In terms of academics and research, MIT is a world-class university. In addition, it is playing a leading role in a major change occurring in higher education. This IAE Blog entry draws on an article by Kevin Carey that summarizes what MIT is doing in terms of making its academic course offerings available to the world. Quoting from this article:
MITx is the next big step in the open-educational-resources movement that MIT helped start in 2001, when it began putting its course lecture notes, videos, and exams online, where anyone in the world could use them at no cost. The project exceeded all expectations—more than 100 million unique visitors have accessed the courses so far.