Matkin says many OCW courses are part of existing UC Irvine Extension certificate programs, adding that new courses are developed with grant funding.
Still, the question remains about how committed state legislatures are to support OCW programs. In California, for example, which has a $42 billion deficit this year, does the legislature feel that UC Irvine’s OCW program will help residents develop skills that can make them more employable to improve the state’s 7.7 percent unemployment rate? Or do they feel a state school should not give away educational content?
The offices of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg and assistant president pro tempore Sen. Leland Yea did not respond to numerous requests for comment. The office of Sen. Mimi Walters of the 33rd district, where UC Irvine is located, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Perhaps this kind of government apathy is what Caulfield is hoping to change when he says that one of the OCW Consortium’s goals for the future in the United States is to get state governments more interested in directly supporting OCW. In China, Vietnam and the United Kingdom, Caulfield says OCW is increasingly being looked at as a national infrastructure project with government and universities working together to benefit the whole country. The UK, for example, distributes grant money to experimental OCW projects.
For UC Irvine and MIT, they offer open education resources via OCW for fundamentally the same reason. “We want to help learners around the world,” says MIT’s Carson.
Adds UC Irvine’s Cooperman: “OCW is an outreach project to make knowledge available for free.”
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
