MIT, Harvard link up with free online courses

May 2 (Reuters) - Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both academic heavyweights and often neighborly rivals, are joining hands in a new partnership to offer courses online and for free.

The two schools, located near each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are teaming up on an initiative called edX only five months after MIT rolled out MITx, its online learning system which allows students to earn certificates for completing course work from a distance.

Harvard and MIT each committed $30 million to the project, which will be overseen by a not-for-profit group based in Cambridge. Anant Agarwal, who led the development of MITx and directed MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, will be edX's first president.

The group plans to offer its first courses in the fall and eventually expects other universities may join. Read more here...