to add a percentage of the courselet's attribute scores to your academic record as a learner.
Anyway, it is very dynamic, but it is still new so there isn't too much content. Please join up and submit courselets!!!
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Yes you may be able to find the information you need on Google, but this will almost always be data in isolation. MIT will leverage the fact that all of the data is contained within one logical system in order to enhance cross referencing, indexing, searching and metadata generation. Done correctly it will be a truly cohesive, intelligent library. I contend that we have only scaped the surface of what can be achieved with the web in terms of information management and I suspect the MIT project is also interested in advacning the state of the art.
This is because the american university system is closer to school. The German system is to have the professor go to the board or slide projector and to give his performance for 90 minutes. This is usually an one man show, with very few questions from the audience. School is IMHO, wenn the professor cares about the individual progress of the students and asks them questions etc.
The places where you learn are the small exercise groups and in contact with other students.
Today I study computer science next to my job at a distance university and wish I had the same material when I studied physics at a traditional university. That stuff is better and it saves you time, except you are one of those few persons who are actually able to learn at the speed the professor gives his talk (I'm not, I need usually twice the time :-)
I am amazed that you think that professions that don't need lab environments don't need campus based training. Would you want to pursue a history/English/law/religion degree without spending actual classroom time with your teacher and fellow students?
Well I signed up for the hardware lab this year and it is done this way: They send you a complete computer with interfaces, software etc home and you have 8x2 weeks time to get used to it and do homework with it. Later, if you solved the assignments, you have to go to one the locations where they offer examination and write a test. If you pass you are allwed to do a one week full time lab at the university location.
The funny thing that you meet your peer students personally just at the examinations or these labs in person, otherwise e-mail, news or irc is the means for contact, or individual arranged meetings among the students that live not too far away.
Regards, Marc
for people who cannot afford the premium version, or who somehow missed out on college for various reasons, this is a great boon to them without diminishing your experience.
Dang, I was hoping they'd make the textbooks available online. There are a lot of texts I'd love to browse through, but don't really want to spend the $50-$100 each for the privilege. (How did I ever afford it when I was in college, anyway!?)
The FAQ mentions that things available "could include material such as lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, and assignments for each course". That's nice and all, but it sounds like you'll still need to get hold of the textbooks if you really want to take advantage of the course materials.
BTW, I suspect that part of that $100M figure may be from lack of revenue selling these materials in the campus bookstore. Just a guess.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Students at other universities worldwide can use it as an additional reference. Those of us (sniff sniff) who have graduated and are working can look up that algorithm or data structure that we don't quite remember accurately (probably because of the hangover from the night before).
Not that I can throw away all my textbooks, but this is pretty sweet.
Oh, and as for job eligibility, again it's not about the degree...everyone that can afford to go to college should, just because of the enriching atmosphere and the chance to meet smart girls^H^H^H^H^H people.
As an MIT alum, I'm disappointed that you have not realized the true value of the MIT education.
;)
Anyone can buy the textbooks for any MIT class. Anyone halfway gifted with Google could get the lecture notes, problem sets, and exam solutions to just about any class since about 1995. Think of those things as the things you get for free as a student.
What you pay for is the opportunity to interact with brilliant minds like yourself (and some undoubtedly more brilliant). Don't believe me? Go to one of Noam Chomsky's lectures on American foreign policy and get in a debate with him. Or head to LCS and have a chat with Ron Rivest. Go to MAS.100 and talk with Michael Hawley (does he still teach that?) after class. That's just a few examples. You can certainly find others interested in whatever you are interested in. And that's just the professors. Don't neglect the opportunity to learn from your fellow students.
Your tuition is only wasted if you waste it. MIT is more than just going to class and reading some books and lecture notes.
When I was a student , only 2 things impeded my progression :
..
1 - Getting there on time (late riser / late Quake player, pick your choice 8)
2 - Finding the course I missed from a friend, or fiend, or anybody who got it, AND/OR reading this filthy writing (mostly mine 8)
Now I don't know about you, but... this would have been a life saver
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I found the page for the class on SICP, and lo and behold, THE WHOLE BOOK (well, it look like the whole book) is online at
k .h tml
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/boo
Mod me down if you already knew this. It came as a very pleasant surprise to me. For those who don't know, this book is considered by many to be part of the core of CS books, along with K&R, TAOCP, and the MIT Algorithms book.
andy
Life is life . . . everything else is just a stupid T-shirt slogan.
or luddite, but. . .
It isn't exactly as if the course materials or curricumlum at MIT, or any *other* college, is some sort of great secret.
Nor is the actual *course material* really going to be online. That will be found in the textbooks.
If you want to learn physics or how to read the Iliad in the original greek all you need do is make the trip to your local public library, and in some states any state funded college library is also considered a public library, and take out a relevant text.
And read it.
Without trying to appear *too* snide, anyone who can't figure this out probably isn't up to college grade work in the first place.
The possibility of having lecture notes available online is an interesting exercise, but I'm not sure of what general relevance or use it might be. The textbook always contains superiour information, that is why they USE textbooks after all, and lecture notes are, in fact, often useless without the text and only needed to make sure you might have some niggling little tidbit that * that professor, in THAT course, is likely to sneak into a TEST.*
All in all I see how this might prove useful to the less actually educationally ambitious student of MIT, and how it might prove *interesting* to some of the public, but I fail to see how it in any way AIDS the public in an educational sense. The material is already available to the public, (including the course curiculum of MIT which is published and stocked by public libraries already), in the superiour form of actual texts.
MIT is correct. They can publish this material freely because 1) The essential information is *already* free and public, and 2) Because you don't pay MIT to reveal to you that F=MA, you pay them to have a professor *explain it to you.* and then be able to say you earned a degree from MIT!
If all you want is access to the learning material so that you may educate yourself at little or no expense you likely have a vastly superior resource right in your own community.
It's called a "reference librarian."
Go introduce yourself.
KFG
The Mellon and Hewitt foundations directly. MS gave a big chunk to improve computing infrastructure.
Poke around course notes and prof home pages.
Some of these are better than print versions-
being more up to date and cheaper.
Being that most (if not all) universities in America are nonprofits, they suck a great deal of taxes from the government (hence the people) and for this priveledge the Universities gather an immense amount of cash reserves farming out their professors and staff for cash to bussiness and gov't and charging exhorbitant fees for the "honor" to attend a few lectures.
What I find remarkable here isn't the fact that the info will be free (Mellon et. al. are picking up the early tab) but that it even exists at all. See, one of the scams of education is it's vaporous nature. Having to prepare lecture outlines is one thing, to actually solidify a course's material in almost linear form via a web page has to be remarkable. How many courses, especially the humanities, do you remember as a bullshit waste of time because it was virtually a free for all class discussion or the professor (while well intentioned) was just a very poor professor? This shows, if it comes to fruition, a great deal of courage on MIT's part and proves that they aren't the con artists many Universities are.
And not just once, but twice.
9 /thedsmautocropag/107-8499798-0210907)
I went to a Canadian Military College (a loose analogue of West Point) Studied Computer Science (Systems)
The first:
Along the way, I took a course in Military and Strategic Studies, and discovered, belatedly, that that was where my true interests lay. I've since made it a point to read every single book on the MilStud required reading list, plus a large number of the other books written by the authors of those books, plus books written by the professors.
I've also toured some battlefields (seeing the actual ground reveals much the books don't) and have the experience of over 10 years of military service that I can apply to my readings.
I'd lay money that I could pass the 4th year MilStud final exams.
The Second:
After I retired from the Army, I took up building and driving race cars. Shortly thereafter, I took up a self-study of Automotive Engineering, through a mixture of buying textbooks, completing the exercises, and then hands-on applying the concepts to my own race car.
You want obscure formulae? Try reading Miliken!
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156091526
I had a step up here, as there's a lot of crossover at the 101 level courses of physics and math between engineering and computer science, but I'd bet that I could hold my own at Batchlor-level engineering exams.
If there's an interest in the subject, and you're willing to get your hands dirty, you can learn a hell of a lot on your own.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It would be cool if some people got together and set up a slash site discussing a course at MIT. Anyone could do it, and it would at least help add what is missing from not attending the actual class.
Of course one of the drawbacks could be the dissemination of misinformation. But I think that on the whole it could be a positive supplemental aid. Any thoughts?
There's a section where you're supposed to be able to see questions asked by students along with the answers, but it's empty.
All this seems great if you're a student at MIT, but it's not useful for others.
So shall we find a bridge over the Charles River, and measure it in CmdrTacos?
sulli
RTFJ.
This certainly isn't true. Sports are one of the biggest money makers for division one schools, second only to parking fines (sarcasm, and disgust). Take a look at this article:
Trust me, sports makes money. I go to Va Tech. When we went to the big dance in New Orelands 2 years ago, we got some rediculous amount of money just for making it that far - 11 million, i believe. Then you have to think also: add revenue from tickets/TV/Radio/merchandise (most university bookstores basically launder money)/grants/alumni contributions/athletic boosters/etc.
Sports make money for colleges.
~Z
sig?
Reading this I am really glad they DIDN'T have distance learning when I was in college 10 years ago. Time spent in class, taking notes, hearing the prof. speek live, asking questions, and so on is so much better than the Memorex version - and yet I can easily imagine being "busy" or distracted enough that I might have chosen the latter.
MIT is doing the right thing to put its course material on line while maintaining the requirement to actually show up. If I were an alum (I'm not) I might kick in some bux for this project. (Not $100M though.)
sulli
RTFJ.
It's not as simple as critics of these programs make it, though. Athletic programs add immeasurably to the esprit de corps of the student and alumni bodies. They also add to the bottom line in ways that are not obvious or direct. I went to a school with a powerful athletic program and the effect of, say, a contending basketball or football program is amazing. Students and alumni buy tons more athletic jerseys, baseball caps, T-shirts, and bumper stickers - all at HUGE markups - so the school's licensing revenues jump. Alumni see their school name in the news and they donate way more money. And students identify with their school more strongly when they can follow and latch on to their team and track their exploits weekly. They are happier to be there. They have something else to talk about with their friends. And when they become alumni, they will have happier memories of rallying behind their school banner and will be more likely to donate. These effects occur, too, when you are watching a pro basketball or football game and you see that so-and-so played at UCLA or Stanford or Michigan State, which is why these statistics are advertised.
I have to agree with you. The MIT instructors argue - convincingly - that the course materials hardly constitute an MIT education, so I don't think this can devalue your own education. However, I do have to wonder how the MIT Board of Trustees justifies a big expenditure like this. How does this action benefit their own students ? Possibly it could serve some larger good, but tuitions and the like are not paid to MIT in its capacity as a charity. Most alumni are probably not donating money to MIT to benefit people who are not at MIT. It seems like MIT should primarily be concerned with doing right by their own students, and frankly I can't see how this kind of initiative benefits them. If this were an inexpensive project that would be one thing, but we are talking about a tenth of a billion dollars. If I were at MIT, I would think this borders on irresponsibility.
So let's just consider going to the local library and finding an available copy of last year's 'Markov Chains and Simulated Neuro-physiology' textbook just right out, shall we?? What we really need is some kind of system that can transmit large quantities of text and pictures to each interested student's workspace, without reducing the supply for anyone else. Gee, I wonder what we could use....
Oh, right, I forgot. Except for those literally thousands of errors I have found in textbooks over the course of my life. So errata must come with each; distributing such and updating such is difficult if it has to come with the physical book -- I suppose you would need the above hypothetical information transport system, tying the errata to the book, in some kind of 'web'.And as I said above, frequently there are no books. Or the books suck, which is an even more common situation. Or school politics fucks up book choice, so the prof is xeroxing and distributing portions of other books, making his own compiliation for the class as it goes along. Or somehow, the prof deigns to think himself talented enough to explain material better, to his focused group, than a general textbook -- perish the thought!
Okay, cockmonger, let me put it for you straight. The material, at least not all of it, is not available to the public. This missing material, the real deal, the reason people pay 5 or 6 digits for 4 years of it, is the community of learning that supports peoples' interest and efforts. This community is the one thing that the ACES project is trying to duplicate that makes it different from the rest of the 'put notes on the web' projects the world over. Go read the article, join the community, add your ideas to the source -- it's GPLed.So in closing, I should thank you for pushing the declining cause of public libraries. They need more support and funding, and always have. But there is so much more to a college course, and to a college environment, that you are missing. Take another look.
How much do you pay in income tax? Mine's in the neighborhood of 30%.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Oh... Wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The possibility of having lecture notes available online is an interesting exercise, but I'm not sure of what general relevance or use it might be. The textbook always contains superiour information, that is why they USE textbooks after all, and lecture notes are, in fact, often useless without the text and only needed to make sure you might have some niggling little tidbit that * that professor, in THAT course, is likely to sneak into a TEST.*
Except, I've a number of classes where the textbooks were strictly optional. Why? Because the professor thought they only provided good background information. Or, the textbook only supplied a convenient reference... all the "real" learning was based upon the lecture. There are numerous reasons this could happen - here are just a few:
1) There aren't any appropriate textbooks. For example, I took "Linux Kernel Interals". It was all hands on, looking at the code. All the lectures were based upon the professor's and students' personal knowledge. Or how about "Computer Architecture", where our studies were based on architecture principles realized in the PDP-8? (A machine with a decent architecture without being too complex to completely understand.) The only thing available was the lecture notes (which have subsequently been published in textbook form, I believe).
2) It's a topics/research class. You don't find many textbooks for "Current Topics in MiddleWare". Or in "Current trends in Organo-Metallic Chemistry Research", if you want to leave the computer science field. Sure, you can reference some of the appropriate journal articles, but they won't don't give you the comprehensive view and insights that lecture notes give.
3) It's a subjective field. How about all those humanities classes? (I'm sure even MIT students have to take a few of these.) Sure, you can list the "Norton Anthology of American Poetry" as a text book, but that by itself won't give you any insight into the cultural and historical forces that shaped a given poem. And it certainly won't help you when the test asks you to expound upon how the author makes an emotional connection with the reader through his careful selection of language.
I think I've expressed my point. I've usually found lecture notes to be infinitely more valuable than some textbooks. I will admit that there is occasionally a textbook that beats out the lecture notes, but usually that's been because of a lousy lecturer. There's a lot more worth here than you are giving MIT credit for.
OpenCourseWare will also help professors to improve the quality of courses by exposing them to the world. The mechanism for doing this in scientific research is the peer-reviewed paper. The mechanism for doing this in teaching is not as thoroughly developed. Except for published textbook and external seminar, the professor is only rated by their students and other profs in the department. OpenCourseWare will "pull their pants down" so to speak.
I really applaud MIT's move to make their curriculum available for free over the Internet. It shows an interest in the advancement of science that trumps the growing trend to patent and close-off avenues for technology growth by businesses intent on exploiting technology-related law (who can blame them for doing so?).
The reason I think it shows real guts is that MIT traditionally has been very focussed on maintaing good relations with industry, and industry that profits from the current base of technology laws, and an industry that donates money to MIT. They are more closely tied together with industry as an engineering school, where a liberal arts school is pretty much independent of direct industrial largesse.
I was a student at MIT in my past. You may not know this, but MIT is actually run by MIT Corporation. Furthermore, upon entrance to the school, I "had" to sign some kind of paperwork that essentially insured that patents and ideas that I came up with while at MIT were theirs and not mine. Theses, too, are copyrighted by MIT, and generally more difficult to obtain than theses from other universities that are listed by University Microfilms.
Thus, you can see why I'm impressed at the turnaround evidenced by this move.
What would be even better would be if they were to release streaming video of classroom lectures, sessions with teaching assistants, as well as lecture notes, problem sets, exams, solutions.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Acutally, it is your logic that is flawed.
But if society benefits by educating its members,
The main flaw in this argument is that the "what's good for society" is *highly* subjective. Many people argue that the War on (Some) Drugs is "good for society," when there is a huge, massive pile of evidence that it does much more harm to individuals than it does good.
Who defines what is "good for society"? I claim that "that which is good for society" and "that which is moral" are almost exactly equivalent. The difference lies in that the former implies groupthink while the latter implies individual thought. And "moral" is also a highly subjective definition.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Correct. Many of us do not believe this to be a bad thing, since a reasonable, progressive taxation system results in the rich subsidising the poor.
"Reasonable"? Reasonable to whom? I assume it's reasonable to the "poor" you mention since they get to plunder the coffers of the "rich." How reasonable is it that the harder you work, the more you are penalized?
Not necessarily. What it should mean (modulo tax cuts for the rich, and the myth of trickle-down economics) is that this generation of students are subsidised by the previous generation of students, since they're now earning more than their "non-graduate" contemporaries.
Many students here take out loans to finance their education, and then pay back the loan when they graduate and get a job. This way, students are responsible for their own education, which is the way it should be.
Oh, and Cato Institute reports attacking government spending are not exactly impartial sources
And Tom Daschle isn't impartial, either. So what? You'd expect a person who is arguing their position to be partial to that position, wouldn't you? Impartiality is not important in this regard. What is important is whether or not the facts stated by the Cato institute are true, and wheter or not the reason they employ is valid. I notice that you chose to assail neither of those things.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
You can get all of the courses from ArsDigita University online now. This was a one-year program based loosely on MIT's undergraduate computer science curriculum. It's got Real (unfortunately) video of all the lectures, problem sets and solutions. Pick a course, do them all in order. They're really quite good.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Who defines what is "good for society"?
The people - that's who.
That statement in and of itself is an argument that "there's nothing intrinsically bad about people committing crimes or living in poverty" unless "the people" say there is. In which case, you are simply declaring majority rule/conformity the sole rule of an otherwise entirely relativistic morality.
Rick Greenblatt and the TMRC hackers would be proud!!