Online universities have earned a reputation among traditional higher education institutions as businesses that offer low-quality degrees in exchange for hefty debt. But online University of the People challenges the stereotype. The University is completely free. Its mission is not to turn out a profit, but rather to create a truly global opportunity for education. A thousand students who live in 115 different countries are taught by the university's core of 2,000 volunteers. And traditional universities are starting to open its door to their very nontraditional free counterpart.
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In May, New York University announced it would accept students from University of the People at its Abu Dhabi campus. On Tuesday, HP invited the free university's students to become virtual interns with its Catalyst Initiative -- a global consortia of 56 organizations, most of them universities, that focuses on projects related to improving STEM education.
"I think it's important to support collaboration between the formal and informal education space," says Jeannette Weisschuh, HP's director of education initiative. "We believe educators from the formal space can learn from the informal space. ... I wouldn't say it's a revolution, but its an evolution of the existing education space."
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The consortium will select qualified interns who apply through University of the People to work virtually with its partners on projects that could include setting up webinars and developing some software elements.
University of the People offers two degree programs, one in business administration and one in computer science. Working with HP's consortium partners gives students a virtual equivalent to the internships that many students at physical universities get during summer internships. But they can have the opportunity even if they're working from an Internet cafe in a remote area of the world, as many of them are.
NYU has offered a further bridge to traditional education by inviting University of the People students to apply to its Abu Dhabi campus. Even though University of the People is not accredited, NYU will use performance in its classes to assess students for admission. It will also make some of those classes eligible for credit transfer, giving the free school's curriculum something like a nod of approval, says Shai Reshef, the founder of University of the People.
“NYU Abu Dhabi has distinguished itself not only by the quality of its students and the selectivity of its admissions, but also by its broad international reach,” said John Sexton, the president of NYU, in a statement. “That diversity is part of what draws young people of such talent to NYU Abu Dhabi."
Reshef says the relationship is focused on the Abu Dhabi campus partly because that campus has more money available for scholarships. Most, if not all, of his students would need full scholarships to attend.
"People who one year ago couldn't think about higher education at all, all of the sudden can think about NYU," Reshef says.
Top image courtesy of iStockphoto user RapidEye.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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