Back in 2002, MIT had an idea. Let's give away our courses for free, no credit of course, but let's see what happens. The response...Amazing.
On the first week of publishing the initial set of courses (The complete course, mind you, not a syllabus, not a digest), OCW got over 3 million hits. Within a year, 20 colleges and universities signed on and formed the OCW Consortium whereby all schools interested in contributing could do so in organized fashion. Why did MIT do this? Vision and practicality as the school realized that 1. Sharing knowledge is a real good idea and 2. People motivated to learn will apply to MIT if they have the smarts and the drive to do so because the school, by giving, becomes an entity that people want to associate with.
The biggest users of this gift are Africans. Pretty cool eh?
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