Is iTunes U for You?

If he can't find the answer he needs, he moves on. After all, he says, "there's no penalty for not understanding the material."

Many of the institutions now giving away lectures on iTunes U had ambitious plans a decade ago to make money from selling course materials online.

Nearly all those efforts to profit from distance education failed, in part because higher education institutions overestimated demand. In many ways, online education is still in its infancy. About 3.2 million students took at least one online course in the fall of 2005, according to the Sloan Consortium, up from 2.3 million the previous year but still a small slice of the 17.4 million students enrolled in colleges nationwide that fall.

The iTunes U service is not the first to give away course materials online. Since 2001, MIT has been publishing materials on the Internet for free as part of its OpenCourseWare project. The effort, however, is not without costs. The institution spends more than $6 million a year on the project, much of it coming from foundation grants. "MIT is special in that it can raise that kind of money to support such a project, but most universities can't," says Mayadas.

With tight budgets a fact of life at most colleges, Mayadas believes the market for free courseware is limited to a few classes at any one institution.

Officials at universities participating in iTunes U say that the biggest benefit is worldwide exposure. Norbert Elliot, a humanities professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, says a world literature lecture of his that was featured on the iTunes U Web site recently was viewed 74,000 times in one month. "There is no way that anything I can do under traditional means would interest 74,000 people," says Elliot.

While Apple releases download statistics to universities that participate in iTunes U, the company does not release them publicly. Stanford, which worked with Apple on the development of iTunes U, averages about 10,000 downloads a week, says Scott Stocker, Stanford's director of Web communications. A survey the university conducted last year found that 22 percent of users of the service identified themselves as Stanford alumni. "It's yet another way for alumni to stay connected to the university," says Stocker.

For now, Apple's Cue says the company has no plans to charge for iTunes U. "Our view is that students at the university are already paying for the classes to be produced," he says.

Indeed, many universities, including Stanford, also use iTunes to make recordings of other classes that are available only to current students on a secure server. But some iTunes U users say a few courses are so helpful that they would be willing to pay for them.

"It's definitely worth more than music on iTunes," says Simantob, the Columbia pre-med major.

Jeffrey Selingo is editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He can be reached at 20071@washpost.com.

Top 10 Downloads From iTunes U

1. "Steve Job's 2005 Commencement Address" (Stanford University)