It is interesting that the U of People states several places on their site the following…

At present, University of the People is not an accredited institution. The University of the People plans to apply for accreditation and for authorization from recognized agencies and authorities in accordance with the rules, regulations and timelines of said agencies and authorities.

I wonder what roadblocks they may encounter as they seek to be recognized. Does the “free” model get in the way of more global acceptance particularly if you are starting from scratch as these folks are? There is a cost for all the services we expect but what is the price of recognition?

Stuart

“Canonical research findings suggest that American entrepreneurs who establish popular online markets for customized education will catalyze the creation of many good jobs in America, and will end the reign of America’s kleptobankers. Some of the researchers: Clayton Christensen, Paul Romer and Paul Krugman.”

The write-up also addresses ways to increase affordability…

Then you have the issue that in many countries in the majority world, parents are charged school fees for all levels of education – not the free state education we expect in the West. The fees are prohibitive for many parents – which kind of puts us just paying for Higher Ed into some form of perspective.

Would HE institutions be able to provide alternative models which go beyond the traditional egalitarian or elitist, cost-based educational model?

MIT, Stanford and Yale Universities have all opened their doors to this movement of free open educational resources. This trend has great implications for all HE institutions since its inception. Any HE or educational authorities could exploit such resources and leverage the movement to create an “education economy”.

This coupled with the various social media networking, communities of practice development and Web 2.0 application have benefited hundreds of millions or even billions of people around the globe, for people nearly of all ages. This movement would just accelerate with an exponential trajectory, under the current ecology.

So I see the University of People launch as just one move in the emergent “chess” competition.

What would be the next strategic move for most HE institutions in the chess play?

Would this be the critical moment to develop innovative and emergent social and educational “universities” that could better serve the community? I have included a few questions and comments in HE in my post.

Thanks Terry for this wonderful post.

The older mostly European and Latin American model of “free higher education” has always had problems with scaleability. Often there are very high standards that becuase of problems in secondray schools for the less wealthy, the ‘free’ became a subsidy for the rich and never really helped (and some say hindered) access to the majority of citizens. One big difference that I did not note in the University of People model, is that it is designed as a non profit (I beleive) but not subsidized and scalebable. Supposedly it acquired $5 million US capital startup funding with $1 million US from the founder.

Yes, interesting how Illich’s work and use of the term network seems to be well ahead of his time, but did you realize how technophobic he was? Supposedly, he refused to use microphones as too highly mediated for him, thus limiting the quantity (but not quality??) of those who could hear him at one time.
Cheers
Terry

Interesting to read your take on this new form of “free” education, particularly as it relates to open access institutions such as yours.

I’ve just come back from a conference in Scotland, where the notion of imposing any student fees at all (let alone high ones) on what has been a state-supported version of “free” higher education is still being hotly debated. What do you think of this older model of “free” higher education as compared to the supposedly “free” education offered by the University of the People?

Interesting to think of this new development in the light of Ivan Illich’s (Deschooling Society, 1971) eerily prescient discussion of the replacement of educational institutions by four kinds of “educational networks.”

Walter