(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Remember when some crazy blogger whose stuff you occasionally read predicted that someone would eventually be making university coursework available over the internet for free? We still aren’t there yet, but MIT made an announcement today which looks like a rather large step in that direction.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
I don’t think you’ve posted it before, but Stanford is doing something very similar. Look at http://www.algo-class.org/, bottom of the page(I know of no more central website for it, oddly) – there’s more than a dozen courses starting there in the next few months. It doesn’t offer certificates, but other than that it seems pretty similar.
It’s very commendable for MIT to make their coursework available for free. It’s perfect for those of us who would like to learn on our time. However, nothing can compare to being able to interact with a professor and asking questions.