The University of Hong Kong was privileged last Friday to host Professor Richard C Levin, from 1993 to 2013 president of Yale University, and since the start of April this year CEO of Coursera, the world’s largest MOOC platform. Rick participated in several events on campus, and during the day certainly succeeded in conveying the excitement generated by the MOOC revolution. As he said, there is in recent e-learning advances “an incredible opportunity for universities to do good in the world”. That opportunity resides notably in the change now sweeping universities’ core business of advancing and disseminating knowledge – as possibilities for dissemination become truly universal. Coursera argues that we are now in an age of “education for everyone”, and on its homepage invites people to “Take the world’s best courses, online, for free.” To date, more than 10 million individuals have done that by accessing roughly 1000 Coursera courses provided by 115 university partners. Monthly course completions currently stand at about 100,000. For me, the potential impact came across most vividly in the story of another Yale economist, Robert J Shiller (who became a Nobel Economics Laureate in 2013). In 32 years at Yale, Shiller has taught maybe 8000 students. His Coursera MOOC on financial markets registered 160,000 students in its first session, and 20,000 full course completions. That truly does look like a move in the direction of education for everyone.