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Good morning. Um my name is uh Dimitri Bertsimas. I'm the Vice Provost for Open Learning. I have been at MIT 41 years and uh as many of you, I love this institution. Dear colleagues, friends Dear colleagues, friends, members of the MIT [snorts] community and the world. I'm certain there are people who came I know actually some people came all the way from many uh far places. 25 years ago, at the time when most universities were asking, "How do we monetize online content?" MIT asked a fundamentally different question.
"How do we give it away?" That question, bold counterintuitive and unmistakably MIT changed the world. President Charles Vest Chuck uh as he's known saw what could not. He declared that MIT would freely share its knowledge with anyone anywhere an act of breathtaking institutional generosity. Chuck understood what that knowledge, unlike material resources grows when you share it. Hal Abelson was the intellectual architect who saw that openness was not a threat to academic excellence, but its greatest amplifier.
His advocacy laid the found- the philosophical and prac- practical foundations for everything we celebrate today. Dick Yue, who is in the audience, had the original idea, I'm told. He also turned vision into reality with extraordinary operational skill and quite a quite determination. He built the infrastructure and teams that transform an audacious idea into a living platform. To all three on behalf of this community and the millions you have touched thank you. 500 million learners from villages in sub-Saharan Africa, from bustling cities in South Asia, from small towns in Latin America and Eastern Europe have come to MIT's virtual doors and found them wide open.
6 millions more on our YouTube channel alone. But, let me make it more personal. Several of my own PhD students have told me the same story. They grew up far from Cambridge. They had talent, drive and curiosity. But, what they lacked was access. And then they found OCW. A lecture on optimization, a problem set that opened a door they did not know existed. OCW did not just teach them. It found It reached across oceans and said "You belong here." And now they are here contributing to MIT and to the world.
And yet we are just beginning. Artificial intelligence, adaptive learning, immersive digital experiences, these tools gives us the ability to do what Chuck, Hal and Dick dreamed of at a scale and depth they could scarcely have imagined. We will move from open access to open impact, I aspire. Ensuring not just that knowledge is available, but it transforms lives. If OCW proved one thing, it is this. When MIT opens its doors the world walks in. 25 years ago, MIT made a bet on openness, on generosity on the belief that knowledge is a public good. That bet has paid off 500 millions times over. To President Vest's memory, to Hal, to Dick and to everyone who made OCW
possible, you gave the world a gift that keeps giving. Now, it is our turn to carry it forward with the same courage, the same conviction and the same unmistakable MIT spirit. You will see today that the future of open learning is bright. And it belongs to all of us. Thank you. I would like to invite um my colleague and friend Curt Newton who heads OCW. Thanks, Dimitri, and thank you to everyone for joining us on this wonderful celebration day.
Um while some of the numbers that Dimitri has just shared with you, reaching 500 million learners for instance that just tells part of the story. The true measure of this work lives in the experiences of the learners and the educators around the world and their stories of curiosity sparked resilience strengthened and opportunities unlocked. We hear from learners around the globe who've used OpenCourseWare in deeply personal ways. For some, it begins with curiosity. For others, it's really a tool for navigating challenging times. And for many others, it provides a flexible self-directed path for
upskilling and for growth. Take for example a learner named Thomas from Chile who first discovered OpenCourseWare when he was 17 years old. He explored a course, Principles of Pharmacology to advance his after-school scientific project of extracting and studying medicinal properties of plants and then shared what he learned with the members of his 16-person science group. His story reflects the power of access to meet learners where they are and what they're interested in. He told us, speaking in Spanish "Thanks to the pharmacology course, I can collect and synthesize the information we need
to learn to prepare the medicines for our project. Take advantage of MIT's free digital technologies and tools." he says. "Keep an open mind as to how the knowledge can be applied." And this is also where the distinction an important distinction between simply free and truly open knowledge becomes so important. Free access is powerful and absolutely necessary, but openness goes further. It invites participation. It allows learners and educators not just to consume knowledge, but to adapt it, to share it and make it meaningful in their own communities and their contexts.
We see that in the ways educators around the world are using these materials enriching their teaching experimenting with new approaches and building a more connected and collaborative global learning community. We're grateful to know that this brave leap into open education that MIT took 25 years ago has been, in the words of our colleague James Glapa Grosklag, who's a Dean of Educational Technology and Learning Resources and Distance Learning at College of the Canyons, he says, "Not just path breaking, it's been path making for other institutions to follow." And we see this in the broader momentum of open education as a movement.
Through the dedication and leadership of our colleagues like James, the rise of open textbooks for instance, just one form of open educational resources, has already saved students in the United States and Canada hundreds of millions of dollars while also improving their learning outcomes. So, with this I'd like to invite my colleague Dimitri back up to introduce our very special guest. As we celebrate 25 years of MIT OpenCourseWare, we also recognize the leadership that continues to carry this mission forward. It is my honor to introduce MIT's President Sally Kornbluth. President Kornbluth, Sally led has led with clarity and conviction championing MIT core values of excellence
openness, freedom of expression and institutional independence. Especially important in these trying times. She has also articulated with remarkable clarity MIT's mission to advance knowledge, to serve the nation and the world grounded in merit, access and open educational opportunity. These are the very principles that have saved MIT have saved MIT OpenCourseWare, which is part of MIT Open Learning from the beginning and that continue to guide the future of open education at MIT. Please join me in welcoming Professor President Kornbluth.
Thanks so much, Dimitrius and Curt and good morning to everyone here. And a special greeting to the faculty and staff who organized today's symposium and to all the faculty, educators, learners who share their experiences and insights today. So, 25 years ago when OCW sprang to life, I lived 600 miles away. So, I can't say I was at MIT for 40 years. Um but even over that distance, we heard the reverberations right away and for a long time thereafter. It was an incredibly brave, selfless and bold thing for MIT to have done. So generous and so generative both at the same time.
Now, more than two decades later, this MIT spirit and values that inspired OCW, the boldness, the instinct for service, and the desire for impact that were really central to OCW is what drew me here to MIT. So, it's a wonderful honor to join you for this milestone, and although I wasn't actually here at the time, in some ways I feel that I was because MIT OCW's founding story is woven deeply into sort of the mythology and ethos of MIT. In 2001, the whole world of higher education was talking about digital learning. Actually, the world of higher education, more accurately, was fretting. Um no one knew what to do, and then the institute made a big bet with the full weight of its reputation. With the announcement of MIT
OpenCourseWare, a committed to a 10-year initiative to do something no university of MIT stature had ever dared to open the doors without requiring a key. The idea was to share lecture notes, problem sets, syllabi, exams, and video lectures from thousands of courses, a public website covering the MIT curriculum. Now, at the time, the prevailing wisdom in higher education was to protect the brand, to be cautious. Actually, I still hear that about lots of things, protecting the brand. But leaders like Chuck Vest, Dick Yue, Shigeru Miyagawa, and Hal Abelson, along
with all of MIT's at the time 955 faculty members, saw it very differently. They believed that the brand of MIT wasn't something to be hoarded. It was something to be shared. At its core, OpenCourseWare is a bold digital manifestation of MIT's fundamental mission to advance knowledge, to educate students, and to serve the nation and the world. By its very existence, it asserts that the MIT experience should not be defined by the walls of our classrooms, but by the reach of our ideas. Today, this risky experiment has evolved into a global cornerstone of educational equity. OpenCourseWare has cemented MIT's leadership in open knowledge and access to education.
We have proven, as Demetrius said, when you share excellence, you don't actually diminish its value, you multiply its impact. As Curt and Demetrius both noted, the numbers are striking. More than 500 million people have learned from MIT's materials thanks to OpenCourseWare. In fact, you know, I was in a meeting with some first-year students earlier this year, and I asked a student how she wound up at MIT. She was in a sort of underprivileged area, she hadn't had access to any AP courses. She had taken five MIT classes before even applying to MIT. And I think that this is the kind of story that we hear over and over again, um when we talk to students who are here at MIT, and we talk to others elsewhere who were
touched by uh the influence of these courses. For perspective, 500 million is the population more than the population of uh US and Mexico. Um but the true legacy isn't in the metrics, it's in the landscape of education that has been fundamentally reshaped. OCW didn't just open MIT's doors, it kicked off a global movement. It inspired universities across the world to launch their own open course initiatives, expanding the open education movement far beyond what anyone could have imagined in 2001.
Today, OCW is cited in national education strategies, in by nonprofit initiatives, by international development programs, proof that openness can scale when you lead with vision and with courage. It's actually embodied in things like the teacher in rural Appalachia using OCW to refine their physics curriculum. It's in the high school in Virginia who used OCW, as I mentioned before, to stand in for AP coursework not being offered at the school. And a student who found yes, she could do the work, she could go to college. And it's in the lifelong learners living anywhere in the world who, through OCW, found the spark to improve their own knowledge and to change their communities for the better. That includes learners like uh Sujud
Elduma from Sudan. Sujud discovered OCW when she was struggling with her university's programming courses. She went on to complete more than 20 OCW courses, strengthening her skills, and ultimately discovering a passion for data science. Today, she uses that knowledge and passion to tackle real-world challenges, including responding to devastating floods in her own country. Her story is a reminder of how open knowledge can transform not only individual learners, but their whole communities. As you'll hear from panelists today, OpenCourseWare has broadened MIT's impact to every corner of the globe. It has democratized the school the tools of discovery and given millions of people the power to change their lives.
We feel its impact here on campus as well. What we often don't emphasize enough is that OCW isn't doesn't just share MIT's teaching, it improved MIT's teaching. Faculty came to see their teaching in a new light. They were able to collaborate across departments, and they embraced digital tools that have shaped how we educate our own students. In fact, OCW laid the groundwork for every digital learning advance that follows, MITx, MIT Open Learning, MicroMasters, and now MIT Learn. Each new platform stands on the shoulders of this original brave idea. With MIT Learn, our new online platform, people have access to even more online courses and resources from across the institute, so they can learn with and from MIT.
In short, the world is different because of a bold idea that started here. And I'll note that much of this progress was made possible by the contributions of thousands of supporters, including early funders, the Hewlett Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Ab Initio, as well as newer foundations like Arcadia. We're deeply grateful for all that they do to support MIT learning. Needless to say, OCW would be an empty vessel without the extraordinary intellectual contributions of our faculty, sustained over many years. So, again, I do want to thank the faculty. I want to thank the devoted OCW staff and team, past and present, whose
perseverance, creativity, and excellence have powered this for a quarter century. Their work in curating, organizing, digitizing, maintaining thousands of courses is a remarkable collective act of service to the world, and this is the legacy being celebrated today. We know that the work of equitable access is unfinished. Barriers to high-quality learning still exist, whether linguistic, economic, geographic, or technological. MIT remains committed to lowering those barriers, expanding reach, and really ensuring that knowledge is not a privilege, but a public good. As we look ahead, let's continue to imagine boldly. Let's keep asking what knowledge we can share, what tools we
can invent, and whose lives we can help change next. As AI accelerates the way we create, personalize, and deliver knowledge, this mission becomes even more vital. The world needs trusted, rigorous, openly accessible knowledge, and I believe MIT will continue to lead in this era of learning. So, thank you all for being part of the journey. Um I look forward to seeing what exciting futures uh you all will continue to build and to help enable it in any way possible. So, thank you.
