Schools could undercut one of Bernie Sanders' major platforms by using this as an opportunity to start offering free/low-cost, LIVE courses online, reserving networking and on-campus support opportunities for formally-accepted students. I'd be surprised that this wasn't happening, if not for the cluelessness and/or callousness the moneyed set that make up the constituency of America's top schools seem to be approaching everything these days. As a disabled acquaintance bemoaned about similar developments in teleworking policy: "They've always been able to do it, they just didn't care until their asses were at risk."
They already do that. It's not quite "LIVE", but it's close. When you sign up for a certificate, you take the course along with a cohort of other students during a preset period of several weeks. There are staff and other students available to talk and answer questions in a shared forum, your work is graded, and the lectures/homework/exams/etc are spaced into weekly modules.
Sadly, the quality varies wildly between institutions and it doesn't seem to work as well as an in-person education for most people. But the affordability and availability make them excellent for helping to expand equality of access and get people started down the road of becoming proficient in specialized topics.
If it's "not quite live," then they don't "already do that." There is value to being part of a first-class experience as it plays out, even as a second-class observer, that's over and above dealing with a glorified educational DVR and meaningless certification. But the point is that MIT et al. have lost a credible rebuttal to anyone floating the notion of, "Why not?"; to anyone wondering why the live academic lectures of old, that were ostensibly open to the public but that were limited to people who could afford to be in a particular building at a particular time, haven't seen their progeny truly open to the public as the accessibility of mass communication has grown.
