University for all

INTERNET: A new university wants to make higher education available to all. The International University of the People (UoP) will offer all its courses online — and practically free of charge.

“Hundreds of millions of people deserve to get education and don’t,” says Californian businessman Shai Reshef, UoP’s founder. “We are showing a way that this mass of people can be educated in a very efficient and inexpensive way,” Reshef told The Guardian.

Reshef has used $1 million of his own money to set up the university and is looking for an additional $5 million to keep it going. Students will be charged registration fees of between $15 and $50, plus $10 to $100 per exam.

Although the UoP’s initial offerings are limited —its instructors are all volunteers and the site went online only in late September — it has already attracted support from organizations like the UN’s Global Alliance for ICT and Development . The innovative approach has also caught the attention of other institutes of higher education.

"The concept is great, and one we'll see more and more," says Peter Scott of the Open University.

“The concept is great, and one we’ll see more and more,” says Peter Scott, director of the Knowledge Media Institute at Britain’s Open University. The Open University also provides students with free access to course materials on its OpenLearn website.

Daniel Greenwood, a professor of law at Hofstra University in New York, has volunteered for one day a week at UoP. Greenwood says he likes “the notion that you can create something that can be expanded to serve tens of thousands of students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education”.

Reshef says the main principle behind the UoP is to provide hope for a better future through higher education. “The majority have no other alternative.”