• Ars Technica, Friday, October 5, 2007 10:45 AM

Who needs to pay to go to college? Earlier this week, the University of California at Berkeley announced it would make full course lectures available on Google's YouTube. At launch, Berkeley will have over 300 hours of video available through its new YouTube channel. Course lectures include bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies, and of course, search engines, by nGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin.

Berkeley says (the unconfirmed) that it's the first school to make full courses available on YouTube. What's important is that this could become a trend. Perhaps the proliferation of free, advanced college-level information starts on YouTube. Being a liberal school, Berkeley has chosen to offer courses for free--though it's unclear whether its plan is to accrue ad revenue from the initiative. One could easily see this becoming a gateway to cheaper online degrees. It's certainly one way to build up a college's brand.

However, this isn't the first time that Berkeley has made its course lectures available for free on the Web. The university has been offering Webcasts of its courses since 2001 and podcasts on topics like art, history, computer science, mechanical engineering and legal studies through iTunes U since 2006.

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