You can call me Bobby, I run a little site called Thinksquad. I have an associates degree in industrial design from the Art Institute of Seattle. A bachelors of arts from the University of Washington, and graduated with a double major in philosophy and political science from Rutgers University. I also spent 10 years in the Air Force from 1994-2004, having spent five tours in Iraq and two tours in Afghanistan. I am now a strong advocate of the non-aggression principles, voluntaryism and peaceful parenting.
I believe in anarchism without adjectives, because no one really knows what will work best until we have the chance to try. Local communities should be free to try any non-coercive system, and residents should be able to move somewhere else if they don’t like the way things are going. Through solidarity, competition, and sharing of information eventually a system of social organization would evolve that will be superior to anything that we could imagine today. And even if we were right, we’d only be guessing without going through that process.
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Minnesota Bans Free Online College Courses
You know what would be terrible? If someone figured out a way to make the very best college courses available for free online to anyone who wanted them.
Oh wait! Someone did! Coursera, a California-based startup, offers dozens of free courses from top American universities (think Stanford, Princeton, Caltech, Duke). They don’t grant degrees. They just take material that was previously available to handful of uber-achievers who happen to have more than $100,000 to spend on tuition and make it available for free to everyone with an Internet connection. Here’s what Coursera says about their goals:
We hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.
Naturally, they must be stopped.
Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.
Well done, North Star State.
