Setting Learning Free.

This article comes from Tech News World. In the late 1990s, when everybody wanted to take advantage of the moneymaking opportunities offered by the Internet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided that it too wanted a slice of the action. MIT was, and still is, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Couldn't it use some of the intellectual property it was creating on its campus to generate some additional revenue?

A committee of faculty members looked at the issue but decided, after careful consideration, that the Internet didn't offer much of an opportunity to make money, after all. Why not, the committee suggested, focus instead on the university's core mission: "to advance education and serve the world"?

That refocus led MIT to a radical new proposition. In the words of Anne Margulies, now executive director of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), "They decided that the best way the Internet could be used to fulfill that mission would be to give the materials away." To read the rest of this article click here.