I wonder if this experiment will just remain an experiment because politically Stanford is not ready for open free education. I remember reading an article recently in NY Times that highlighted how Stanford had two opposite camps of opinions. They are bidding to open an engineering campus in NY, which expands their formal education at the same time as starting these free courses, which is all about informal distributed learning. From Stanford's president, it didn't sound like something he was keen on expanding... a classic disruption in the education industry. Reminds me of newspapers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-...