University of the People offers low-cost college courses via the Internet

University of the People has enrolled 1,500 students from 132 countries. Courses are taught online by professors from around the world who volunteer their time.

|
Feisal Omar/Reuters/File
A man browses the internet at a cyber cafe in Mogadishu, Somalia, earlier this year. University of the People allows students anywhere in the world to take nearly free courses online. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $500,000 toward the effort.

University of the People has an ambitious goal: to use the Internet to provide an extremely low-cost college education to students around the world.

And the nonprofit’s big idea is starting to gain traction with grantmakers.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $500,000 to support the university’s effort to gain accreditation. The grant comes on the heels of recent awards by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Intel Foundation, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Since its inception in 2009, University of the People has enrolled 1,500 students from 132 countries. Courses are taught by professors from around the world who volunteer their time, and the university offers degrees in business administration and computer science.

“If you educate one person, you change his life,” says Shai Reshef, the technology executive who founded and leads the university. “If you educate many, you change the world.”

While University of the People uses the Internet to deliver courses, the organization takes a straightforward, no-bells-and-whistles approach to technology.

“Since we wanted to make sure that any person with any Internet connectivity will be able to study with us, we don’t require broadband,” says Mr. Reshef. “So we don’t have audio, and we don’t have video.”

The wide variety of ways that students gain access to the Internet has surprised even the university’s leaders.

Some students take part using dial-up connections at home, while others study from Internet cafés. To cut down on Internet café charges, some students download classroom materials to a flash drive, study and complete assignments on an offline computer, and then return to the Internet café to upload their work. Some students rely entirely on mobile phones for their Internet access.

“We didn’t know it was possible, and then one of the students showed us,” says Mr. Reshef.

The one place where University of the People provides the Internet connection for students is in Haiti. There, the university is working with local charities to provide computer centers to help 250 earthquake survivors complete their studies.

University of the People does not charge tuition, but it does require some fees. The application fee ranges from $10 to $50, depending on the student’s country of residence. Applicants from developing countries pay less.

Starting in September, the university will charge a $100 exam-processing fee for each course. Students who cannot afford it will be able to seek contributions from donors to cover the fees on a Kiva-like Web site the university is developing or apply for a University of the People scholarship.

“The theory is that nobody will be excluded for financial reasons,” says Mr. Reshef. “But we still expect our students to help us become sustainable.”

This article originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to University of the People offers low-cost college courses via the Internet
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/0716/University-of-the-People-offers-low-cost-college-courses-via-the-Internet
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe