When MIT made a formal decision in the year 2000 to publish their course materials on the Internet, MIT alumni could have been miffed. Here was the institution’s renowned curriculum—previously accessible to students who paid for it with their tuition and hard-won academic achievement—being offered to anyone with a computer.

The executive director of the MIT OpenCourseWare program that manages publication of the curriculum, who herself is an alumna of MIT and the daughter of two more MIT graduates, says she and her former classmates were thrilled.