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Free Online Education Unwelcome In Minnesota
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"[Minnesota's] Office of Higher Education has informed the popular provider of massive open online courses, or MOOC's, that Coursera is unwelcome in the state because it never got permission to operate there. It's unclear how the law could be enforced when the content is freely available on the Web, but Coursera updated its Terms of Service to include the following caution: 'Notice for Minnesota Users: Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.' Tricia Grimes, a policy analyst for the state's Office of Higher Education, said letters had been sent to all postsecondary institutions known to be offering courses in Minnesota."
Where I live, you have to get a permit to do just about everything that you're not doing for yourself on your own private land.
You can't even mow your parents' lawn without obtaining a license from the local gestapo, even if you're doing it for free.
You basically cannot perform any work for anyone else that would normally be a revenue activity, without getting the proper licenses and permits from the city.
And many people still think the United States is not a tyrannical big government police state. Sheesh.
In many states, offering an equivalent education is all that is needed to actually be an unaccredited school/university. For example, since I homeschool in Indiana, my house is an unaccredited school called "The Matthews Academy", I can register for anything an accredited school would register for (educational discounts, field trips, Book It, etc. etc.), and I can even give diplomas. There's nothing at all shady/fishy about that site; the issue is that they're giving out real education for free.
Good point. I suspect that the end run around the teachers unions plays into this too. It just goes to illustrate that education is not quite as free and open as some might want you to believe. It's very tightly controlled by the government. The good news is that technology is chipping away at this long standing monopoly. Just this morning I heard that NewsWeek will no longer be a print publication - online only. We're moving from a world of the physical to a world of bits and bytes. In the corporate world I see a trend away from instructor led training classes to online or pre-recorded instruction.
It's happening in the formal education world as well, just more slowly. The first hurdle was getting online degrees some recognition and that is happening now. I'm not willing to bet that formal in class instruction is going away completely but the days of trudging to a classroom and sitting on a hard wooden chair listening to some stuffy old windbag in a bow tie and tweed jacket sporting a C. Everett Coop beard-with-no-mustache are coming to an end.
IP addresses are tied to locations
I know you probably think this, but it's not actually true.
If you have a Comcast cable modem at home, it's possible that you get an IP address that is *associated* with their gateway location in Texas.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure