Short On Cash? Get College Lectures For Free Through iTunes!

Making lectures available through iTunes is nothing new…but who Stanford is now making them available to is.Standford is the first university to offer lectures through iTunes absolutely free to the public. Anyone interested can choose from more than 500 tracks, with no worry about paying the $30,000-plus tuition, or even about signing up for a class.

What do you think? Does making college material available to everyone devalue it for those who pay for the privilege? Or is access to knowledge more important than anything else?

From Forbes:While a number of other universities are now using iTunes to distribute class-specific content to their students, including Duke University, Drexel University's School of Education and the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Stanford is the first to make a substantial amount of recorded university events available to the public at large.

"One of Stanford's primary missions is to educate the public," says Scott Stocker, director of Web communications. Allowing the public to access the content "just felt like the right thing to do," says Cindy Pearson, director of alumni programs.

Stanford has big plans for adding new content going forward. One example is recordings of sports events, says Pearson. November's Stanford versus Berkeley football game, known on campus as "The Big Game," is already videotaped and mailed to alumni clubs overseas. The plan is to use iTunes new video capabilities so folks will be able to watch the game without waiting for the package to come in the mail, says Pearson.

Walking tours of the campus might also be in Stanford on iTunes' future, she says. The public could "tour" Stanford's campus or art collection from home. Or, a visitor to campus could bring an iPod or MP3 player, or borrow one from the school, and set out on a guided audio tour.

It's catching on. Over 130,000 tracks were downloaded from the site in the first two weeks, says Stocker. Through the end of the fall semester in December, on average, more than 15,000 tracks were downloaded per week.(Photo courtesy of The Tyee.)

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