Big Universities = Big Business

Yesterday, Harvard reported its endowment grew 16.7 percent to $29.2 billion during this last fiscal year. Wow. At that rate, applying the Rule of 72, the Harvard endowment would grow to over $1 trillion by 2029. There is more on the story at the Wall Street Journal Online (it’s probably behind a paywall). According to that WSJ report, their endowment contributes about 33 percent—almost $1 billion—to the school’s annual operating budget. The Harvard Endowment puts incredible pressure on the university to use this precious financial resource in a socially responsible manner.

Despite all the talk about the competition American businesses face abroad, our university system is unmatched elsewhere in the world: we are a huge importer of students. There are over 6100 postsecondary institutions in the United States (Forbes).

Another university with a large endowment, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), provides an incredible online free educational resource called OpenCourseWare. Here’s an overview of that substantial program from their website’s “about” page:

MIT OCW’s goals are to:

  * Provide free, searchable, access to MIT’s course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
  * Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the “opencourseware” concept.

MIT OCW would not be possible without the support and generosity of the MIT faculty who choose to share their research, pedagogy and knowledge to benefit others. We expect MIT OCW to reach a steady - though never static - state by 2008. Between now and then, we will publish the materials from virtually all of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate courses.

We will be continually evaluating the Access, Use, and Impact of MIT OCW. With 1,400 courses published as of May 1, 2006, we are still in a learning stage of this MIT initiative and we will benefit enormously from your feedback, as we strive to make MIT OCW as rich and useful as possible for our users.

Imagine—1400 courses for free! MIT realizes that a great education is much more than simply making educational material available. It is the discourse, research, feedback and educational environment that empower the course material.

There are many other universities with sizeable endowments and innovative programs. Hopefully, America can continue to be a knowledge ambassador to the rest of the world. Most likely, the MIT program is just beginning to scratch the surface of what the Web and large endowments could make possible. If you combined MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, with the participatory advantages of a Web 2.0 environment, there could be a major leap in online higher education in the near future.

Great universities know the best way to prepare for the future is to help invent it. Carpe diem.