This is exactly right. Bureaucrats in general have lifetime employment, so the only check on their power is the press. In this case, they made the colossal mist

This is exactly right. Bureaucrats in general have lifetime employment, so the only check on their power is the press. In this case, they made the colossal mistake of attacking Coursera without thinking through the optics. Most of the people the Minnesota Office of Higher Ed intimidates are not Stanford professors who run internet businesses with millions of visitors and have friends at the New York Times. Usually even a state government has a bigger megaphone than their target; this time they didn't. It's going to be more interesting when the federal Department of Education gets involved. Federal bureaucrats aren't super smart, but they do have smarter people than state government; when DoE attacks, maybe a few quarters down the road, it will probably approach via the angle of "widespread plagiarism" or "unaccredited institution" or something that would at least win some supporters in a comment thread. Humanities professors are the big losers in a Coursera world, as they teach classes that are less practically useful and therefore less likely to attract visitors/monetization. They are also more politically connected than their science/engineering peers, and more likely to resort to government when they realize the extent of the threat that online ed poses to their sinecures. I give 50/50 odds of some kind of federal showdown of this nature between Coursera and DoE as the tuition bubble pops and universities start to go bust over the next 5-10 year time frame. The government has a great deal invested in the higher ed system (and vice versa) via Sallie Mae, NIH, and dozens of other vehicles and will strenuously resist disruption.