I personally believe all textbooks and courses should be free. But if a tutor is going to dedicate an hour of her time to sit down with me and help me learn, it is not unreasonable for her to demand compensation.
Universities, of course, are only able to release MOOCs for free because they make money from tuition, alumni donations, endowments, etc.
In my dad's generation, you picked one profession, stuck with it for life, and had one or - if you were adventurous - two, employers. Retooling (and therefore continuing education) just wasn't required. You learned what you needed to learn in high school and perhaps college, and then you were done with that part of your life and moved on.
In this economy, people find themselves having a few different careers over their lifetime, and to facilitate that they need to revisit the academy a few times. But when you bundle together the cost of providing the education, the cost of supporting a large research organization (if at a research university) and the cost of a large physical plant, it gets super-expensive.
And then there are additional market frictions - I adore MIT as an institution, but even if qualified and admitted to their supply chain management program, there are a certain number of candidates who are going to say they can't afford the opportunity costs to NOT work for a year plus the out-of-pocket costs to attend. So, the benefit of such a candidate's intelligence and what they would contribute to the class, is lost in these frictions.
On the supply side, the high cost of resources dictates a high tuition price and an ever-present supply constraint: seats are limited. So, institutions limit the number of applicants who can get in and admissions committees do their best to select those from the applicant pool who will make THE most of the resources provided. But they're not perfect - they admit some people they wish they hadn't, and they reject others they live to regret not admitting. (Warren Buffett was famously rejected from Harvard - needless to say, the university now wishes they'd welcomed him with open arms...)
MOOCs remove this constraint - and scale infinitely - hence the cost can be very low indeed. But they remove the human component and no one knows yet whether LEARNING scales in this fashion.
uMOOC is trying to correct this flaw - to, quite literally, put the 'u' back in the MOOC.
So, HaoZeke, yes, money is made by tutors and the site, but it creates an environment where students who otherwise might get frustrated and quit, instead succeed and can move forward. That has to be worth something to society, no?
It is more depressing to see people advocating working for free without giving a solution to real life problems that a teacher usually has, like say putting food on the table or paying for health insurance.
All this monetization of learning is the wrong approach.
In a world where software is moving towards FOSS it's depressing to see people still trying to sell education instead of trying to teach it.
Education is a journey, teaching is a joy, and if it's not, no amount of money can make you want to teach anyone anything.
I think that's why institutes with great researchers have great teachers and students, it's an environment feeding itself in a positive feedback loop.
It's depressing to see this here.