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Like probably many of you, I’m old enough to have had the privilege of access to what was basically a free tertiary education following high school here in Australia - I’m talking the early to mid ‘eighties. You remember, the golden days.

Today of course it’s pretty much user pays everywhere, and the kids coming through the universities and equivalent institutions have it much tougher. And it’s not just raw undergraduates or newly minted, debt-laden graduates who are pushing it uphill in this respect either. The cost of higher education today can often be a major barrier to access and advancement for anybody in the labour market who lacks the resources to invest in further education or skills training for themselves.

That’s why initiatives like OpenCourseWare (OCW) at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are so important. Launched in 2003, OCW is:

a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

MIT OCW’s goals are to:

* Provide free, searchable, access to MIT’s course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
* Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the “opencourseware” concept.

The site reports that as at December 2005 there was 1,250 courses published on the site. The diversity and richness of the materials made freely available is staggering. Everything’s there, from Aeronautics and Astronautics to Writing and Humanistic Studies. Considering MIT’s formidable tech reputation, that’s some heavyweight intellectual property being opened up to everyone.

OK, so you don’t get a qualification from MIT. Then again, formal qualifications may not always be the critical thing sought after in the labour markets of the future.

Either way, these are great days for the autodidact. It takes me back ….

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