MIT is publishing its entire curriculum to the Internet, available to everyone, for free. And they aren’t the only educator doing it. MIT reports that most of the people using the free courses are from outside the United States, which points to a huge problem in this country: Even if you make it free, Americans can’t be bothered with learning. And for those that want to learn, paying for a secondary education is becoming a major burden.
I’ve come up with many “million-dollar-ideas” in my life and here’s another one. Take the free content provided by these programs and mash them with social networking and wiki technologies to create a free online campus. User volunteers could mix and extend the content and make it interactive. Seriously, someone’s going to get rich on this one.
