Try as I might, I cannot find any information on what the Computer Science program (+) actually <i>contains</i>. Are hundreds of students actually signing up and paying without having a clue what they're getting into, or am I just unable to navigate the site properly?<p>(+) <a href="http://www.uopeople.org/ACADEMICS/Programs/ComputerScienceProgram/tabid/218/Default.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.uopeople.org/ACADEMICS/Programs/ComputerSciencePr...</a>
Wow, if this is successful, it could be huge, particularly in combination with the various free/cheap laptop programs. I really hope this plays out well.
Current TV featured an alternative and accredited model at Berea College:<p>"At Berea, which was founded in 1855 as the first integrated college in the South, all 1,530 students work at least 10 hours a week in a campus or service job, earning $3.80 an hour and four years of free tuition. Eighty percent of the school's operating costs are funded by its endowment and the rest comes from donations."<p>In order to be accepted, you must demonstrate financial need.
I think this seems to be aimed more at countries where the resources for higher learning are absent apart from the very rich.<p>In those cases accreditation wouldn't be very important because the main focus would be on developing skills and the qualifications gained would speak for themselves.<p>Although I think if it is being aimed at the very disadvantaged the fees still seem like they would hold people back.
Why do they need an application fee to process a simple registration form? Are we supposed to believe that they'll actually deny admissions to anyone?<p>And $6 million? Sure sounds like everything could be automated to require zero human input. And its not like they need a ton of resources, if their target is 15K students, that whole site could be run on a single server
Be careful, if you don't turn in your homework, they might send you an angry letter warning you that you'll be getting another angry letter for not turning in your homework.
Wow, what a great piece of progress. Just like MIT's opencourseware I think that this is a great step forwards. We should use the internet much more to facilitate the best teachers reaching the most students. I can see a day in the future when the lecturing part of a course could be delivered by a leading academic and the student's tutorials and practicals could be given and marked more locally.
I hope this doesn't end up like Western Governor's University. Early on it was hard up for attracting students. I think it was (or is) an idea before it's early time but now will fit in.<p><a href="http://www.wgu.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wgu.edu/</a><p>Anyways, here's hoping.
Unfortunately, nothing good could be with their CS because of 'default.aspx'.<p>OSS in such kind of projects is so natural choice, leave alone wasted money for their MS licences.