I'm not sure why there's a down-vote here, because that was exactly the question I had. There has been a system of professors referring their top students to their colleagues for years, and on a small scale I don't see much issue. However, with these large online classes, these professors can stand to be gatekeepers to an incredibly massive - and valuable - source of leads. It doesn't help when there is no true transparency to the process, and a desire for the school to recoup costs - we assume the professor would just send the top 1000 over regardless of source, but what's to stop them from only referring the names of students who, say, enroll for credit and pay the university? Or those who pay some sort of a separate "consideration fee"?
I can't put my finger on why, but I'm a little unnerved by this...
