A near free online college education will benefit many who otherwise might not get a college education. A thought provoking article…
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-22-IHE_University_of_the_People_ST_N.htm?csp=34&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28News+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher …The University of the People relies on free syllabuses and learning materials from open courseware projects at institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It currently offers only two programs, business administration and computer science, and employs only five paid instructors.
Those instructors administer courses designed by a corps of faculty volunteers numbering about 800, by Reshef's count. Those professors put together courses using open courseware. They also write the final exams, which is one of the two ways the university makes its money; students pay to take the exams — between $10 and $100 each, depending on country of residence (students from poorer countries pay lower fees).
The other revenue comes from admission fees, which also run from $10 to $100 according to country. Admissions criteriaare rigorous and designed to weed out students who do not have high school certificates and a firm enough grasp of the English language to participate successfully in college-level courses.
Now in its third term, the University of the People has received 3,000 applications and admitted 380 students. …There are currently nine courses ready to be taught, and 20 more in development….
…One undeniable accomplishment is that University of the People has generated a lot of buzz from students. It has attracted 3,000 applications this year without a marketing budget. According to Internal surveys conducted during each of the first two terms, about 90% of the students there said they would recommend University of the People to a friend. And several students contacted through a University of the People Facebook group seemed enthusiastic about the free online college.
…There is, however, an elephant in the room: University of the People is not currently authorized to award degrees.
The process of gaining license to give out degrees is a complex one — made even more complex since California, where University of the People is based…. … Reshef says the university is currently studying what it needs to do to get approval to grant degrees in California, but that might not be the end of it; online programs have for years struggledwith state laws requiring them to gain approval from every state where they are educating students — a potentially lengthy, expensive process.
…The University of the People is also not accredited. It doesn't need to be to award degrees, but it does if it hopes to award degrees that hold much weight among many employers or persuade other higher-education institutions to count its students' credits.
Reshef says that University of the People is currently seeking accreditation in the United States….
…For the sort of students University of the People attracts, Reshef says, the approval of an accrediting body might be nice, but the important thing is being able to have access to college-level educational resources. "Whether it's accredited or not accredited," he says, "it's a question of getting this or nothing."
