Many universities are publicly funded anyway, so I don’t see why they shouldn’t provide the materials for free to the public (regarding both teaching and research).
I wish something like this would happen but I don’t really see it happening anytime soon in the US.
i know for a fact that MIT does at least some similar stuff via OpenCourseWare so it’s not impossible for this to catch on, at least
As far as I’m aware, most of Coursera’s courses, which are offered by instructors from many different universities and organizations, are available in “audit mode.” You don’t get the accreditation toward a degree that you would if you paid and verified your identity, but you do get to go through the whole course. So if you’re into it for the sake of the knowledge, there’s that. I’ve done a handful of courses over the last decade or so in a wide range of topics (sound design, philosophy, astrobiology, paleobiology, etc), and it’s been pretty cool.
