What my free online education taught me - TheStreet Staff, MSN

Expect the $475 billion market for higher ed to be cut in half by the rise of no-cost online college courses. What's remarkable about learning intricate and complex topics, such as MapReduce and SQLite, with nothing more than a PC is not that automated grading tools work. Or that online social schooling really does substitute for much of what a traditional teacher does. Or that the same gut-wrenching collapse felt by giants including Warner Music Group, the New York Stock Exchange or Hewlett-Packard(HPQ -3.33%) await the giants of higher education. What's stunning is how ordered, well understood and -- let's be honest -- mundane the process of digital devaluation will be. Absolutely positively free online higher education is on the by-now classic explosive Web trajectory of dazzling growth. Geez, Coursera has meetups in 1,646 cities; content from 62 universities, including Yale, and investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Heck, its teachers will have bigger followings than rock stars. http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/post.aspx?post=89a8e6d5-0a50-4b71-8c5a-e14df0791ddb