If your aim is to learn and not just to pursue credentials, then you are in luck. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have opened a new world of possibilities for those who cannot afford to learn at western universities.

The recent advances in communication and information technologies are radically changing the education and learning landscape. Minus the credits or credentials, MOOCs provide the same materials and similar opportunities to learn to those whose learning options are restricted by financial and other constraints. You do not have to be enrolled at a University to participate in a MOOC, and could still have access to lectures notes and watch videos of lectures.

The age-old style of delivering a lecture to students in a room is being replaced by a model where thousands of students and their instructors are connected in real time online, while they are millions of miles apart. MOOCs enable learning for those who share the passion to learn, but do not have the means. The death of distance and mass adoption of the freemium model in higher-ed holds great promise for those at the margins of the learning curve. Education policymakers in the developing world should consider expanding education-focused bandwidths and making Internet cheaper to enable learning from MOOCs.

Also read: Education in the digital world

It may be convenient to understand the concept if one were to see a MOOC in action. Professor Robert Shiller, the Nobel Laureate in Economics and a professor at Yale University, offers a popular MOOC on Financial Markets. In fact, the course is a regular offering in the undergraduate program at Yale University. The only difference is that all course materials and 26 hours of lectures delivered by Prof. Shiller are available free to anyone with access to the Internet. The course materials include lecture notes, reading materials, assignments, exams and their solutions.

The lecture videos are available on YouTube and iTunes. The first lecture in the course (delivered in 2008) in fact begins with Prof. Shiller introducing his teaching fellows. Interestingly, the first teaching fellow he introduced was Usman Ali from Pakistan, who graduated earlier from LUMS in Lahore and was working on a doctorate in Finance at Yale. The course comprised of 26 lectures where each lecture had its own page that listed related material and the embedded lecture video. Learners could in fact download the video or audio to watch it later. Both high- and low-resolution versions of the videos are provided for download.

While Prof. Shiller’s course is available free at Yale, the University charges hefty amounts to enroll. In 2012-13, the total annual cost to study in the undergraduate programs at Yale was $58,600 ($42,300 in tuition). Multiply this number by four and you will have the total cost of getting an undergraduate degree from Yale University.

But Yale University is not alone in giving away its courses free of charge. Several Ivy League universities have created programs to share their courses online. The latest to join in is the Harvard business School with a new MOOC program called HBX. Harvard calls it “a digital learning initiative powered by the faculty of Harvard Business School.” For several years MIT has been running the MIT Open Courseware Program with the intent “to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone,” said Professor Dick K.P. Yue of MIT School of Engineering.

MOOCs are not confined to universities. Several new businesses have cropped up whose sole product is MOOCs. Coursera is the most popular platform that offers 631 courses from 108 partners.

One wonders why Yale and others are giving away their course material free. Shouldn’t they be trying to make additional money from these courses? The answer to these question lies in the way modern-day economics is playing out. Freemium, a pricing strategy that offers a product or a service free of charge, goes hand-in-hand with premium services where the user is charged fees for advanced features of the same product or services. So, what will be the premium version of MOOCs?

Lectures and course materials are one small component of what the universities offer. Their real product is the credentials they bestow upon those who meet the set criteria. You can watch the entire content of a commerce degree from MIT, it will still not earn you any credentials. The premium version of a regular MOOC offers the ability to interact with fellow students and receive feedback from instructors. Now that’s something worth paying $58,600 for. The instructors also benefit from MOOCs. As their name gets around on YouTube, publishers become interested in their teaching and award book contracts to them.

Also read: An open letter to unblock YouTube in Pakistan | YouTube ban: Running out of excuses

The modalities of learning are changing fast. YouTube is now a big player in higher education. There are millions of hours of instructional materials available on the video-sharing website.

The government in Pakistan must open its eyes and make an informed decision about YouTube.