What the Ivies have to offer

To a recent post about Yale offering some courses (6 in total I think) for online access, a long-time reader notes:

MIT has something similar as well, which I've used heavily when enrolled in courses with poor instructional design.

Occasionally, some students for the Big U wander over to DU and I've been less than impressed. They really do think that their Big U matriculation status does actually make them better. Maybe they are since they can take their Big U diploma and get better jobs right out of school than I could with my DU one.

Miranda, I had heard about MITs as well (although the bulk do not include the lecture notes, where the real meat of a course lies). That just goes to my initial conclusion that the content is not nearly so important to the institution as the brand name.

A caveat on that, though. While my experience with both land-grant U and Snooty-U are limited (really just one of each), I did notice a qualitative difference in the approach to a subject at Snooty-U. It seems that Snooty-U takes an ever-increasing macro view of the subject, wanting to categorize, label, and affix the subject. For example, adhering to a type of interpretive approach seems to be much more desired from Snooty-U (perhaps they are seen as the vanguard or definers of the approach) than from LGU. And that may not be a bad thing. I have learned a great deal by reading both the SU and LGU thoughts on a given subject, along with whatever snarky iconoclasts I can find along the way.

So, take whatever content you may find.