[excuse-me]

The business model of Ivy league free courses is protect the market, destroy competition, preserve monopoly.

At the moment Uni education is a pretty open market, there is Ivy league, there are top state colleges, there are 3rd tier and then the Phoenix type places - you pay your money and take your choice.

The real tough competition, at least in technical subjects, is between ivy league and top state schools. The students can save a lot of money by going to UCB over Stanford, learn exactly the same stuff and get exactly the same job - why pay the extra $100k for a Stanford t-shirt?

What these free courses are saying to the students headed to state Uni outside the top 10, and in fields that don't require a paper qualification (like software) is: don't bother paying to go to UCLA, do a startup or do opensource AND do our courses for free and you will get the same job. Gradually (at least in CS) UCLA etc will disappear from the market and the employer radar who then see MIT/Stanford vs self taught.

It's really no different from why Nike pay Tiger Woods a zillion $. The idea is to put in the minds of the consumer (or CS student and employer) that there is only Nike or nothing.