Want to learn about the iPhone, inside and out? Then your local college or university might just be the place to do it very soon. Last week, Apple launched the iPhone Developer University Program, a free initiative that aims to help higher education institutions who want to teach development and intimate details about the iPhone.

Given that teaching courses on iPhone development would likely involve in-depth discussions of the iPhone’s capabilities and programming frameworks as part of the class, the initiative has raised both eyebrows and questions among existing iPhone developers in regards to Apple’s iPhone non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

At present, the NDA prevents iPhone developers and programmers from discussing the technical ins and outs of programming for the iPhone, even with other application developers who are also bound by the NDA by default. It’s unknown whether Apple will create a separate agreement for the university program that specifically permits discussion or whether the current NDA will be changed in some way to take this new course into account.

The program, available only to accredited institutions in the US, allows teachers to create iPhone developer teams of up to 200 students who can develop and distribute apps among themselves or even using the App Store. Apple’s standard developer program costs $99 if you want to test applications on a device, but the university program is free and confers the same benefits; Apple also has a $299 Enterprise Development program for corporations over 500 people that wish to develop their own in-house applications.