University of the People
= The UoPeople is a free or nearly free university
URL = http://www.uopeople.org/
Description
1.
From the IHT:
"An Israeli entrepreneur with decades of experience in international education plans to start the first global, tuition-free Internet university, a nonprofit venture he has named the University of the People.
"The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia," said Shai Reshef, an entrepreneur and founder of several previous Internet-based educational businesses. "The open source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free. We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works. Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection."
The University of the People, like other Internet-based universities, would have online study communities, weekly discussion topics, homework assignments and exams. But in lieu of tuition, students would pay only nominal fees for enrollment ($15 to $50) and for exams ($10 to $100), with students from poorer countries paying the lower fees.
Reshef said his new university would use active and retired professors - some paid, some volunteers - along with librarians, master-level students and other professionals to develop and evaluate curriculum, and oversee assessments."
He plans to start small, capping enrollment at 300 students when the university begins in the autumn, and at first offering only bachelor's degrees in business administration and computer science. Reshef said the university would apply for accreditation as soon as possible.
Reshef said he hoped to build enrollment to 10,000 over five years, the level at which he said the enterprise should be self-sustaining. Start-up costs would be about $5 million, Reshef said, of which he planned to provide $1 million. He said he was currently trying to raise the other $4 million." (http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/25/technology/university.4-415520.php)
Status
Update 2011
"The university is not accredited, and it offers programs only in business administration and computer science. But in June, it got two votes of confidence: New York University announced a partnership under which unusually promising but needy University of the People students might be able to enroll at N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi campus and receive financial aid, and Hewlett-Packard announced an internship program, saying it believed strongly “in the work UoPeople is doing to democratize higher education.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/education/25future_people.html)
Update 2010
See: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-22-IHE_University_of_the_People_ST_N.htm
"A year has now passed since the University of the People opened its virtual doors to the world. And while it appears to be a functioning institution where education is indeed taking place, questions about the project's long-term viability — and its ability to replicate the essential functions of an actual university — are yet to be answered.
The biggest question is the most obvious, and that's money. Higher education might trade in ideas, but it runs on dollars. So how do you deliver education without tuition revenue?
Thriftily. 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.
Reshef last year predicted it would take an enrollment of 10,000 within five years to make the university financially sustainable, though he has upped that estimate to 15,000 in more recent interviews. Since the fees are tied to geography, that number could still change depending on where applicants wind up coming from, Reshef says. The project has not charged any fees yet, and is still leaning on its $5 million in seed money — $1 million of which came from Reshef's own pocket.
Soliciting help from faculty who are busy with obligations to their home institutions can be unwieldy, Reshef says, and some have failed to deliver on promises. The trick, he says, is to use pro bono labor smartly. "You never rely on a volunteer to a point where if one of them decides to stop, you're being stopped," he says.
...
There are currently nine courses ready to be taught, and 20 more in development, according to Reshef.
The manner in which those courses will be taught has also raised eyebrows. The University of the People uses a "peer-to-peer" learning model: Students are directed to the appropriate open course material, then encouraged to discuss it in online forums. The instructors log in several times daily to monitor discussions among students and interject when necessary. Students can send messages — either through the e-learning environment's chat feature or via e-mail — to their instructors if they are stuck.
But for the most part the students are expected to learn autonomously, by studying the open courseware materials and talking through concepts among themselves.
While many U.S. colleges offer seminars that operate in a similar way, having the professor in a marginal role might negatively affect learning outcomes, says Altbach — particularly when dealing with more difficult concepts. "I don't think that's a model that provides disciplined knowledge over a field of study," he says.
The best test of whether students are actually learning, of course, is how they do on the exams, which are developed by professors outside the university as part of the course-development process.
However, the data available as of the project's one-year anniversary have little to say about the long-term effectiveness of the model. The University of the People has data only from its first-term exams, when it taught just two orientation-level courses: English Composition and Skills for Online Learning. The pass rates were 86% and 74%, respectively; not bad, though there is no guarantee that students will perform as well on more advanced courses advertisedon the university's website, such as Comparative Programming Languages and Business Policy and Strategy.
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.
"[I] can feel that i have learn a lot from my colleagues and also from my devoted instructors and i know i will fit into any organization after i graduate because everything we learn here at the University of the People is practical and i really enjoy it a lot," Enoch Ampong, a 23-year-old Ghanaian who plans to study business administration, wrote in an e-mail. "[I] cant wait to tell the world about this wonderful experience," he added.
There is, however, an elephant in the room: University of the People is not currently authorized to award degrees." (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-22-IHE_University_of_the_People_ST_N.htm)
Update 2009
"The UoPeople is a free or nearly free university (there are some minor assessment costs per course depending on the country you are in that range from $10-$100. There is also a university entry fee of $15 to $50, again depending on the country you are located in). Shai noted that the UoPeople is intended for the millions (or billions)of people around the globe who do not have access to traditional higher education. Like Lucifer Chu who used his own money to create OOPS which is translating MIT content to traditional and simplified Chinese, Shai is contributing his own money to get this innovative university started (a cool $1 million of his own money). Of course, like the Wikimedia Foundation, his university also takes donations. He noted that the business plan indicates that they will break even when they get to 15,000 students. This might not be too far off into the future.
When I asked about current enrollments, he said that they have 180 students this fall. He also noted that people are signing up from nearly 50 countries already--for example, Jordan, Saudi, Brazil, Vietman, China, USA, Ethiopia, Russia, Syria, Columbia, Nigeria, Germany, UK, Israel, etc. The initial two courses are orientation ones in computer science and English which students must pass in order to continue their studies. At this point, they are not inventing any courses or technology. They are using free content found online and the Moodle course management system. There is no video content found in the UoPeople courses at this point; it is all text. Shai told me that the university is about access first and low cost. They do not want to deter people who are interested in learning. Hence, no video content for now as many would not be able to access them.
For the 180 students, there are more than 800 professors volunteering to teach. This is not your Aunt Betsy type of PTA volunteers. These professors come with master's or doctoral degrees. Simple math indicates that this is more than 4 professors for each student. That is certainly the best instructor-student ratio I have ever heard of. What's more, it is an indication of the many people who want to teach college level courses or expand beyond their current offerings. But these "professors" are not directly instructing students. Instead, they are available for students when and where needed. I think that is the model of 21st century teaching and learning. When a learning need arises, a teacher should appear. And those teachers can come from any setting or location on the planet.
When I asked him about similar ventures, Shai noted that they are different from Peer 2 Peer University, in that P2PU does not offer programs and degrees. Instead P2PU just provides guides people through free online content. How do these compare? Perhaps think of it this way...perhaps OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources are Level 1 or Phase 1 of the Open Education movement--free stuff which you can explore online. P2PU is a transitionary phase but let's call it Phase 2--free stuff you can explore online with help from mentors, tutors, coaches, and facilitators. The University of the People is then Phase 3--free courses and degrees using free and open content. What is Phase or Level 4 or 5? Where is this headed?
Shai also surprised me by saying that they hope to be accredited at some point. He did not mention how or by what agency. For now, the University of the People is located in Pasedena, California." (http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/2009/11/talking-with-worlds-youngest-teacher.html)