There are a couple of insights that led to the creation of University of the People. Firstly, I discovered that online education works. I have been involved in education for about 20 years now. Among other things, I was involved in the creation of the first online university outside the U.S.  It was an institute associated with the University of Liverpool, but was based in the Netherlands. I spent three years there building this university until we sold it in 2004—with mixed feelings I have to say. On the one hand it made me realise how powerful online learning is. For example, as a student you can combine your studies with other activities more conveniently. Also, for the university it offers a means of reaching people practically anywhere in the world. The main problem with such initiatives, however, is that this type of education is still very expensive and therefore remains out of reach to most people in the world.

 

The other important lesson, which I learned later on, is that communities exist where people help each other out with homework and study; and that they do so without getting paid. That was a revelation for me. I thought that I understood human nature; but clearly I didn’t. However, the key facilitators for these sorts of behaviour are the social networks. They’re needed to bring like-minded people together and to create a platform for exchanging help and support.  

If you link these lessons to the emergence of open source technology and open access study material (there is a tremendous amount of coursework freely available online) then you inevitably come to the conclusion that it must be possible to bring tuition-free education to the world. In most parts of the world higher education is very expensive or simply not available. Others cannot attend university because it is too far away and they cannot leave their family. Cultural factors play a role too, with women often excluded from higher education. As a result, there are so many people out there who do not have access to higher education. They’re quite simply stuck; they’re blocked in their attempts to develop themselves and seek a better career. For all these people, free online education would be a huge benefit. And it is possible to offer such education today. To be honest, I cannot think of a better or more important use of the internet than education. With University of the People I’m doing what must be done! I didn’t invent anything new; I’m just combining what exists already and am trying to get it done.

We announced the project in January last year (2009) and from the first minute we received tremendous support all round. For example, we have partnerships with the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID), the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and UNESCO. Top academics from many of the first tier universities in the world—e.g. Columbia, NYU, Insead, etc—are joining our advisory committees, both the general advisory committee and the programme committees in computer science and business administration. These people are helping us set up the programmes and oversee their quality.

 

In addition, another 2000 professors from all over the world—some active, some retired—have offered to support us in our programmes. Obviously we couldn’t possibly manage so many staff members, but it shows how overwhelming the support has been thus far. Also from students: we’re currently in our fifth term and have accepted over 530 students from more than 100 countries. They’ve been exceptionally supportive of our work; and tolerant of mistakes. Every week we ask for their feedback and on a regular basis they also complete an in-depth questionnaire for us. To illustrate, on the question of whether they would recommend the university to their peers, 96% say that they would. I think the reason is that they really appreciate what they are receiving here; not that it is perfect.

I want to emphasise two things. Firstly, the main reason that we want to offer people access to higher education is so that they can improve their standard of living and their social position. That is why we started with two programmes: computer sciences and business administration. These are programmes that are geared to help people get jobs; and they are culturally unbiased. That is important. Unlike for example a history programme, business administration is a pretty universal discipline.

 

Secondly, we think it is important that we include people from different backgrounds and regions in our classes. That is so vital. There is nothing like education to bring peace to the world; to bring people from different sides of the world together; to work together and learn about each other. That is a great mission!

Students have to apply if they wish to participate in a programme. The basic admittance criteria are a high school diploma and proficiency in English. If these are verified the student is accepted and begins with two orientation courses, one is an English language course and the other is a computer skills programme. Students must pass these two courses if they wish to continue. This is important because it assesses their ability to cope with academic studies.

 

Once through the orientation courses, students can participate in the academic courses. These are all 10 week courses with specific start and end dates. In other words, students who join a class—typically about 20 students per class—all start together. Each week starts on a Thursday and ends on a Wednesday. At the start of the week the students log into their ‘class’ independently, where they will find the lecture of the week, the reading material, the homework assignment and the discussion question of the week. This is the core of our pedagogy. The first student to come online—typically in Asia—begins the self-study and then replies to the discussion question. As the other students come online they also respond to the discussion question—and to the previous replies from other students. This process caries on until all have commented at least four times. In this way, most of the study and support is done by the students themselves; although there are instructors available for support if needed. 

 

At the end of each week there is a brief test and a final exam at the end of the 10 weeks. It is important to note that nothing is done live or in real-time; no use is made of video or audio tools. Students have total flexibility and we want to ensure that people from all over can participate, even if they have really poor internet connections.  

As I said, we have over 500 students today but in principle there are no limits to our student number. We hope to be able to serve all the people who need us. Could we reach 100,000 students? Why not? I hope that we are building a model here that shows to the world that it is possible to teach masses of people at a fraction of what it costs in a live setting. Especially in developing nations it would make sense to spend scarce resources on online higher education, as opposed to physical universities that cost millions to build, and to which so few people have access to anyway. This is not to say that online universities need to replace physical universities.  On our part we would welcome collaboration with any university that wants to work with us. We’re not here to compete with existing universities; we’re here to supplement the existing model. A student from an Ivy League University recently asked me whether we are creating competition to their university.  No, obviously not.  With University of the People we are targeting people who have nothing.