The Boston Globe reports on a site that posts students’ notes on faculty lectures.

Several professors, including the English professor and writer Louis Menand and the economist Greg Mankiw, have refused. Mankiw says he didn’t want to make it easier for students to cut class. “Listening to lectures and taking your own notes is part of the educational process,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Thanks to Mankiw for the pointer. Clearly, he does not think that reading a distilled version of his lectures is as valuable as hearing them in the original.

Again, the question of disintermediation of the collegiate institution lurks in the background. Can one unbundle the educational experience, and most importantly the credential signal, from the institution?