Education breakthrough: high quality AND low cost.

A combination of certified online courses from top universities and social networking tools will eventually create the best of both worlds - excellent off-campus education AND social connections. All of that will be available for a fraction of the usual university costs.

Dec 19, 2011. Cnet. -- The university [MIT] today launched MITx, an initiative to provide students with a certification for taking MIT-taught classes online through a software platform MIT plans to make open-source.

Anyone with an Internet connection can take classes through the software system, which is expected to be released in the spring of 2012. Students who are able to "demonstrate mastery of the material" through online tests can get credentials for what MIT called a "modest fee.

tags: trade-off, education, problem, solution