> (the government, [...]) should be paying for.

If someone can use OCW to advance their knowledge and opportunity in society, and then later in their career voluntarily contribute back something, that is a good model for some people.

Contrast this with the government's role in creating a vocational structure that saddles students with enormous debt right at the start of their working life. Also, the arguably opportunistic behavior of the lending market and universities and the devaluing of education via diploma mills.

> Contrast this with the government's role in creating a vocational structure that saddles students with enormous debt right at the start of their working life

And contrast that with how it was a few decades ago when the government funded universities and a summer job was enough to pay your yearly tuition.

The current loan system is an awful mess of perverse incentives. When people talk about what the government should be doing, they're not talking about the current system.

I believe a lot of endowments have only specific uses. You can't just spend as much as you want on whatever you want. It also gets buy-in from the community. Even if you can afford to run something for free, accepting donations is a great way to measure your impact.

This is true, too. But OCW really cannot cost more than several or several tens of millions of dollars per year, and MIT gets the brand recognition.

Right, but as the parent comment states, it makes sense to run it while also asking for donations.

True. I agree with you for the most part, but we can't forget that this OCW thing is something MIT never had to do. It's probably also quite a money pit, that is besides the donations, which might make adminstrators wonder why they do OCW if it's not atleast self sufficient.

You'd think MIT would be all about educating the world as its mission. But its mission is to remain elite and unattainable for the masses so that it ranks high in US News and World Report. OCW can't really be that much of a money pit considering the resources at this university's disposal.

> You'd think MIT would be all about educating the world as its mission.

Though that sounds like a great mission statement I feel MIT's core mission is probably more along the lines of giving their students a world class education and of course producing world class research from their staff. Although your mission statement fits perfectly with OCW's purpose.

> OCW can't really be that much of a money pit considering the resources at this university's disposal.

It's true it might not be that big of a money pit relative to their total resources, but I figure a money pit is still a money pit and if they are looking to cut something it is likely to be a money pit. Honestly I just hope they never cut the program. I've thoroughly enjoyed MIT OCW courses and they have prepared me for some of my university classes.

Yeah! That's why it provides an absolute ton of its courses and lecture material online for free!

...

Wikipedia also has a huge amount of money. I get what you're saying, but the comparison doesn't really work =P

Isn't 100% of Wikipedia's money from donations? Maybe they don't need to raise money every year, but eventually they do need people to donate. MIT doesn't, they have other sources of funding. That was the point of the comparison.

The problem with Wikipedia is that even though they're getting 10x more money than ever, their operating costs are always growing, and they're constantly increasing the amount of money they spend like a runaway train....or so I've read.

Wikipedia is part of a non-profit whose purpose is to spread free information in the world, while MIT is also (supposedly) a non-profit which takes thousands of hundreds of dollars from its students. Not sure if Wikipedia has any other sources of income, but whatever they may be, they're not even close to the potency of MIT.