You know
what would be terrible? If someone figured out a way to make the
very best college courses available for free online to anyone who
wanted them. 

Oh wait! Someone did! Coursera, a California-based
startup, offers dozens of free courses from top American
universities (think Stanford, Princeton, Caltech, Duke). They don’t
grant degrees. They just take material that was previously
available to handful of uber-achievers who happen to have more than
$100,000 to spend on tuition and make it available for free to
everyone with an Internet connection. Here’s what
Coursera says about
their goals:

We hope to give everyone access to the world-class education
that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to
empower people with education that will improve their lives, the
lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

Naturally, they must be stopped.

Luckily Minnesota is on the case. The Chronicle of Higher
Education
reports:

The state’s Office of Higher Education has informed the popular
provider of massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, that
Coursera is unwelcome in the state because it never got permission
to operate there. 

The result is
this notice in Coursera’s terms of service:

Notice for Minnesota Users:

Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher
Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a
university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents
unless the university has received authorization from the State of
Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree
that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for
each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class
will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

Well done, North Star State. I bet no Minnesotans will use their
totally unrestricted (and basically unrestrictable) Internet access
to take Penn’s Neuroethics course or Stanford’s six week series on
Game Theory now. They are safe from free, super awesome online
courses.

Idiots.