OpenCourseWare
Many colleges and universities have decided to treat their courses as proprietary goods—a source of competitive advantage, and a potential revenue stream. The result? Gradually, the free exchange of ideas is being transformed into the fee-based exchange of ideas.
MIT has chosen a dramatically different path. OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) makes the course materials that are used in the teaching of virtually all MIT’s undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. Why? Because our mission is “to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.”
Endowed and expendable funds are needed to sustain and maintain this exciting initiative. One meaningful way to make an immediate impact is to direct your contribution to the fund listed below. With your help, MIT OCW can continue to set a standard for the world.
Additional giving opportunities for MIT OCW
OCW seeks to build endowments for technology and education in these areas:
- Publication and maintenance of 25 new MIT courses each year, in perpetuity—$10 million
- Delivery of MIT course materials to 25,000 educators and over 150,000 learners (roughly 5 percent of OCW user traffic around the world) each year, in perpetuity—$5 million
- Department liaison (DL) positions, where DLs assist faculty with developing and compiling teaching materials for both classroom teaching and publication on the MIT OCW Web site—$800,000 and up.
Expendable support is also needed in order to …
- Help 10,000 faculty in developing countries to build and enhance curricula in science, engineering, humanities, architecture, and management;
- enable video capture and delivery of a complete series of lectures for two MIT courses;
- support external outreach efforts by MIT OCW staff to educators around the world; and
- meet core publication costs for each course.
To discuss a special gift to the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, please contact
Stephen Carson, MIT OCW External Relations Director, at scarson@mit.edu or 617.253.1250.
Upbeat about uploading
Jon Gruber ’64
An enthusiasm for “cutting edge” technology has molded
Jon Gruber’s life. Now, this enthusiasm has made its mark on MIT.
An entrepreneur and president of Gruber & McBaine Capital Management,
Jon Gruber ‘64 is also known for his talent as an investment advisor
on technology stocks—in some circles, he’s known as “the
father of technology investing.” Recently, he decided to funnel
a $1 million campaign gift into MIT OpenCourseWare, a progressive MIT
undertaking that aims to make nearly all course materials available for
free on the Web.
Gruber, who established a career development professorship in finance
at the Sloan School in 1998, decided early on to celebrate his 40th
reunion this year with another major gift. But it took a conversation
with then-MIT President Charles Vest to tip the balance in favor of designating
that support to OpenCourseWare.
“This idea was the most distinct—something that no one
else has done,” says Gruber. “And it was clearly one of Chuck
Vest’s favorites, too. He was very, very upbeat about it.” Gruber’s
gift targets course materials in electrical engineering—his
undergraduate major—and also visual arts programs.
Jon and Linda Gruber live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they
are patrons of several arts organizations. [ top ]
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