I don’t know how orange it is, but you know what’s a pretty big idea? Free online university-level courses over the web. The implications of this medium of education are astounding, and everyone should be extremely excited about it, despite the fact that the potential is largely marginalized by the very institutions who sponsored the idea.
    
The very first example of open course ware is traced back to 1999 when the University of Tubingen in Germany released videos of lectures online; but the most influential point of origin would have to be when MIT spearheaded its OpenCourseWare initiative, which has released course materials for about 2,000 classes in most major fields and is purported to have benefited and supplemented the education of over 100 million people world-wide. Since then, several other colleges like Stanford and Berkeley have come to the fore with their own ideas about class structure and availability. For example, Stanford makes you pay for degrees and certificates online that cost up to $60,000, but pretty much everyone involved offers the ability to peruse course materials for free without certification or predetermined structure.
    
But it isn’t just the large institutions that are exploring this new idea. Small teams of motivated and benevolent professors are embracing the golden rule of the Internet that remains so foreign to most businesses: The more free and easy-to-use a quality, in-demand service is, the more it benefits everyone involved. Exclusivity on the Internet is, in general, only for people who don’t want to see their ideas reach their full influence or potential. Be it in the form of unpretentious YouTube videos that keep people coming for the real thing or free online classes that grade and give out certificates for free, the freedom and availability of the Internet is itself a business model — or more generally, a model for success, be that measured in human benefit or money through influence — that slapping on fees and limitations can only diminish.
    
The sheer potential of the audience itself keeps the threshold for money, influence and change at its maximum (Facebook/Google/everything successful on the Internet that has fundamentally changed culture), and exclusivity tends to lower it — and in general closes the infinite network of doors that is the whole power and appeal of the Internet in the first place. What’s so counter-intuitive about this idea? Everyone can get to Stanford’s courses and seminar’s page online, but how many people are going to pay $995 just to audit one course? Stanford’s got the ease-of-use principle down — the website is a joy to navigate and you can pretty much learn about the commitment you’re making and jump into it in about 10 minutes max of reading and clicking — but structured, no-credit courses at no cost that draw large audiences are supposed to be what this educational movement is about. However, Stanford seems to be adapting to free education as a long-term goal by offering 17 interactive courses online for no cost.
    
One member of a small team pushing for the progress of free education is Sebastian Thrun, research professor of computer science at Stanford, who was featured in an NPR article on the subject (“Stanford Takes Online Schooling to the Next Level”). Using $200,000 of his own money, he recently founded the website Udacity.com which, I’ll grant them, has the audacity of offering two structured, comprehensive and applied (meaning you’ll actually be learning and using code and stuff) computer science courses that offer final grades, for free, with more to come. Sounds a lot better than taking a computer science course here and being forced to help UT finish paying off their new engineering building by getting $400 slapped gracelessly on your tuition.
    
I can’t program or code. I’m frankly terrified by the very idea. But I enrolled in the Udacity class and am taking it (you should too), and there’s something wonderfully soothing and freeing about this process. It feels like a world nestled between effective collegiate structure and the romance of autodidacticism. Who needs credit when there’s nothing stopping you from using and applying high-value skills you’ve acquired from some of the finest sources, at no cost? As an American, it’s a direct solution to my watered-down, limited high school experience that didn’t introduce any of these hyper-relevant concepts to me. As an empathetic world citizen, it’s just as direct a solution to the lack of quality global education. As a hypothetical college dean who is both prudent and forward-thinking, I’m more concerned with being a part of the long-term educational conversation than I am with short-term economic paranoias.

— Wiley Robinson is a junior in ecology and environmental studies. He can be reached at rrobin23@utk.edu.

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Opinion: Online courses next step in education | Column