Today I sat in on lectures at Princeton, MIT, and Yale. Oh, and how could I forget--there was that one about entrepreneurship at Stanford, too. So how did I criss-cross the country to sit in on some of the best classes? One simple answer: I was on Academic Earth, where you can watch videos of lectures from prestigious universities around the United States--for free.

Farhood Manjoo described Academic Earth the best when he said that it's essentially "Hulu for nerds," but you could also describe Academic Earth as YouTube for overachievers. Whatever you call it, the business, founded by Yale alum Richard Ludlow, allows the average person to learn about everything from game theory to American literature.

According to Manjoo's article on Slate, Ludlow hopes that by posting lectures he'll lower the cost of education around the world--even by running Academic Earth as a for-profit venture. He plans to add videos from think tanks and run advertising alongside it, but he won't run ads with any videos from educational institutions (as of right now).

I think Ludlow's concept is a great one, and like Manjoo, it seems more accessible than Google's Knol, since video from a classroom best approximates the experience we've all had listening to teachers over the years. Google Knol is great for random research, but Academic Earth provides a context for learning. Even though I like it a lot, I hope that Academic Earth isn't limited to just "big name" schools like Harvard, Yale, and MIT. There are tons of great professors out there doing interesting research, and they don't all teach at Ivy League institutions.

Academic Earth also seems really interesting because it finally scales the "ivory tower" and throws open the doors to the general public. It's really refreshing to see universities, especially Harvard, welcome the association with something so very modern, and web 2.0. It surprises me because it's been my experience that many academic and other institutions take a passive role when it comes to incorporating new media and technology into their plan for remaining relevant--it's only when they're faced with complete irrelevance that they make the foray into this sort of venture. I hope universities and other institutions remain open to the concept of collaborative learning.

Check out this great video about communication from Yale: