Free Legal Education Through OpenCourseWare from T1 Law Schools? Wouldn't That Be Sweet!

Imagine really informing the public for FREE about the mysteries behind the study of law through OpenCourseWare such as being used by MIT, Yale, Harvard and more.  Great article. 

The world's top universities have come late to the world of online education, but they're arriving at last, creating an all-you-can eat online buffet of information.

And mostly, they are giving it away.

MIT's initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.

As with many technology trends, new services and platforms are driving change. Last spring marked the debut of "iTunes U," a section of Apple's popular music and video downloading service now publicly hosting free material from 28 colleges. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley recently announced it would be the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. Berkeley was already posting lectures, but YouTube has dramatically expanded their reach.

If there isn't yet something for everyone, it's only a matter of time. On iTunes, popular recent downloads include a climate change panel at Stanford, lectures on existentialism by Cal-Berkeley professor Hubert Dreyfus, and a performance of Mozart's requiem by the Duke Chapel Choir. Berkeley's offerings include 48 classes, from "Engineering Thermodynamics" to "Human Emotion."

"It's almost as good as being there," said Whelan, the Massachusetts retiree, of the MIT classes he has sampled. "The only thing that's lacking is the pressure." He says he usually doesn't do the homework assignments, but adds: "Now that I'm not in school I don't have to do that anymore."

YouTube, iTunes, OpenCourseWare — none are the full college experience. You can't raise your hand and ask a question. You can't get a letter of recommendation.

And most importantly, almost everywhere, you can't get credit or earn a degree.

That caveat, however, is what has made all this possible.

When the Internet emerged, experts predicted it would revolutionize higher education, cutting its tether to a college campus. Technology could help solve one of the fundamental challenges of the 21st century: providing a mass population with higher education at a time when a college degree was increasingly essential for economic success.

Today, the Internet has indeed transformed higher education. A multibillion-dollar industry, both for-profit and non-profit, has sprung up offering online training and degrees. Figures from the Sloan Consortium, an online learning group, report about 3.5 million students are signed up for at least one online course — or about 20% of all students at degree-granting institutions.

But it hasn't been as clear what role — if any — elite universities would play in what experts call the "massification" of higher education. Their finances are based on prestige, which means turning students away, not enrolling more. How could they teach the masses without diminishing the value of their degree?

But MIT's 2001 debut of OpenCourseWare epitomized a key insight: Elite universities can separate their credential from their teaching — and give at least parts of their teaching away as a public service. They aren't diminishing their reputations at all. In fact, they are expanding their reach and reputation.

Professors teaching for free beyond their campus, their state, their country and across the globe. Can you envision the possibilties for law schools?  Will it ever happen, though?  That is the question.  Or are we too protectionist?  Is a truly informed public dangerous to our livelihood, our egos?  Does this type of free education of the masses bring us further towards commoditization of legal services? Would it force the ABA to tighten their control over who may or may not take the bar? I don't know for sure, but I have an idea.  And you?

And as a parent, why not start introducing your high school aged kids to online educating from the supposed best and brightest to give them a heads up on their college experience? At the very least, I'm going back to school and maybe my husband will join me!