People will soon be given access to knowledge from one of the world"s foremost technology institutes for free over the internet, as BBC World ClickOnline"s Ian Hardy reports.
Like almost every organisation in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent the late 1990s struggling with the question of how to take advantage of the internet.
Many other colleges launched online degree courses aimed at anyone with a modem and a big wallet.
But MIT has taken a completely different direction with a project called OpenCourseWare (OCW) that could stop the trend of commercialising online education dead in its tracks.
The first group of courses are set to be published on the internet on 30 September, including subjects like anthropology, biology, chemistry and computer science.