Online Academics

I wasn't sure whether we were supposed to write about the online academics links posted or to merely read them and discuss them in class.

In general I think I would have to say that I support MIT's open course initiative. This seems to be a step in the right direction in terms of breaking down the long-established wall that has held University curriculum up on an elitist pedestal. What I mean is that by making everything that MIT teaches completely open and accessible to the public--a public consisting in part of those individuals who may never have the chance to attend an ivy league school--there are no secrets and MIT suddenly becomes relevant to everyone, less untouchable. In the long run, I don't know whether this will prove to be good or bad for MIT. One the one hand, MIT is significantly acknowledging that knowledge is meant to be free, whether it is in the form of a lecture developed by a teacher or not. Yet they are making a subtle distinction between knowledge and academic accomplishment. The information is free; the degree and the MIT name still cost money. In addition, this means that MIT becomes almost more elitist because this distinction--the fact that people will still want to go to MIT and get a degree there because it's respected, because it's established as being upper-crust--almost negates the academic element involved in MIT's respectability and places an emphasis on MIT as a name more than anything.

That aside, the fact that inevitably, someone somewhere is going to put university materials online makes MIT's decision preemptive and wise. They are branding themselves as technologically ahead of the game.

But what about the teachers? By MIT giving away its curriculum, it seems to be disregarding the authorship of the professors and claiming that all work produced or developed at MIT whether it is a class or lecture or an invention or some sort of software, belongs to MIT in the end and thus they can do what they want with this information.

This doesn't necessarily tie into the controversy involving the professor suing for the note to his lecture being sold, but still, there's the issue of whether knowledge can be owned and whether a professor owns the information he gives as a part of a university course. I mean, if the professor gets to sue, does the university get to sue as well? At the same time, I can appreciate the fact that a professor would see his lecture as his own intellectual property and thus lecture notes from that as being part of that property. I don't think it's wrong to share lecture notes, but definitely to profit from them when the professor doesn't share in that profit is wrong.