OneWorld.net (U.S.)

for adapting social networking principles in an effort to make higher education accessible to everyone, regardless of where they were born or how much money they have

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (OneWorld.net) - With support from the United Nations and Yale University, entrepreneur Shai Reshef has launched the first nonprofit, tuition-free online university, aiming to make higher education a reality for the countless individuals worldwide who want it badly but until now never had the chance.

The first 178 students to study at the UoPeople, who began their courses in September, are aged 16 to 61 and hail from 49 different countries -- the largest numbers coming from Indonesia, Brazil, the United States, and Nigeria. Nearly 2,000 people from 142 countries applied in just the first half year after the school opened for applications.

Reshef's big idea is this: the same principles that have made Facebook and other online social networks fabulously popular in recent years can also bring education to the masses.

"The idea is to reach the hundreds of millions of people who graduate high school, have all the ability and the right to study in an academic institution, but cannot do it either because they don't have the money or because there aren't enough institutions," said Reshef, according to an article in the U.S.-based Chronicle of Higher Education. "In quite a few countries in the world, the demand is much more than the supply," Reshef added.

Shai Reshef. © Univ. of the PeopleReshef's idea likely wouldn't have gotten off the ground just a few years ago, when high-speed Internet connectivity was still just a dream outside of major metropolitan areas in wealthier countries, let alone in developing nations. But today's high-speed networks reach into practically all the world's countries, making it possible for eager learners almost anywhere to download and study the high-quality course materials already available online, for free.

What they need is a curriculum to bring together that coursework into a useful set of lessons, a community to help them learn when they get stuck, and a professor to work through the toughest concepts with them and ensure they've learned the key points before moving on.

At UoPeople, the course structure and guidance come from 800+ professors around the world who have already agreed to volunteer a little of their time. The students themselves create the interplay of ideas that makes higher education so powerful -- they just do it online rather than in person.

"Hundreds of millions of people deserve to get education and don't," Reshef was quoted in a profile for the British newspaper The Guardian. "We are showing a way that this mass of people can be educated in a very efficient and inexpensive way."

Reshef may have discovered how -- in the globally connected age -- to efficiently bring together all the component parts necessary for motivated students to learn, regardless of where they are and how much money they have. Anyone who has spent time in an underresourced country knows there is no shortage of motivated students who have been waiting for someone to bring together all those parts.

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