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

Tim Cook timothywayne.cook at gmail.com
Mon Oct 11 13:32:36 MDT 2010


Hi Theo,

On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 19:49 +0100, Theo Lynn wrote:
> Is this what this forum is about?

I joined thinking it is a group of individuals looking for ways to
create and distribute educational materials. As far as I can tell, that
is true.

> 
> Someone subsidises all OER development. Acknowledging this is not inconsistent with education for all.

True. 

> On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 11:36 -0400, Steve Foerster wrote:
> >> We disagree.  Education is an important service, but it's not something
> >> that's magically immune to the laws of economics.  It's not like
> >> physical infrastructure where the argument can be made that it's a
> >> natural monopoly.  Since it's capable of supporting many different
> >> providers in the same space, education is actually better provided by a
> >> competitive marketplace than by a centralized bureaucracy.

I was specifically curious as to Steve's perspective related to this
paragraph he wrote. 

Physical infrastructure is no more of a 'natural' monopoly than
education.  In fact I would argue that education is more of a societal
good than physical infrastructure.  But that is; so many apples and
oranges.  


Cheers,
Tim

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