For First Time, MIT’s Free Online Classes Can Carry Credit

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has offered free online courses for the last four years with one major downside: They didn’t count toward a degree. That’s about to change.

A doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reads outside a building at the Cambridge, Mass. campus, on April 22, 2007. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has offered free online courses for the last four years with one major downside: They didn’t count toward a degree. That’s about to change.

In a pilot project announced Wednesday, students will be able to take a semester of free online courses in one of MIT’s graduate programs and then, if they pay a “modest fee” of about $1,500 and pass an exam, they will earn a “MicroMaster’s” degree, the school said.

Amid the growth of free online courses, some academics predicted that it would spell the end of traditional college courses.