Well, patents and degrees work that way too. Universities are businesses first... extracting value from students and faculty. It's uncool when it becomes the primary focus.

It's not like Harvard and MIT don't have enough money already, so it's curious why they need obscenely more.

This happened a long time ago with Harvard Extension School.

> So the universities have decided to monetise their own great reputations by simply selling it to a bidder?

I think that this is a terrible decision and regret it, but there's not much surprise: this monetisation of their reputation is kind of the business of modern universities.