New frontier for better online classes: credit

Two days later, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and seven other prominent universities announced a consortium called Semester Online offering students at those institutions — and eventually others, though details aren't yet clear — access to new online courses for credit. These won't be giant classes, but the announcement is important because top colleges, generally stingy about accepting outside credit, are signaling they agree the technology can now replicate at least substantially some of the high-priced learning experience that takes place on campus.

The latest announcement will come Monday, and appears smaller but is potentially important: a first-of-its-kind partnership between edX, the MIT-Harvard consortium, and two Massachusetts community colleges. EdX's popular introductory computer science course from MIT will provide the backbone of a class at the community college — a key gateway to degree programs — with supplemental teaching and help from community college faculty on the ground.

This is where the rubber meets the road for transforming higher education.