UC Berkeley new partner of edX

Since MIT and Harvard revealed their plan to develop a platform for free online courses called edX, over 120 other PSE institutions worldwide have expressed interest in participating. Leaders of the effort announced this week that they've added the University of California at Berkeley as a partner, and that more PSE schools will eventually be admitted to the group. While MIT and Harvard have each pledged $30 million to edX, UC Berkeley will not bring any funding to the project. Instead, it will contribute technology -- specifically, a new online-education platform that engineers at the institution had already been working on. UC Berkeley will also take a leadership role in the project, agreeing to chair the "X University Consortium," a new governing body for edX. The Chronicle of Higher Education (free access)