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Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

Founded in California four years ago, Coursera has become one of the world's biggest providers of "massive, open, online courses" - known as Moocs. The online platform has 20 million students following courses from about 145 prestigious universities and institutions around the world.But most of the online courses have been short units that give students a certificate, rather than a full degree or credits towards a degree.

Coursera has announced a partnership with the US State Department to help refugees to access online courses to improve their job chances, such as English language lessons or computer coding.It would remove any costs from studying, such as fees for certificates showing the completion of courses.

EdX is offering a range of online courses from Arizona State University - and if a student passes eight of these, costing $200 (£150) each, it counts as the equivalent of a first year at university.