The Cambridge-MIT agreement comes on the heels of an expanding number of alliances between MIT and foreign universities and multinational corporations.
These partnerships are fully consistent with MIT's founding principles of the "dignity of useful work," Bacow said, adding that educational institutions need "to engage the world around them."
MIT already has distance-learning partnerships with the University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technical University, also in Singapore. MIT also now has a $20 million alliance with the Ford Motor Company, and a $30 million alliance with bio-tech giant Amgen.
And last month MIT partnered with Microsoft to explore uses of technology in higher education.
Wire services contributed to the reporting of this story.