Why give a course away online for free?

Rhodri Marsden asks in the 12/9/2011 Independent why Stanford University is "giving away a course online at no cost".

Marsden's piece is wide-ranging, and it draws on the knowhow of several people in UK HE, including Nial Sclater and Susanah Quinsee.

But it was filed some time ago¹: if Rhodri had done a bit more digging at the time, the possibility that Stanford or an associated business might be looking to pilot a delivery method for future commercial or revenue-generating use might not have escaped him.

Some quick observations:

• I'm not objecting to online courses not being free;
• I am enrolled on the Norvig/Thrun AI course - out of interest in AI and out of interest in how such a large-scale course is organised;
• my gut feeling about the Stanford courses - whether free or priced - is that they are going to be "game-changing";
• my guess is that when the three Stanford courses were launched last month neither Stanford nor the teachers behind them will have been expecting anything like such quick uptake - they'll have been as taken by surprise by the viral spread as the rest of the community;
• having got the mass uptake Stanford will be looking at how to exploit it - who wouldn't? (A couple of superficially inconsequential 10 September tweets by Thrun are consistent with this: "Fun meeting with Stanford's president today. Perhaps more courses will come online in the near future." "Who here would love to get a CS Master's degree online, if it is of Stanford quality and only costs $2000 in tuition? Please reply.")

Previous posts about the AI course:

• 7/9/2011 - Know Labs - looking to "change the future of education by making it more accessible and less expensive";
• 2/9/2011 -Know Labs - looking to "change the future of education by making it more accessible and less expensive";
• 26/8/2011 - Over 200,000 people have signed up for the three free Stanford University online courses;
• 18/8/2011 - Thrun/Norvig/Stanford introduction to artificial intelligence - just short of 90,000 enrolments in 2 weeks;
• 3/8/2011 - A free online version of Stanford University's introduction to artificial intelligence  (includes archived versions of the original publicity materials).

¹ - email exchange with Rhodri Marsden