MIT and The Community College: What a Four Year Research University Can Teach Community Colleges About Their Own Mission.
?? What do MIT, OER, and community colleges all have in common? Well, at first glance, perhaps not much. However, what if I told you that the intersection of these three held the secret to addressing many of the major issues currently plaguing higher education. Community Colleges are almost like night and day designed from the ground up to tackle incredibly different matters than MIT, a four-year institution of incredible renown in some of the most advanced disciplines humanity has conceived.
?? Community colleges are rather special institutions of learning. Their mission, generalized, is to provide education that is tailor-made to a ‘community’ at prices meant for a person of moderate means (Segal, 2024). In other words, community colleges are institutions that are designed to deliver more nuanced instruction, at least relatively speaking, and this instruction is to come at a price meager compared to the standard four-year. This much ought not be too terribly new information to most. What may be new information is that this definition means that most community colleges are suitable for the utilization of OER content.
?? OER, or Open Educational Resources is an umbrella term encompassing a wealth of resources from textbooks to lab materials and all points in between. My more avid readers are probably already sick of me writing on the topic, but we have further to trek before we can pull the curtain on the topic. Most OER content is either free or incredibly cheap compared to its mainstream counterpart and this is what pulls it into this article, OER has something to offer community colleges the world over.
?? Now we can say that it’s easy to see where OER and community colleges connect. Community colleges share an ethos in the delivery of affordable education, and we certainly can see how OER can help with that, but what about MIT? How does it fit into this equation? As we’ll see, the most unlikely of alliances has been forming for quite some time now, and it’s a definite force for good.
?? Let’s turn to the main local of the article, America’s community college. Community college is meant to be cheap; this provides it with the unique mission of supplying its local community with an education that conforms to its needs, hence the name. Further, education within this college is meant to be specifically catered, within reason, to the specific region where the college is located (Segal, 2024). This is where they thrive so well.
?? Now introduce MIT OpenCourseWare, an enterprise constructed in 2001 by MIT in its Open Learning initiative. With this, MIT became the first higher ed institution to offer free learning materials. (Segal, 2024). From here sprang the well that we would come to refer to as OER.
?? So, there lies the connection. MIT OpenCourseWare can be of great use. OpenCourseWare is both free, modular, and adaptable and this allows itself to be the perfect vehicle for the mission of the community college (Glapa-Grossklag et al., 2024). To that end, OER in general, regardless of the source institution, accomplishes this feat, as it is often free of charge or cheap, and readily adaptable to the needs of community college faculty. MIT is special in this case as their long-term presence in OER type content lends itself well to the quality of their work.
??? There is another angle to consider though. While yes, OER is inherently flexible, it should not just bend and turn in just any sort of way. America’s community college are in a constant state of flux and its materials needs to accommodate that (Glapa-Grossklag et al., 2024). When I say flux, I don’t just mean rapidly evolving technological considerations in CTE courses. I also mean the needs of the students.
??? Community College students have considerable different needs when considering both time and the highly variable socioeconomic situations of one community college student to the next. This is the main point I have been driving thus far. Yes, OER is free and adaptable, but what does that mean to the student? Free means the fiscally strained student has more money for bills and groceries, adaptable means a student or set of students with learning difficulties can have a course tailored to meet their needs. OER is best utilized, and most appreciated when it is drawn in terms beyond its affordability and into what exactly that means (Hulbert et al., 2025).
?? My thesis then is this, if OER is to be used to its full potential on the community college campus, then it needs to be delivered beyond just its face value utility. OER producing faculty have a duty then to create content that reflects the diversity of the student body utilizing it (Hulbert et al., 2025). In poorer communities, this means driving home its low or no cost to deliver it to the impoverished student looking to boost themselves socioeconomically through education. In student populations with diverse backgrounds, this means introducing pedagogy that addresses appropriate and culturally sensitive learning needs and styles to the benefit of the student population (Hulbert et al., 2025).
?? Introducing my final point, this is where we consider MIT as our light in the dark. With a long and storied history, MIT’s special brand of OER, could be the shining example we need. Though it, like everything else, has a list of pros and cons as we’ll discuss. I’ll introduce a list of them that were presented to me by the team that spoke on the topic at the OEN conference.
Pros:
-????????? Branding and Quality. (MIT is well known for the quality of the product they produce. Naturally, they can be trusted to produce high quality OER that can be used at the community college level.).
-????????? Adaptable. (As I have stressed throughout this piece, OER is adaptable and the content that MIT offers is no different.).
-????????? Robust Infrastructure with an Intuitive Interface. (MIT’s OpenCourseWare has a large collection of OER catalogued and minded by a in-depth site and easily accessible regardless of skill in database use.).
-????????? Faculty Tested and Approved. (Perhaps cliché, but it’s made by faculty for faculty.).
-????????? Inter-Institutional Collaborative Possibilities. (The adaptability practically begs for collaboration between community colleges and other institutions for the sake of OER refinement.).
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Cons:
-????????? Content Oversaturation. (300 channels and nothing to watch. Content overload is real, and it can happen in the OER market and this could make navigating OER sites daunting by faculty.).
-????????? Potentially Outdated Material. (It’s a lot of content, and it’s hard to manage. In some courses like philosophy or literature, this may not be a big deal. In S.T.E.M. though, this could be a deal breaker.)
(Glapa-Grossklag et al., 2024)
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?? To wrap up the ideas here, consider this. OER is beyond a doubt the perfect tool for community colleges to gain an edge in their mission to their students. MIT has been the champion pioneer in the development of free course content for some time now (Segal, 2024). There is something to be said about community colleges looking to MIT as a guide on their own path, despite how different these types of institutions seem to be.
?? The community college’s mission is special. OER, like what is produced and curated by MIT is the perfect tool, a beacon to serve the specific needs of the community college. It’s time we take a long look at what we have at our disposal, and what we are willing to do in order to ensure that community colleges across the nation are successful in meeting the students where they are in their needs, background, and experiences. I believe we have what it takes, all we have now is to lead, not for ourselves, but for our students.
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References
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Glapa-Grossklag, J., Hansen, S., Segal, S., & Young, L. (2024, October). Centering Community College Faculty Perspectives: Pros and Cons of MIT OpenCourseWare. OEN Conference. Providence; Rhode Island.
Hulbert, I., Harkins, D., & McBride, M. (2025). Charting the Course: Case Studies in OER Sustainability. ITHAKA S+R. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep66734
Segal, S. (2024, June 26). Collaborating to support Community College faculty in teaching with MIT Open Educational Resources. MIT Open Learning. https://openlearning.mit.edu/news/collaborating-support-community-college-faculty-teaching-mit-open-educational-resources