Donor seeks to offer ‘freshman year for free’ through online college courses (Wah. Post)

Donor seeks to offer ‘freshman year for free’ through online college courses – The Washington Post.

Good idea, especially in light of what I have seen. I wrote.

I’m a former math professor. At Washington University in St. Louis, I taught a course based on MIT’s OpenCourseWare. Their materials were excellent and easy for me to utilize. It was much better than the “cookbook” course that Wash. U. normally teaches – and that the Math Chair and Engineering school wanted me to teach so as not to “discourage” them and “retain” them – so much better that a student tutor who had taken the “standard” course (and the next course) wrote that

“I cant do most of the MIT problems and I made an A in the [cookbook] course and the next course.” (My students laughed heartily when I told them this.)

My point is that, for anyone who wants to be a really good engineer,take the MIT online course – not to save money but to learn.

(Learn more about what happened at Wash. U. and other places on my blog inside-higher-ed .)…more