[Oer-community] Is MIT thinking of putting its OCW material behind a pay wall?

[Steve Foerster]

Tim wrote:

> So I take away from your comments below that you are okay with
> having a society that encourages educational access based on
> economic status?

Well, at least in the U.S., we already have educational access based on
economic status despite having a mostly public system of primary and
secondary education.  Schools in areas where people are wealthy tend to
be much better than those in areas where people are less well off.  The
problem is that students from poor families usually don't get the
benefit that would come from having a choice of more than one school, so
they're trapped in a failed public system.

Higher education here is a little different in that there's always been
diversity in available institutions because of a strong private
non-profit sector.  But even there the reluctance of old style
institutions to accommodate the needs of working adults and minorities
led to the rise of for-profit universities from the '70s on.

So to answer your question, am I okay with disparity of access?  Not at
all.  I just think that on balance, market forces are part of the
solution, not part of the problem.

-=Steve=-


-- 
Stephen H. Foerster
http://hiresteve.com
http://hiresteve.com/blog
http://wikieducator.org/steve