MIT just got a whole lot less exclusive. MIT celebrated a milestone Nov. 28 in <A HREF="http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/education/mit_frees_up_learning.html?kc=EWKNLEDP120607B">its efforts to open its course content to the public</A>--the core teaching materials, including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and exams from MIT's 1,800 courses, are now online and free to the public.

The site includes voluntary contributions from 90 percent of faculty and more than 2,600 members of the MIT community, together reaching an estimated 35 million individuals--60 percent of them from outside the United States. Nearly 600 courses have been translated into languages including Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Thai. More than 120 paper copies of the site were provided to bandwidth-constrained countries in Sub-Saharan regions.