$2-Billion Federal Program Could Be 'Windfall' for Open Online Learning - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Online learning enthusiasts could get a windfall of federal money under a $2-billion grant program that the Obama Administration described on Thursday. But how big the windfall will be —if it comes at all— remains unclear. One thing is for sure: The four-year program, designed to expand job training at community colleges, signals a major endorsement of the movement to freely share learning materials on the Internet....Beth Noveck, a professor at New York Law School and former White House technology official, wrote that the openness requirement represented “a fundamental and laudable shift in how grants are made in government.” ..."