I have just enrolled in a university course called Introduction to Sociology taught out of Princeton University. It is the same course that is given to the students at Princeton except that for myself and 30,000 others enrolled in the course, it is free. This course is one of about 50 or so other courses anyone can enrol in on a site called Coursera. The courses come from academics at Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of California Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. And for the moment, they are all free. Not to be outdone, Harvard University and MIT have announced their own version of Coursera called edX. They plan to offer a range of courses in the third quarter of 2012.
http://theconversation.edu.au/will-free-online-courseware-from-the-us-mean-the-end-of-most-universities-elsewhere-8016
