<story><title>MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2021/mit-harvard-transfer-edx-2u-0629</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brutus1213</author><text>This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>benrbray</author><text>I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a &amp;quot;food science&amp;quot; course, but was disappointed to see that they&amp;#x27;ve resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as:&lt;p&gt;* Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class.&lt;p&gt;* Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out.  When you visit the site, every course says &amp;quot;Course began ($TODAY-5)&amp;quot; to make you feel like &amp;quot;wow, I got here just in time!  I better sign up for everything!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;* Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes.  I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I&amp;#x27;m listening while doing dishes etc.&lt;p&gt;* An unsettling UI that feels less like it&amp;#x27;s about presenting information in a compact and&amp;#x2F;or digestible way and more like it&amp;#x27;s tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce.  Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos &amp;#x2F; course materials available.  But I&amp;#x27;m quite afraid for the future.</text></comment>
<story><title>MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2021/mit-harvard-transfer-edx-2u-0629</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brutus1213</author><text>This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sokoloff</author><text>One of the problems of the current structure (at least as of five-ish years ago) is that most of the EdX employees are on the MIT payroll and benefits system (meaning the benefits are pretty great, but the pay bands are incompatible with competing [financially] for engineering talent against the actual tech market). If this breaks that logjam, it could be good for EdX in this one, small regard.&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally though I agree with your summary; I trusted EdX a lot more &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; it was tightly affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Spun out into an arms-length institution, it seems like it will now be more likely to be driven into the ground by its leadership at some point in the next 100 years because of the lack of enough stabilizing &amp;quot;keel&amp;quot; provided by the affiliation with world-class universities.</text></comment>