Read­ing the press late­ly, you’d think the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem is the next mort­gage mar­ket. And the human­i­ties? They’re tox­ic debt. Here’s a quick recap of the grim parade of sto­ries:

• Last week, The New York Times set the stage with this: an arti­cle detail­ing how stu­dents are drown­ing in debt, which rais­es the ques­tions: Can stu­dents still afford Amer­i­ca’s expen­sive uni­ver­si­ties? And will banks keep mak­ing these loans? The Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er goes fur­ther and blunt­ly asks: Is a High­er Edu­ca­tion Bub­ble about to Burst?
• Next, in The New York­er, a wide­ly-read arti­cle offers this fac­toid: Dur­ing the com­ing decade, most of the sec­tors adding jobs in the US won’t require a col­lege degree. So some aca­d­e­mics (yes, aca­d­e­mics) are left won­der­ing, “why not save the mon­ey and put it towards a house?” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, is a col­lege edu­ca­tion real­ly worth the mon­ey?
• The meme con­tin­ues yes­ter­day with David Brooks mus­ing in an opin­ion piece: “When the going gets tough, the tough take account­ing. When the job mar­ket wors­ens, many stu­dents fig­ure they can’t indulge in an Eng­lish or a his­to­ry major. They have to study some­thing that will lead direct­ly to a job.” “There already has been a near­ly 50 per­cent drop in the por­tion of lib­er­al arts majors over the past gen­er­a­tion, and that trend is bound to accel­er­ate.” So why both­er with a human­i­ties edu­ca­tion? Brooks tries to make his best case, and it’s not a bad one. But I’m not sure that a younger gen­er­a­tion is lis­ten­ing. And if you lis­ten to this 2008 inter­view with Harold Bloom, they maybe should­n’t be.
• And just to top things off: Stan­ley Fish launch­es his own defense of a “clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion,” even if it “sounds down­right ante­dilu­vian, out­mod­ed, nar­row and elit­ist.” You get the drift. Anoth­er sign that the human­i­ties is in a bear mar­ket.

This is a cause you can all relate to: Cre­ative Com­mons is kick­ing off a cam­paign this week to raise mon­ey for its recent­ly-launched Cat­a­lyst Grants pro­gram. Put sim­ply, these grants will help “empow­er indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions every­where … to make knowl­edge eas­i­ly, freely, and legal­ly avail­able to every­one.” Grant sizes will range from $1,000 to $10,000, and they will be dis­trib­uted to seri­ous researchers, edu­ca­tors and inno­va­tors across the globe. The goal is to raise $100,000 this month. You can help make free edu­ca­tion (includ­ing open edu­ca­tion­al resources) avail­able world­wide by mak­ing a dona­tion here, or using the wid­get below.

This week­end, The New York Times is ded­i­cat­ing its Educa­tion Life sec­tion to Open Edu­ca­tion. It all starts with a lengthy arti­cle on the state of the “open course” move­ment. Then, a relat­ed arti­cle tells you where you can learn some­thing for noth­ing (always a good thing!), list­ing sev­er­al sites – includ­ing Open Cul­ture – where you’ll find an end­less sup­ply of free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Final­ly, you will learn about the 10 most watched aca­d­e­m­ic videos on YouTube, one of which (#9) comes out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford.

If you’re look­ing for open cours­es, def­i­nite­ly vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. At last count, our col­lec­tion includes 243 free cours­es (about half in video) from 25 uni­ver­si­ties, which amounts to more than 6,000 hours of free lec­tures. You can down­load these cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, and watch them any­time, any­where. Mean­while, if you have an iPhone, you can access these cours­es via our free iPhone app. For more free edu­ca­tion­al media (free audio books, for­eign lan­guage lessons, movies, etc.), sim­ply explore the free resources list­ed in the nav­i­ga­tion bar above. Enjoy!