Universities provide free access to online classes

Tens of millions of people are watching videos of professors, listening to MP3s of lectures and reading notes from classes held at top universities across the country -- for free. Schools, from Yale to Utah State University, are posting entire courses online for almost anyone to see. However, as the headline of the Washington Post article on this new trend states, "Internet Access Is Only Prerequisite For More and More College Classes" -- and with detailed video, long audio tracks and large files to be downloaded, the necessary high speed Internet access could be a prohibitive prerequisite.

While a number of schools have offered online classes for enrolled students as part of a normal curriculum, this new movement is of note because the classes are free. According to the Washington Post, some say this is a return to the grander mission of higher education, which is to provide knowledge to everyone. The problem with this method is that many Americans -- particularly rural and low-income Americans -- remain without high speed Internet access.

For some, though, it is working. MIT has posted nearly their entire curriculum -- 1,800 classes -- online for free, and has worked with more than 150 other learning institutions to host nearly 5,000 classes online on an international Web site. Almost half of the 35 million people who have tried MIT's free online courses were not students or teachers, but average people who were interested in learning.

Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom says he supports posting lectures online for moral reasons.

"There are a lot of people who won't have a chance to go to Yale and won't have a chance to go to university. . . . [But] anyone with access to a computer can hear these brilliant lectures on physics or ethics or the Old Testament."

But while Professor Bloom's intentions are on-target, his assumption that "anyone with access to a computer" can participate in this educational boon is suspect. Without high speed Internet access, downloading large videos, audio files and documents becomes virtually impossible.

Internet Access Is Only Prerequisite For More and More College Classes (Washington Post)

Education (Speed Matters)

High speed learning (Speed Matters)