The College Fix

Harvard and MIT announced a plan to offer free online courses to the public.

Harvard and MIT are each donating $30 million to create a nonprofit organization, to be called “edX” that will develop an Internet platform for the classes and design new ways to teach and learn with technology, according to the two Cambridge, Mass., schools. They will join an emerging arena in which other research universities, Stanford among them, and private ventures around the world are trying to stake out territory.

The first five or so free classes are expected to be offered in the fall, and the number will expand in subsequent years from the Harvard-MIT partnership and other universities that may join it, officials said. The classes will not earn online students academic credits, although students may receive a certificate of completion, for which they might be charged a fee. In addition, other online education courses that already charge tuition may also become part of the effort and continue to require fees.

“MIT’s and Harvard’s mission is to provide affordable education to anybody who wants it,” Anant Agarwal, an MIT computer science and artificial intelligence expert who is edX’s first president, said in an interview. “Millions of people in the world don’t have access to quality education.”

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