Imagine being unprivileged enough to be born in a third-world country and not even have a chance to pay your application fee for higher education. If you're bright enough and have Internet access you can still learn from the best and maybe prepare yourself and earn a scholarship in the future.
Well, it's very common at my university (Faculty of Information Technology, Brno university of technology: http://www.fit.vutbr.cz). We're in the 21st century after all. Lectures are streamed in real-time and also recorded and published later.
At Georgia Tech, they filmed a lot of lectures and you can go back to the library and watch the tapes there. I found it to be one of the best ways to study for an exam. It's funny how the second time you watch a lecture, it all seems so easy to understand.
I'm watching the Gilbert Strang linear algebra course to pick up enough for other classes I am taking. Saves me using up an entire semester for that (I have a tuition benefit which I am using to take one class for semester; so I can take Information Retrieval now instead of taking Linear Algebra and waiting until next Spring.).