University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs | Hacker News Reader

University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

uopeople.edu

725 pointstomato2juice464 comments

Hi. I attended this school and then got accepted to another more standard institution, which I applied at the same time to. The new institution, learning I had been attending U of the P, promptly told me that U of the P credits would not transfer. Universal transferability in question, I opted out.

I did enjoy meeting people from all walks of life, all over the world. However, I also saw a grossly wide range of educational professionalism in the students. In the introductory mandatory writing course, for example,there were a number of classmates whom could not grasp the idea of plagiarism being unethical. With a plagiarism assignment graded by those peers, it was difficult to not feel like higher educational learning was moving along for oneself at a progressively intellectually challenging pace.

> could not grasp the idea of plagiarism being unethical

I remember experiencing this at a private religious university. At the time, my hyper-religious mind was blown to see students outright cheating in the Testing Center.

Since then I've been exposed to additional perspectives on plagiarism. It is an extremely deep and nuanced topic. A few years out of school, I ended up mentoring and then teaching college students who seem to match the sort of person you describe. This was a huge shock at first.

The more I learned about these students, the more I learned about the sheer variety of perceptions involved: One person's fairness concept is, to another person or group, a latent power dynamic which ought to be questioned.

Or, this person's concern for the big-picture ethical questions is this other person's small-picture roadblock in an economic problem which seems more urgent with each passing moment. You want a big picture? Can you justify it in seconds, with something that's not simply a subjective perception or largely-covert moral construct of your own?

Yet another person's assumption of perpetually commonly-understood contract is another's baroque exercise in cleverness and flexibility. It's the sneaky laser dance from _Ocean's Twelve_, and _that_ kind of challenge is, psychologically speaking, extremely energizing for them. Don't think they didn't notice how things work in the "real" world! (When these two see each other face to face--so to speak--there are harsh outcomes)

Anyway--sorry to hear about your experience & thank you for sharing so that others can be more educated about their choice of institution.

The problem with plagiarism isn't best characterized as some sort of power struggle between teachers and students via bullshit assignments.

The purpose of learning to write is to make yourself a formidable communicator. If you can independently analyze a new topic to learn something new and apply the results of those learnings towards a particular goal, you can be amazingly effective in everything you aim for. But if you plagiarize every assignment you rob yourself of your own training of this critically important competency.

Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

This is under the assumption that you see college is a program of self-betterment and not busy work for receiving a degree that says you can have a middle-class job. It feels like even the universities themselves see it as the latter these days.

I think, plagiarism also harms the character. If instead of doing things right and put effort, you cheat, eventually you learn that doing things right does not worth it. And then it becomes a personal trait, so to speak.

Not necessarily hurt you, but doesn't help as much as it could.

From talking to people further along the plagiarism spectrum than myself, they see it as developing good taste or almost coaching.

Yeah yeah in a writing class its hard to justify not learning to write. But in any other class...

Lets hypothetically say we're in a computer science class and our assignment is to write an essay on the supremacy of the C++ language. There's all these English department goals of becoming a better writer that would be met by my pitiful attempt to glorify polymorphism. But the C++ goal of learning to be a better C++ programmer would be best met by extensive reading and research to find the best Stroustrup quote. If I were involved in the academic scene of converting papers into salary via cooperation with other researchers, I need to quote my coworkers accurately to share the revenue appropriately. However what if I don't have the goal of playing that game? In a learning environment in casual verbal conversation I might tell my C++ instructor that C++ main() returns an int. Yet if I write that down as I just did, I'm committing the academic sin of plagiarism by not properly footnoting Stroustrup, that's a direct quote from him. But I'm not trying to play the academic game, I'm trying to learn to program, and develop good taste by copying the right people. It seems a little unfair to grade students based on playing a different game than they signed up for. Even if the institutional goal is to produce little academics, in practice almost none of the kids will become academics.

That's a very authoritarian example of copying a guy at the top; but it also applies to lower level copying.

They're not necessarily wrong or self destructive, just kids on a different path with different priorities.

> Power struggle between teachers and students via...

Uh, did I say that, or were you intuiting? Not exactly a learner's approach :D

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

Except when it benefits you? This is the subjective perception I was talking about. That their mindset differs does not instantly make them wrong, especially when you can throw a dime out the window and hit an educated professional who falls short of the best (heaven forbid the "perfect") ethical standard.

Ethics is, and should be, hard. If you put words into my mouth, is your position ethical? This stuff requires the ability to stick around, listen, learn, and stay in the game, moreso if you plan to claim the high ground.

I wonder if a similar principle is at play when people throw links at each other in place of a debate

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you

Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.

>Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

and a job well done is its own reward right? i think it's very pretentious to say that to a person who's attending school in order to improve their lot in life (because credentials count for so much); that what's more important than the credential is some abstract notion of improvement. you might as well cast it in terms of sin and salvation.

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

Funny enough, this idea is almost certainly one you are plagairising. Perhaps you could find nuance, depth, and understanding by turning those words on themself?

Somehow I feel like most of the debate here centers on these words:

> The purpose of <foo> is <bar>.

That little word "the" there at the beginning seems a bit myopic to me. I mean, clearly, something like writing functions in more ways than one. Here are some other potential purposes of writing, off the top of my head:

* Deconstruct your personal ontology,

* Intrinsic artistic value,

* Emotional expression,

* Elucidation of unconscious grammatical habits,

* Social signaling.

Any of those are perfectly functional operations of the writing act, and a few of them actually benefit by plagiarising (Identifying these is left as an exercise for the reader). Of course, saying that "university should allow students to operate under any possible goal framework" is a different matter, but hopefully that at least points toward one way of thinking with more nuance about plagiarism.

I've seen this myself, and I think this sort of moral relativism is pretty bad for society in general. You can spin a story of victim hood or power dynamic to justify anything unethical. What should be a fair transaction becomes a game of who can backstab first and who is left holding the bag. This I think leads to a breakdown in the fabric that keep things stable eventually.

The problem is that these people will plagiarize their previous employers' code when working on your codebase and your code when they move on to their next employer or will also plagiarize FOSS code without worrying about the niceties of licensing. Their perceptions are one thing but the legal reality makes these sort of people hazardous to employ.

Except when their boss hired them because they're clever and can solve extant work problems (huge workload) via a happily-localized scope of concern. I've seen this easily placed back on the employer. Non-FOSS versions happen in various industries all the time.

You can make the argument that legal teams exist to relieve the very potent pressure of this uncomfortable situation for those on both ends. There are truths here that flow right up to the top and all the way to the bottom. Attacking those perspectives is too hard. Better in some ways to set up social norms around it. Thus, lawyers, the concept of win-win negotiation, etc. Just when your anger is boiling over you learn that the C-levels want you to drop the moral crusade.

This is a thoughtful comment, at the same time, it's some pretty scary postmodernism.

Advocating cheating because it helps a student from possibly lesser means achieve their 'check-box' in education is missing the point, in a very serious way.

We can always strive to have an open mind, to try and be sympathetic to the plight of others - but the Truth is pretty much still the Truth.

Plagiarism is not a controversial subject in the context you've mentioned, it's just wrong in every sense.

More pragmatically - if someone is in a situation wherein their need for the 'checkbox degree' outweighs their actual need to learn something, then they almost assuredly should not be there. It's pointless for society to be spending a lot of energy and resources only for people to waste them, and it ruins the credibility of the system. I'm not unaware of the fact that a lot of Uni may feel like jumping through hoops, but even then, if the hoops are merely jumped through, we're learning something. Uni is not meant to be enlightening at every step, it's also, like everything a grind.

A 'free public Uni' is going to attract a wide swath of students, and there will necessarily be all sorts of issues, probably very low graduation rates, challenges in communicating the material. I totally support the idea, at the same time, we should strive to maintain the credibility of our own ideals and institutions. Universities are there to help develop character, they're not just about 'absorbing data'. In the long run, it's worth it.

The "checkbox degree" hypothesis is mostly false. Some companies do require a degrees, yes. But that's a minimum requirement. Literally zero companies promise a job to everyone with a degree.

It's a bit difficult for me to believe that there are highly competent people who would be effective employees now, but for whom cheating is easier than doing the work. Remember: cheating (without getting caught) takes time too.

I can write a few page essay on any given topic much faster than I can figure out how to copy/pasta that essay without getting caught.

I can implement most undergraduate programming assignments faster than I can figure out how obfuscate someone else's code enough to fool cheat detectors.

Etc.

The subset of people who are truly competent but for whom cheating is easier than doing the work has to be vanishingly small.

It depends, like many things, this is very nuanced.

In my time at university, I knew many capable and bright people who cheated once in a while, but only in well-picked cases, not as their general policy. For example if there was a mandatory bullshit subject, or something that they regarded as worthless waste of time etc. and rather spent the time on the important things.

I think it's a very naive shielded "good boy" view of the world that there is some simple rigid moral rule like never lie, never cheat etc. It may work in a benevolent environment like rich protective parents and never dealing with adversity. One has to develop one's own sense of justice.

This can be easily misconstrued. The point isn't to believe in nothing, be exploitative and selfish. Rather, be mindful and don't just blindly follow someone's bullshit. Indeed much of the purpose of education is to kill this ability and to certify the capability for blind obedience and jumping through hoops without ever questioning it.

One guy I mentioned in the above parts is actually really honest in general and sometimes I wonder how he gets away with it in corporate environments, saying straight nos, not putting up with colleagues criticizing him for working too fast etc. I've usually been much more careful but he's more successful. And it's an art of picking your battles, refusing bullshit, sometimes openly sometimes secretly (at least don't lie to yourself), sometimes making a stink, sometimes just complaining to fellow students, knowing the unwritten lore of which courses are unofficially considered "cheats allowed" by most talented students and probably the teacher included.

The world is complicated, but for shielded kids with underdeveloped social skills it can be hard to learn how widespread "rule bending" is in real adult life and how much this is basically known, expected and part of life.

Again, this is not to say be selfish and disregard others. Rather, think for yourself, know when something is bullshit (there is lots of fancy official institutional stamped-and-signed authoritative bullshit out there, often coming from people who know it's bullshit but either don't care of feel their hands are tied).

I agree. I'm a CS major and am forced to take a class on history. The class is entirely online and the teacher doesn't seem to really care one bit. The entire class is just random quizzes that can easily be googled/ Just follow along on quizlet.

I have two options; Read the super boring textbook for 5 hours, take the test legit and get an 80% or I quizlett the test get 100% and spend the next 5 hours listening to Dan Carlins "Hardcore History" Podcast which i find much more informative and enjoyable.

> Can you justify it in seconds, with something that's not simply a subjective perception or largely-covert moral construct of your own

You are making this way too complicated.

It's honesty vs. dishonesty.

Those of us playing on team honesty are right to view the dishonest as playing on the opposite team.

Which team is actually morally right, is the complex issue.

> You are making this way too complicated.

> It's honesty vs. dishonesty.

Kind of like you're either a criminal or you're not. If you drive 58mph on a 55mph zone you are. Otherwise you're not.

Binary positions are always convenient, once you pick a side.

This is a great meta level view of the moral perception landscape, the individual replies advocating for one particular prescriptive position or the other are missing the forest for the trees.

> Since then I've been exposed to additional perspectives on plagiarism. It is an extremely deep and nuanced topic.

There are deep and nuanced ways in which people tell themselves and others how ethical they think they are taking credit for other people's work.

It's not really something that is up for discussion whether it's bad. The rules are pretty clear, and for serious higher education the punishments are extremely harsh. And deservedly so.

What does it even matter what it says on your diploma if you cheated your way to getting it?

These people might pat themselves on the chest for being oh so clever in subverting the system or whatever, but what does it really mean? That you're good at cheating, unwilling to do the work, and gladly take credit for other people's work. In other words, being a useless turd.

You could have been studying astronomy, physics, math ... but instead all that you really proved is that you're good at cheating.

People are extremely good at justifying their own actions in any shape and form. Reminds me ex's mother,who was a hard core church goer and was undeclaring profits from her company. When asked why would she do such thing,her excuse was that the taxes are way too high( the country was within top 20 countries in the world when it comes to taxes). Another thing is that usually these things don't happen all at once but rather gradually. The same is observable in companies,where corruption start from tiny things and evolve over time.

... the Testing Center!? Hey I went there too.

But I don't see how this is more nuanced that being honest or dishonest. I really pride myself on being able to see where a lot of opposing viewpoints are coming from, but I can't see how any of the people you describe are doing much more than lying to themselves about what they're doing.

How is this different to the following?

"Using counterfeit money is arguably OK because some of the people who use it might need it, or see the need to earn a living as a needless waste of time as long as there's idiots who'll accept fake currency".

The issue with counterfeit money is that it devalues the worth of all other money.

But given who holds the majority of the money being devalued, given the extent that money is already being devalued for the benefit of some at the expense of others, and given that the idea of taking a relative to wealth portion from the group for the benefit of the poor is a form of redistribution the group already engages in regardless of the consent of the giver, I think you can easily construct an argument that it is not immoral to use counterfeit money as long as you pick the right targets.

Wait, this is interesting. I thought plagiarism is universally bad? Can someone explain?

themodelplumber is a perceptive observer of human psychology, and they've described some of the ways people justify cheating with one narrative or the other. This isn't advocating for cheating or plagiarism, just hypothesizing why some brains are happy to do it.

People have to justify bad things otherwise they wouldn't do them. This is how we get racism, antisemitism and discrimination in general. A lot of taboo activities have an initial moral barrier and once you break it there is nothing stopping you from doing it over and over again.

Plagiarism was very widespread in my university. The students doing it were simply not punished

> At the time, my hyper-religious mind was blown to see students outright cheating in the Testing Center.

Then you would have lost your mind during some of my upper division STEM courses, where the normal class average is in the mid 40% on the high end and high 30s most semesters. We had a class average of ~83% in one of them, and when the professor was in total disbelief about how blatant they were being (several didn't even try not to get 100%) he got upset and decided to stop re-using the previous year's exams that were circulating amongst the Frats/Sororities and the class average dropped back down to low 30% for the last 2 Midterms and finals. This personally helped me as I got my average to a B+ range after my Lab scores were included.

Academia, be it online of IRL, it always going to have that element of corruption, there has just been so much money to be made that it drew the worst from other sectors into its administrations. Eric Weinstein goes into the depth about the artificial scarcity within STEM that was created in the US to favour a 'race to the bottom' approach to wages since the the 90s, and he went to both MIT and Harvard!

My best professors were often disillusioned and jaded after having been in Academia for a few decades, one even having to petition and protest to the Dean of their departments to be paid for having taught back to back Summer courses during the budget cuts. A person who went to Oxford for his BSc, no less...

All of this is taking place while hearing about some high ranking official or executive is in the process of being disgraced for having plagiarized their Masters or PhD thesis decades ago, which begs the question how the hell did it pass back then? Don't they all have to go through dissertations defenses and have academic advisors who are PhD or Post Docs in the very same department?

I won't even talk about the administrative led favoritism and vetting they did for foreign students during my time there, either.

I'm a proponent of of Online Learning in general, especially as its disrupting the Brick and Mortar University exploitation model; you can now get a Masters in Electrical Engineering from CU Boulder entirely via Coursera for $20k with installments and Financial Aid available where applicable, whereas that's not even the total cost of a single year of Undergraduate studies there. Which really sucks for incoming students, but could be a net boon if they can start reaching the undergrad degrees in time now that most Universities are having to do that due to COVID.

I just think its worth keeping in mind that this institution (academia) doesn't deserve to be regarded anything more than the corrupt money-pit that it is, which occasionally avails itself to allow brilliant minds to excel in their field, after having exploited them to publish and use their labs until the can make a name for themselves and operate outside of it. I just think about the wasted Human capital, talent, and drive that you only have when you're young, naive and idealistic and determined to make make a difference in the World.

This detailed reply is fantastic. I want to paint a narrative in acrylic. (Perhaps just my mood today). It will have a plummer modeling on a catwalk as a moral war rages of cool fashion balconies meet the vision of the dog fights in a proverbial rotation of another fresh coat to the red carpet. See u in the concrete warehouse just short of arms reach, but certainly out of the limelight. Or in. Or out. Or in. Which is real?

You're welcome!

> The new institution, learning I had been attending U of the P, promptly told me that U of the P credits would not transfer. Universal transferability in question, I opted out.

Yes, many schools will not accept coursework from nationally accredited universities. This includes coursework from UoPeople. You will not be able to apply for many graduate schools as well. A degree from UoPeople definitely comes with limits, and I wish the school was a little more forward about that. (There are lots of discussions about this on the internal social network.)

This isn't restricted to untraditional schools. At least one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges due to the practice of transferring for the final couple years. Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

If that was happening in my state I’d definitely be writing my representatives to take action and change that- transferability to a university while being able to live at home and pay less was quite explicitly one of the points of having a community college system when I was growing up.

> Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

Everything I've ever heard about and learned of the college admissions and pricing situation makes me prefer that latter.

That's surprising. Around me it's mostly been the opposite with schools signing transfer agreements and the community colleges developing programs specifically for students who plan to transfer.

Though, in the case of UoPeople, it's purely about nationally accreditation lacking the prestige (and sometimes rigor) of regional accreditation. It's been that way for at least a couple of decades since I started reading up on higher ed.

A degree says something about the student. I completely understand why universities would not want to accept credits from school below their own qualification level. If they confer a degree to a student that student is representing the university's education quality to everyone that hires them or works with them.

Spending three years at a community college and expecting the credits to transfer to a major university makes no sense for the institution. At that point they did a minority of your training, why would they recommend you?

one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges

Do you remember which state and university?

Yes I was slightly piffed. Yet, the professor was notably intelligent and very professional. My comment was for others wondering if it was a scam. Its not a scam, it's real, but preferably for people seeking a multicultural experience along with their general educational knowledge, irregardless of the loss of highly guaranteed nontransferrability. Perhaps if one is retired, for example, it would simply be an amazing choice. :)

Speaking on your comment about plagiarism, my second term there was a student who submitted their Java homework in a Word document. It contained two screenshots. The first was of the NetBeans IDE. The second was of their browser opened to a Github page that contained the answer to the assignment. They'd un-destructively cropped the second using Word. They made it look like it was typed into NetBeans. I was able to track down the original source.

>there were a number of classmates whom could not grasp

Sorry, pet peeve. It's "who". "Classmates" are the ones doing "could not grasp" instead of "could not grasp" being done to them.

Any easy trick I use to help remember which to use is to replace who/whom with he/him to see which makes more sense in the context.

"He" could not grasp. => "Who" could not grasp.

I should vote for "him" => "Whom" should I vote for?

Not to invalidate your observation, but plagiarism is a hot topic at any college or university. I attended 6 different ones and in all of them it was top or near the top of concerns.

I am sorry to hear that your transfer of credit was not possible between UoPeople and the more standard institution. But I think that you should not feel bad or think that because the transfer was not possible implies that UoPeople standard is low or questionable. I say so because transfer of credit depends on the university in question, University A may refuse but University B may accepts and both universities are of high standard. For example, there are universities of higher standards out there that accepts transfer of credit from UoPeople, all you need do is to first of all carry out a research to know such universities before you apply rather than applying before requesting for transfer of credit which might not be possible. As for the aspect of plagiarism, I must say that it is a serious offense and at UoPeople, many students have not grasp the idea because they did not take their orientation classes and foundation courses seriously else they will not be ignorant or be victims. So putting all these together truly makes one feels that studies at UoPeople is not like higher education, but on the other hand, everything being equal,if you are a student at UoPeople, then it means that you should be responsible to follow all the instructions and rules governing the platform right to the end of your study then you will feel that UoPeople is more than a higher education center. NB: There is no institution in the world without a downside that affects the student as well.

>there were a number of classmates whom could not grasp the idea of plagiarism being unethical

It might help to define what form of plagiarism you encountered as there are some behaviors that count as plagiarism (at least were counted as such back in my college ethics class) which I never found any valid reasoning for. I have no difficulty understanding the ethical issues of passing off someone else's work as your own, but you can also plagiarize by passing off your own work as your own.

I've just completed my first term with UoPeople. I agree that I learned a lot about plagiarism and even had the opportunity to report some!

For me UoPeople is a blessing. I'm able to pursue a higher education all while working and supporting my family. This will give me so many new opportunities for better careers when I eventually move back to the states.

The educational method is challenging. I do like peer assessment, but I feel that some peers don't really try when grading. I like to give grades that are warranted, good or bad. Being told my work is not good with no correction is highly vexing.

I hope to continue to grow as a student with UoPeople and see others do the same.

I mean, that's probably true, but even students at the absolute top universities are capable of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal

The more students you meet at "top Universities" the more the illusion of superiority disappears.

The students are mind numbingly average. (But don't worry they will let you know what college they went to 12 years ago)

Heck if the job requires any communication, you might be better off finding someone humble or someone who needs to prove themselves.

Or maybe the best of these students go on to work at companies that pay 250k/yr and I just don't meet them.

> However, I also saw a grossly wide range of educational professionalism in the students

Your specific example of plagiarism is odd; I'm not sure what's difficult to grasp there. But wide ranging dedication (or professionalism if you prefer to call it that) is pretty standard at brick and mortar universities - it's pretty standard for a subset of people to prefer the partying and socialising aspects, and also pretty standard for quite a lot of people to drop out altogether.

The saying goes: copying from one person is plagiarism, copying from many is research.

But in the latter case, sources are properly referenced?

plagiarism was how the germans caught up on the industrial revolution. plagiarism is how china cought up to the western world. the strict argument on this is that ideas cannot be owned. no one owns an idea. ideas just float around and can be left aside or captured. that's how i think about it anyways.

There's a moral argument w/r/t the concept of stealing IP, but in the context of education there is arguably more damage being done.

If you steal a design for a jet turbine, you still have to learn how it works and you add that understanding to your personal/corporate skillset. Basically you have learned a secret.

If you have someone write your college essay for you, then you probably do so in order to avoid putting in the work to write the essay yourself. Basically, you have learned nothing.

I know there's nuance to both but I think your argument is overly-reductive.

Oh yeah you're right let's not mix that both. I thought he strictly meant the first.

I took a semester of courses from UofP. It had a wonderful diversity of ages, genders, and nationalities. Interacting with those people through peer assignments was interesting, and I applaud what they're trying to do.

Ultimately, however, I found the entire thing way too tedious - full of the classic "make-work" and silly hoops. The level of pedagogy was very basic.

I dream of (and am actively working towards) a day where the computer's potential as a new educational medium is fully realized, rather than the current parade of attempts at transplanting a brick and mortar classroom into a remote asynchronous delivery system.

Are you willing to share more about what you're working on? It sounds interesting.

One language app I tried for a few minutes was a VR app that put you, for example, on a train, and you had to have a relevant conversation. It was cool, not sure how effective because the GearVR I used at the time made me sick too quickly.

(Disclaimer: Most of what I say here has caveats and qualifications – hard to capture full nuance in a comment's space.)

One of the distinguishing features of computers is easy simulation. Humans learn well by direct, tight, interaction with a system – poking at a thing to see how it works. Tight feedback loops are how we quickly build intuitions.

Explorable Explanations [0] are a great extant example of what I mean, but we can do more... Imagine a "textbook" constructed around a well built-simulator (extant example, Earth Primer [1]). Sections of the textbook would present the simulator configured in a pre-set state, with various simplifications and initial conditions. Students can poke and prod these simulators, reset them, test out new states, and answer questions. Assignments could be on the order of "Given Sim[Initial Conditions] figure out what gets you to Sim[Desired State]".

Current explorables are lovely, but (usually) incredibly bespoke. One concrete improvement would be to produce an OpenSim standard, which would allow other content creators to embed and customize these sims to construct new narratives.

Another powerful computer affordance is extreme specificity – a system should be able to build a representation of a learner's current knowledge / skill graph, and figure out a (or many) shortest path(s) from current knowledge to desired knowledge, scoped to that user's interests. (Many LMS systems attempt this, but we're still in the early, clunky days).

Next we have non-linearity. Most textbooks and courses impose a false idea of topic dependence. Yes, there are some intrinsic dependencies, but there are many MANY more ways (orderings) of moving through a learning space than your chapter textbook suggests.

I can go on like this forever. I myself am currently focused on constructing usable knowledge graphs (and localizing incoming students on them), and simulations students can easily play around with to build powerful intuition. For the latter, we've found the wealth of STEM tools available in Python to be a huge boon. We (I work for an ed-tech non-profit startup) usually teach students some programming, and then have them start building models (physics simulations) or interacting with existing toolkits (such as, recently, the Rosetta protein modeling suite). These tools act as a forcing function for real-world relevance, and allow for direct intuition building over rote memorization. More effective, and much more engaging.

To address your comment: VR (and IMHO, AR) look to have a lot of potential in the future, though they are still in their infancy. I think there's a lot of potential for the humanities to provide more immersive experiences of places and time periods. (Re humanities, simulations also work quite well. Mock trials, political re-enactments, etc. There's a reason simulation games are so popular...)

[0] https://explorabl.es/ [1] https://www.earthprimer.com/ [2] https://rosettacommons.org/

A knowledge map (or graph) is definitely something that should be used more intensively in course structure and instruction.

I remember very well reaching an understanding of a subject by different means than what the teacher expected(?) or was taught to expect. That path of learning was rejected (despite the result being the same) and accordingly graded as a failure. Such resistance to different learning paths, a "status quo" of how people should learn, and the tendency to try and fit everybody into well-defined boxed is frustrating and counter-productive.

This is fantastic. Not that you’re lacking in ideas, but as you mention the value of simulation I wanted to ensure that you had seen this historical case study: https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/

Literally all of these ideas are ones I've had for years in the education space. I'm glad someone is actually doing them.

I'm 100% on board with these ideas, and I've also been following a lot of these ideas for a while. I'd like to learn more about the startup if possible, my email is in my profile if you don't want to post here.

Wow, that kinda sounds like my dream job. Do you mind sending me a plain link in an email?

A young lady's illustrated primer? ;)

Sure, but as of today 2020, it would probably be GPT-2 (or -3) filling in for the voice actors, which would create students extremely well educated in knowledge which is 60% real. Maybe that's not so different...

The greatest potential benefit AI has for humans is the ability to act as a life-long personal mentor: to collect, filter, summarize, translate into a form best suited for the individual, and communicate that information. Especially as we enter into the "Post Information Age", where the amount of information becomes so large that traditional methods of management such as search engines become unusable.

> I dream of (and am actively working towards) a day where the computer's potential as a new educational medium is fully realized, rather than the current parade of attempts at transplanting a brick and mortar classroom into a remote asynchronous delivery system.

I assume you already know about PLATO, yes?

Wow it's been a while since I've read about PLATO. Thank you for the reminder. Another example of how so much that's cool in computing has its roots in systems of the past (the mother of all demos, neural nets, LOGO (Mindstorms), etc.).

My ideas aren't novel, but every decade we try again and hope all the pieces are in place to start something which grows and thrives.

Assuming you're not talking about the ancient philosopher, I'd like to know what you're referencing. Searching for "PLATO education" isn't finding something beyond the expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

I've been thinking about this as well. There is so much potential given the vast number of free and incredible resources online. Lmk if you're interested in working on something together.

I started building this last year with the same realization: https://learnawesome.org

The first question I always ask of these weird online universities is, are they regionally accredited? National accreditation is not really a high bar and isn’t considered competitive; all legitimate institutions of higher learning should qualify for and receive regional accreditation from an appropriate authority before considering such study in one’s best interest.

This online learning site is eligible for regional accreditation as of 2020, but they really play up the eligibility in a way that seems suspect. They aren’t clear if they have even applied, but they have 5 years to apply until they have to have a redetermination of eligibility.

Not saying this is a scam, but it feels like a scam.

This site was very hard to find, for what it’s worth.

https://www.uopeople.edu/student-experience/quality/accredit...

> Not saying this is a scam, but it feels like a scam.

Not directly related to your specific concern, but every attempt to make a open / democratized degree has felt like that to me, unfortunately.

Example: There was an online degree program I saw that awarded a real, regionally accredited degree from a state university. The degree and course work were exactly the same, but the online program was basically open. No admission requirements except to pay for and pass some pre-requisites that would then grant you access to the rest of the degree. The equivalent brick and motar program went through the typical admissions process.

My first thought: "this sounds very close to for-profit school".

I've attended several schools online at both the undergrad and graduate level including a for-profit school. I don't find much different between them because they've all followed an asynchronous approach.

However, UoPeople is different in that it's much, much less instructor led. They use a "peer learning" pedagogical approach. It's something I quite dislike about the school. I consider it to be poorly implemented and leads to problems like "revenge grading." However, I tolerate it because it allows me to study in a structured environment for less than I'd pay at my local community college.

It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree.

I'm there not because I need it either. I graduated from a software bootcamp and I've already been working for 2 yeast, so I'm good. However I found out UoPeople and researched them a bit e.g. called a local college 's HR department to find out if they'd recognize someone with a degree from there to teach and they said yes. My next thought was to review the Visa process for a couple countries; this is my primary interest and motivation. None of them specified where the Degree came from only that it was a sanctioned/Accredited institution.

So I don't really care about the details. I learn more, great, but otherwise I'm happy because I just want to be able to apply to get into Europe or Asia as a software developer in the future and not worry about whether I have enough points, etc to pass the rigor.

All of that being said, the first course was a gong show with lots of academic violations, but like all things in life it's what you put into it and I plan on graduating with Honors, so even if it's a weak degree I'll still be able to respect my work and effort.

Can you give some examples of 'peer learning'? I noticed OP said that about plagiarism and I was curious how that works.

The problem with all forced group work and not being able to choose the group is you get a very mixed quality of effort and talent. I'd stay away from any program that pushed that heavily.

>It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree.

I should hope not given the fact that they are not regionally accredited and now that they have finally applied they likely won't be for another 2-3 years. Assuming they pass.

In principle, this could work if the school maintained high standards and allowed everyone to attempt to pass their courses + eventually attain the degree. Having an online platform without limitations (or with less limitations) in instructor resources allows legitimate programs to pursue this model.

To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. If the for-profit institution actually had a good reputation, I can imagine they could also implement more restrictive policies. But the way academia works, a large part of prestige comes with history - and this makes it nearly impossible for new schools to break into this echelon of elites. I suspect it's also for the same reason that for-profit schools are not able to consistently attract talent in terms of instruction, since the ones who can would prefer to be employed by more prestigious institutions.

> To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees.

A large majority of students who start at the University of Phoenix fail to graduate. The guarantee you speak of does not exist, not because the standards are high, but because the average student admitted to these universities is incapable of the work, or too disorganized to do so. There are plenty of not for profit universities who admit similar students and they don’t graduate either.

I won't name names since I've buried the hatchet but here's a story along those lines.

During a hotly contested political debate in my city a person who called himself a doctor (psych therapist, to be precise) showed up at a council meeting and threatened a city council member from my district.

Being the data-fluent person I am I offered to help, so I pulled all of the person in question's educational, legal, and accrediting history to see what would turn up.

It turned out that the person was a state employee before moving to my state but was fired after burning a car for insurance fraud during a divorce. In fairness to him he admitted to that crime and paid his fines, restitution, and community service and what not, but he could no longer work for the government in his previous role (police) after being convicted. So he managed to get himself into an online psych program like the one you're describing (from a state university, but awfully scam-looking), which got him an Education degree, not a medical degree. In short, he could have been a high school guidance counselor and that's about it. But what his online undergrad and master's degrees in psych education did get him was the ability to make his entry into a PhD program look legitimate. But wait, you say, what would make any PhD program accept such a person who had a sketchy online undergrad and master's degree?

Presumably it's a lot easier to stomach such a PhD candiate if the university in question is in the African nation of Malawi, and is affiliated with the evangelical church that the person in question attends in the US. The Malawi university was one of the African universities that was churning out PhDs in suspect STEM disciplines back in the early 2000s to go around publishing papers about "intelligent design" if you remember those days. If you don't, it was the latest in a long line of hare brained evangelical attempts to end-around Charles Darwin in textbooks in the early 2000s. To this day, the person in question advertises himself as a "Christian hypnotherapist" providing all of the usual counseling services, and has an ID in the government medical provider database so he can accept Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance payments. The state I live in has since tightened up applications for medical licenses for people moving in from out of state. Previously, they had what seemed to be a fast-track process for people licensed in other states that did not involve re-checking educational credentials (that was in the late 90s/early 00s).

So I could discern from looking at all of this that there was likely some sort of coach, seminar, consultant, or similar that was training people on how to do all of this back then. If not, this guy planned the whole thing as his escape from the car burning bit and new career as a psychiatrist with shady credentials. First he got the state university degree, then the state university online masters which was fairly worthless, then the shady online PhD from Africa, then as soon as the ink was dry on his conditional (based on criminal background) therapist license in the state he lived in he moved to my state, and applied for a new license based on his existing license in his previous state, all in an attempt to get out from under the criminal record and reinvent himself as a shady psych therapist.

And it worked! As far as I know, his "medical" practice is open today.

In the process of digging all of this dirt I found other professors at other religious affiliated universities in the city I live in that had very sketchy African university credentials, including one listed as a neurosurgeon. I also found quite a few high school teachers who were making regular trips to African countries, including Malawi, from this area that they surely could not afford to make on high school teacher salaries. Those teachers per their social media profiles were all associated with the two evangelical sects in question that the car burning cop therapist and the shady neurosurgeon came from.

The likely erosion of educational legitimacy from of all of this (job markets, US university professorships, professional licenses, etc) are fairly obvious, I'd say.

> If not, this guy planned the whole thing as his escape from the car burning bit and new career as a psychiatrist with shady credentials.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors, and the rules on who gets to practice in the US are for practical purposes written by the AMA. That guy was not a licensed psychiatrist. He wouldn’t even be allowed to sit the first levels of the requisite exams.

This sounds really interesting. Would you specify which state university?

Sure, It's the University of Colorado Boulder Masters programs hosted through Coursera:

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/msee-boulder

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie...

The fact that they're masters programs with performance based admissions make them even more suspicious to me, but if you're looking for bachelors programs like this I think the ASU bachelors hosted Coursera also has such an admission path.

So what makes regional accreditation so great? Do other countries have it? Why can’t a major regional body go national? Is it the law? It all sounds like a scam from that to textbooks.

To somewhat oversimplify, the regional accreditation bodies (about a half dozen of them) are older and better established than the national accreditation bodies. They generally have 100+ year histories, accredit all of the major universities within their jurisdiction, and in general have acquired a great deal of respect throughout US academia.

National accreditation boards in general, and especially those that are not field-specific, are seen as being less rigorous, faster to accredit, and more profit- or prestige-motivated than the regional accreditation boards. Most are relatively new and some of the most prominent (e.g. ACICS) have been involved in specific controversy over the quality of their work. Because the regional accrediting boards are older and better respected, the first question about a university that advertises a national accreditation tends to be "why aren't they regionally accredited?". It is both symptom and cause of this difference that most for-profit and otherwise "questionable" institutions are nationally accredited and not regionally accredited.

While some national accreditation bodies are considered rigorous and respectable (e.g. ABET), they tend to be field-specific (in the case of ABET, engineering) and often require regional accreditation as a prerequisite to accredit a university, as they consider regional accreditation to be the indication that the broader learning institution is able to provide a quality program. Usually specific departments or colleges of a university will go to these types of accreditation boards to add a credential to specific programs (e.g. "ABET accredited computer science program") above and beyond the university already having a regional accreditation.

Short version: Its not great but if you want your credits to transfer you go to a regionally accredited school. Its old and spent a large part of its history entrenching itself in the American education industry, therefore its automatically granted legitimacy.

There are schools with a shit curriculum that have regional accreditation. The reason it matters to Americans is because most large universities are more significantly more accepting of transferring credits that come from a regionally accredited school.

I've been to nationally and regionally accredited schools. My degree was from a top 200 school in the US. The classes I took at the "lesser" institution were significantly more rigorous and significantly more effective at teaching skills relevant to the major I was studying.

I've known several people that went to schools that have been sued or otherwise have terrible reputations for being predatory for profit schools like ITT and the University of Phoenix. Their coursework was frequently more difficult than mine.

To be fair though, those schools were sued partly because of their shady high pressure sales tactics and for tricking people into taking on massive amounts of debt to take classes. That's pretty scummy, but based on the experiences of my friends it seemed like they at least had legitimate work to do in order to graduate.

Note: I don't doubt that on average the regionally accredited schools have been more thoroughly vetted. I'm just saying accreditation is not even close to perfect so the only reason it matters in the US is because the credits are easily transferable.

Regional accreditation is the "gold standard" in the US. National accreditation is consider below that. However, the school is accredited by the DEAC which is recognized by the US Department of Education. (Some have tried to claim the school is unaccredited, but that is false.)

I graduated from Bob Jones University. During my time there, BJU was Nationally Accredited and not Regionally Accredited.

This didn't personally affect me very much, but I know of many people who had difficulty getting into graduate school or professional work because of this.

A degree from a nationally accredited university limits your options. I'm not saying you'll be completely screwed if you get it, but not as many graduate schools will consider you.

Not yet. They started the process a few months ago.

Uopeople is not a scam . It's like every other institution of learning with qualified instructors . Make your research well before you make any comment.

I've graduated from this university with a bachelor's in Computer Science last year. Overall I had a good experience. I found the curriculum to be on a weaker side. I was interested in various things about computers when I was young, so it felt like I knew half of the material. While studying, I was working at the company part-time. At the normal study pace, you should be ready to put up to 30 hours per week when taking 2 courses. In reality, it took me half of that time. Usually 10 hours per week. Some people with whom I've studied had a full-time job. I guess its a tradeoff. You have a less rigorous curriculum but you then have more time to pursue other interests. Closer to the end of the studies I quickly found a full-time job in a good company locally.

The tuition-free part is more of a marketing. At the end of the day, it cost me $4,060 for the whole degree which is quite reasonable.

Speaking of employment and red flags, from LinkedIn I know that those who had studied at UoPeople work for many big companies including FAANG. No problem here.

> At the normal study pace, you should be ready to put up to 30 hours per week when taking 2 courses. In reality, it took me half of that time. Usually 10 hours per week.

30 hours per week for just 2 courses? Are these courses covering more than a typical university?

In my undergrad, I took a minimum of 5 courses per semester (16-20 credits). Scaling from your expectations, that would be 60-80 hours per week? I doubt I went over 40/week, including lectures (admittedly, it wasn't a demanding university).

Just giving you my 2 cents so you don't assume that the time you spent per course is all that different from a traditional university.

The school uses terms (5 per year) rather than semesters, so each course is 8 weeks (plus 4 days for finals) rather than the usual 15 weeks plus finals week.

That's what I'm finding. I started with one course because I was worried about time to study and time with my wife and child, but now I'm thinking I could do 2 courses probably without too much concern.

My only worry is the Math course. Not having gone to University or high school in 20 years I'm fearful. The other courses have been easy so far though, but like you I'm working on the field, so it's not so new to me.

The math courses were surprisingly difficult for me, but in general, quite good. I spent way too much time on College Algebra (I kid you not, like 20+ hours every week--the pace is insane, they give you like 20-40 pages to read, and a number of assignments).

I'm happy I went through them, but yea, MATH1201 was kinda difficult and MATH1280 was super boring (but not as difficult to be honest).

A fellow student at UoPeople here. I too spent an enormous amount of time on College Algebra. I did nothing but math, morning till evening, all day every day. I dreamt about math at night. And guess what? It was one of the best periods of my life. I fell in love with math.

YMMV. When I took Calc 3 at a "legitimate" university, we were told that the class would probably require a good 30 hours a week. I don't think I ever spent more than 5 hours a week, and I still got out with a good grade.

On the other hand, I've had small classes worth only half the credits, with absolutely ridiculous workloads.

>In reality, it took me half of that time. Usually 10 hours per week.

I got a bachelor in a normal university while having a full time job in the last two years. I see no issue about this point.

So this seems like a good time to ask, does anyone have experience with University of London's online degree and how US employers feel about it? I've been eyeing it for a couple years now and was wondering if anyone either has experience directly with this program, or at least can speak more to how US employer's feel about degrees from overseas.

https://london.ac.uk/sites/default/files/prospectuses/comput...

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

This may be slightly off-topic, but if you're looking at online/distance-learning offers from the UK, the OpenUniversity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University ) is very well known and well respected, and has decades of experience in doing this.

I will second the OU, both me and my wife got access to higher education through the OU and successfully transferred credit elsewhere. It was still cassette tapes and books back then, but those materials were excellent. The difference I see now is that the funding is not as good from the government for UK learners. I didn't pay a penny for my courses.

OU is pretty interesting, and I've always heard really good things about it, at least from people in the UK nations strongly associated with the UK. But one thing the GP asked about was how US employers feel about it, and I wouldn't consider OU a well known school in the US.

Some people have brought this up about UoTP, and I think it may also apply to OU in the US: The name makes it sound fishy.

Slightly unrelated, but I find it weird that I, an American, can apply to some their law degrees, but not a number of fully-online STEM degrees.

Unfortunately, the OU is now a lot more expensive than it used to be. It's a shame it can't offer anything at the price of this University of the People.

Another vote for OU; I haven't attended but from an employer perpective, OU grads have had excellent depth of knowledge.

I’m doing a Master’s in Finance from CEFIMS[1]. It’s a taught Master’s so it’s just fifth year of undergrad, with higher grading standards, though not that much higher. I’ve found it reasonably rigorous and intellectually stimulating and to the extent it’s not rigorous a great deal of that is my own fault for not choosing harder courses. Can’t speak to the esteem it’s held in by US employers but it’s cheaper than almost anything equivalent in the US. If you want prestige and you’re in Software Engineering do Oxford’s M.Sc. They’ll accept enough quality work experience in lieu of a Bachelor’s[2]. You need to go to Oxford for a week for each module though, and the fees aren’t cheap. If you want a regionally accredited US degree cheap and fast people have gotten Excelsior College degrees in under a year. If that interests you go to degreeforum.net. It’s devoted to speed running the credential acquisition process at minimal cost. People have done GA Tech’s MS in CS after.

[1] https://www.cefims.ac.uk/

[2] http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-software...

> However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional experience.

I don't know about the online course, but in general the University of London is highly regarded. Some of the best universities in the world (LSE, UCL) are part of the University of London system, and all the members are very good universities.

I don't imagine US employers would have an issue with degrees from there. You can find it easily and it looks reputable.

University of London includes among the most prestigious colleges in the world: King's College of London, London School of Economics, and Goldsmiths. They have been doing distance learning since for decades, if not longer if I remember correctly.

The one thing to note, at least when I took it in early 2000, is that its tough. I signed-up for their business/finance program and it was quite the course workload.

In looking at the CS curricilum this looks more like an extended bootcamp. Most regular university courses are not there, the credits/classes won't transfer to full universities, and you're left with a "degree" that pales in comparison to a "regular" degree. Plus you've spent about $5,000 to get their paper. I guess "accredited degree" just doesn't mean the same thing to as what I was thinking.

It doesn't have a compilers construction class. Analysis of Algorithms is an elective class. It's not a real computer science degree.

Algorithms is also an elective class at Berkeley

This gives more ammunition to my hot take that degrees from elite universities don't teach you anything special.

accreditation has varied levels of shenanigans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accreditation_mill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unaccredited_instituti...

But is it enough to get me a visa to work in the US? I'm already a self-taught programmer, 5k is cheap to have the option of working in the US.

Purely for work? Maybe. As the other poster noted, I would also lean to no.

For study and eventually work? No. The school does not participate in the student visa program. It's purely online.

Some students start at UoPeople and transfer to a better known school to finish. This saves a fair amount of money. So, that's a possible path. But, getting a work visa in the US might be a challenge even then.

I would speculate no. It's not a well recognized degree and has little history or experience to back it up.

Presume that my accomplishments stand on my own, and the only thing getting in my way is that I don't qualify for a VISA under NAFTA. What I'd need would be a

> Baccalaureate or Licenciatura degree; or Post-Secondary Diploma or Post Secondary Certificate and three years' experience.

Now you and I know this is pretty much just a sheet of paper, but what's the cheapest/easiest way for someone who already has professional accomplishments to get that sheet of paper?

After seeing a lot of comments here discussing accreditation, I figured it may be beneficial to many readers to know about low cost, more transferrable, options for college credits. I have to stress though, there are lots of a-hole universities so try to find one that is ok with transferring large numbers of credits. You can't get an entire degree from this, but you can get most of the fluff class requirements you don't actually need for your major done.

Ordered based on cost. First 3 are online.

saylor.org - You only pay the fee for online proctoring. Has a list of roughly 20 total lower level courses that are ACE accredited. Self paced.

aleks.com - Like 20 bucks a month and they have some classes at the level of college algebra and precalc ACE accredited.

straighterline.com - Self paced, overall better course quality than saylor. Has professor graded writing assignments sometimes. ACE accredited courses. Normally $60 a class with a $99 a month membership fee. To keep costs down sign up and do as many courses as possible in a month.

The GED - You can get up to 10 college credits by doing well on the GED. Not online sadly, requires a testing center. If you have a non-traditional american high school background you probably need one of these to get into a university anyway.

CLEP exams - Are very cost efficient at $90 each and allow you to "test out" of many lower and higher level classes. Not online, requires. testing center.

I'll append a few more.

Sophia Learning is currently offering their courses for free through July. They are ACE "accredited" (recommend is actually the proper term, I believe). I think they're normally ~$300-350.

There are several of us students doing courses there to transfer in.

Study.com offers many courses in CS and other areas which are ACE recommended. They charge $199 a month and an exam fee. If I recall correctly, you get so many exams in the monthly fee.

AP exams are another option.

DSST offers credit by exams.

And Excelsior College offers credit by exam as well, but I'm not sure of the costs.

There are different types of accreditation for schools. Generally speaking, if you are in the US and want minimal risk in terms of transferability, you want to attend a school that has been accredited by one of several regional authorities. National accreditation is different and for purposes of credit transferability in the US, it is considered inferior to regional accreditation.

The University of the People applied for regional accreditation in 2020. They are not regionally accredited yet. The process can take years.

Note: Good schools can lack accreditation and bad schools can get the most prestigious accreditations.

Another note: There are schools that set up accrediting organizations to, surprise, accredit their own schools.

Edit: I think this is the list of legitimate regional accrediting organizations:

https://www.chea.org/regional-accrediting-organizations

They branded this wrong.

University of the People stands out front and centre as different and sketchy as the name makes you think of protestors in a park waving the hammer and sickle and handing out diplomas for life experience.

That’s a pretty interesting interpretation of “we the people” filled with political undercurrents.

I think your underlying assumption is that only an “exclusive” university can provide a good education, and not something en masse. I think UoP is explicitly trying to challenge that assumption.

Btw, I have a hunch that if we valued “life experience degrees” more than “law degree at Harvard” the US Congress would be a better legislative body

Is UoPeople completely free? Are there any costs?

While we have removed most of the costs associated with attending a university, we do still have some fees to help us keep UoPeople running, and take care of all the admin and processing work we have to do for all of our students.

To cover these fees we ask for:

A one time non-refundable application fee of $60 and, For undergraduates: an assessment fee of $100 per course, or For graduates: an assessment fee of $200 per course Don’t worry, if you need to time to save the money and you want to start right now you can, as the fees don’t need to be paid until the end of each course. The assessment fees do not need to be paid until the end of each course which is very convenient for students who have to budget and save up. You can also apply for one of our numerous grants and scholarships to help you cover all the fees.

Please note the application fee does not include any additional fees that may be required for third-party evaluation.

After all courses we estimate the total fees for the:

Associate Degree are $2,060 Bachelor’s Degree are$4,060 MBA is $2,460 M.Ed. is $2,660 What are the costs for Transfer credits? If you have credits approved to transfer toward your degree, the cost per transfer course will be $17. This is instead of paying the assessment fee per course of $100 for undergraduates and $200 for graduates. Transferring credits may significantly reduce the total cost of your degree.

What Grants & Scholarships are available? UoPeople works with top corporations and organizations to provide grants and scholarships to students needing financial support when paying the required application fees. Students can apply each term for the scholarship for which they are most qualified, and once awarded it can last for a full year of study. It is UoPeople’s aim that financial need will not restrict students from studying.

How can I pay the application fees? Payments can be made through Western Union, Western Union Global Pay, Paypal, Cashier’s Checks and Payment via MoneyGram. PayPal payments can be with your personal PayPal account or by using major credit card or debit card – VISA, MasterCard, Discover or American Express. For more information on how payments can be made, click here.

Accredited or not, “university of the people” sounds just like “hard knocks university”, “life college”, etc. Works for the Saul Goodman’s of the world, maybe.

It's not free if you want a (partial) degree: https://www.uopeople.edu/tuition-free/processing-fees/

"tuition-free" is a misrepresentation of USD 4K for an undergrad degree. That might seem cheap for US (does it? really? compared to community college for example?), but it's crazy expensive for most "people" out there.

Yes, it's still cheap compared to a community college, which generally average an yearly tuition of around $4,000 to $5,000 per yeah, and that only for the first two years, after which you have to progress to a 4-year school to finish your degree at more than twice that price.

$4K is cheap for the US, even for just an Associate's degree from a community college. I want to say my undergrad tuition was around $4k per semester (before grants and aid), and this was from a relatively cheap university.

I can't wait for a fully online without human University. I'd like speed running to be a thing

You can kinda do that already. In my first semester at WGU I went through about 20 classes. It’s competency based and you can complete classes as soon as you master the material.

> In my first semester at WGU I went through about 20 classes.

Woah, that sounds insane at first, but I'm assuming some of these might be like history 101? Could you elaborate on which program and which classes this was?

I'm currently enrolled in WGU in CS, I started 11 days ago and I finished 8 courses out of 34. They were (5) programming (2) Math (1) general

Most exams have a cutoff of 66.6%. Above that is a pass and below that is a fail. The university doesn't assign a GPA grade therefore you graduate with an automatic GPA of 3.0 regardless of how well you score. Since there's no intensive for a higher score and I already know the material from working in the industry (SQL, HTML, Java), I'm speed running the curriculum for the Bachelor's degree.

Check out Western Governors University, it's self-paced.

I'll just add that many UoPeople students in the US transfer to WGU to complete their bachelor's degree. (WGU is regionally accredited, so it carried more weight. And it accepts UoPeople credits.)

So the savvy move if you have the cash is to do your three years and then what transfer to your final year at WGU? That's so smart.

What more do you know about this strategy? Can you introduce me to anyone who has done this?

That's good to know. I applied for WGU a few years back but they didn't accept my application (not sure if it's because of my poor grades from an early attempt at community college a few years before that or if I bombed the application essay - or both). If UoPeople's a bit more lenient about my past mistakes, then it seems like UoPeople→WGU would be a viable approach. Or maybe I should just re-apply to WGU?

Speed running comp. sci. in 6 months!

Some people do it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/g7h1qz/bscs_87_credits...

This is nitpicky, I'll admit, but I consider it a canary in the coalmine.

On the MBA admission requirements page (https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/ba/degrees/master-of-busin...):

"As an accredited University, UoPeople has a number of requirements for all potential applicants, to help maintain a strong, intellectual student body. [...] In addition, applicants need to have:

" * Be able to demonstrate undergraduate degree completion

" * Have English proficiency

" * A minimum of two years work experience

" * One reference (from an employer/lecturer etc.)"

The phrasing of the first two bullet points doesn't agree with the preceding sentence. That's a poor example of English proficiency.

If they don't proofread and correct their own admissions page, I'm frankly not too optimistic about the rest of the university.

It’s not regional accreditation, so it’s not real accreditation.

For example, the MBA program doesn’t have AACSB accreditation.

I don’t want to just be negative here and certainly for the price of free it’s a good resource to receive some kind of education, and ultimately a lot of people shopping for degree programs forget that a big reason to do them is to actually learn things. In that way this is a great resource!

But without that regional accreditation, I find the big bold claim of “accredited” to be just about as misleading as the way that for-profit schools throw around the term.

Of course, a lot of employers ignore the name of the college and don’t bother with researching its accreditation. I’m sure a lot of people want to just get through HR filters if you can say “bachelors degree” instead of “high school diploma.” Or maybe you need a masters degree to become a manager as a matter of company policy, and the company isn’t picky about the degree.

I look at the MBA courses and it looks like the program consists first foundational courses that make up less than half or so of the curriculum of an AACSB accredited MBA. The computer science program does look a little more comprehensive.

There are a ton of programs out there online with reasonable costs and more legitimate credentials. Since I was recently looking at MBA programs, I can tell you that public schools like the University of North Dakota, Ball State, Mississippi State, and many others are highly ranked along with a low cost per credit hour. You can jump on the US News online MBA ranking site and filter by credit hour cost.

The most expensive thing is your time, and unlike money you can’t get it back, so if it were my own education I would consider cost but also consider whether I come out of the program having wasted time with any of the concerns I stated above. Look at the curriculum and make sure it offers electives that might help you in your desired or current career (for example, a good AACSB business school will have courses on specific industries like Healthcare or IT Operations).

Regional vs. National Accreditation – There’s a Huge Difference https://www.edsmart.org/regional-vs-national-accreditation/

Yep. And this is absolutely a concern those considering the school should take seriously!

That said, the school started the process for WASC accreditation. They announced it about a month or two ago. Thus, those who start now and take 4 years to do a bachelor's may end up with a regionally accredited degree instead of national.

Great, they made it tuition-free, accredited, and online; now take it all the way and get rid of the idiotic hoop-jumping of the admissions process!

Edit: I know nothing about their admissions process, only that they have one. Somebody's unimaginative I see. "Admissions" should be filling out a form including contact info, bank info and so forth, and then verifying that it's all true. What could they (or you downvoters) possibly have vested in restricting admissions in any way beyond that?

To conserve scarce resources? No, resources are almost limitless, because it's online, and lecturing and presumably grading are partially or fully automated, and there's no campus with spatial restrictions.

To make sure everyone pays their way? No, everybody does pay their way, and it's a non-profit.

To maintain an air of exclusivity? No, it's the University of the People.

To make sure the on-campus community is vibrant, diverse, and full of people with interesting extra-curricular interests and leadership skills? No, because again, there is no campus and no on-campus community.

To make sure not too large a percentage of enrolled students flunk out or quit trying? No, because who cares? Only elite colleges that care about an air of exclusivity, and they care in the other direction, i.e. they want you to fail out so they appear rigorous and demanding.

So yeah. ????

This university does not have a quota. They take in all students who apply as long as they meet minimum criteria.

There are reasons as to why there should be admissions. For starters, they require a high school degree. It's obvious that you should be well familiar with all of the school material before university. All studies and communications at the university are in English only. They accept people from the whole world so they need to ensure that you have adequate English skills. In the case of CS studies, they also check if a student has some basic math skills and any previous experience in the field or recommendation.

But even here university is trying to help students who don't pass minimum math and English requirements by offering them to take introductory English and math course. If they pass it, they can go on and pursue the degree.

There are good reasons as to why it is necessary. If you don't have basic English, you can't communicate with your peers. As a part of the study, you have to read and write a lot. You also need to understand your peer work and grade it. Finally, it is easier for the rest of us to study.

Before they were more lenient in requirements and it was causing problems. They had a very high drop rate because people who enrolled had no adequate English skills for example. It also made it difficult for others to study.

Re: Your Edit (Note: Didn't downvote you.)

They can't "take it all the way." If they removed the requirements (e.g., English proficiency, high school diploma equivalent), they wouldn't be accredited.

See: Section VIII. D.

https://www.deac.org/UploadedDocuments/Handbook/Accreditatio...

As a US based student, it wasn't too difficulty. It's comparative to any other school in the US. For students outside the US and particularly outside English speaking countries, it can be more involved.

For what it may be worth: two accredited online universities that have interestingly sustainable models and, I gather, good quality:

BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I think tuition is much lower especially if you do the year of English etc first, bachelors programs (like IT, business, others) are available, programs excellent, and is also suitable for those who need to first become qualified for entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used in curriculum, and other basic skills), then provides that university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news article that explains it well I think, here: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html .

And: https://www.wgu.edu/ (also mentioned in wikipedia): state aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp). Others have commented about it in this discussion, and praised it in other HN discussions, IIRC.

Sometimes I read some heated comments / discussions on online degree programs. Is it good? Is it better or worse than traditional education? The answer is very simple: it depends on the student! I am a student at UoPeople. I’m already in my early 40s and I earned my bachelor degree in business roughly 20 years ago. I’ve built a solid and international professional career and I am a new father. I really wanted to pursue a new degree in computer science and I am so glad that I found UoPeople. It suited me perfectly. I have to say, though, that online education is not for everyone. It requires a few qualities that not everyone has (or wants to develop): discipline and self-motivation. UoPeople is excellent in my opinion, and from my perspective. It is an accredited American university that has academic partnerships with some of the most prestigious universities on the planet. It is tuition free. It allows students to have a flexible schedule. It sounded just like music to my ears. If you are a curious self-motivated person that is willing to accept the level of discipline that such commitment requires, I have to say: you will have a rewarding experience.

Hello. I have just completed my first term with UoPeople. For me, it's been a blessing to be able to pursue a higher education from home and on my own schedule, without the financial commitment that other institutes have.

My purpose for getting a degree is to A.) Have a degree, and B.) Have the competitive advantage over others in my field. Many employers these days want 2 things from employees: a degree and experience. I've already gone off into the world, worked for a few years, and started a family. Now it's time I complete my resume by getting a higher education.

Specifically with UoPeople, the educational method here is much different than what I've experienced before. Peer assessment has it's ups and downs. The fact that we are headed by peers (on written assignments) I think is an effective when done right. I'm an English teacher and I've started implementing it with my intermediate students.

Only time will tell how the rest of my path goes. For now, it's a good solution to my situation and I plan on taking advantage of it.

I like the premise and I believe education should be a basic right. Someone should be able to pursue knowledge to the highest level and receive recognition for having done that. Now so often large corporations will not hire someone unless they went to a very expensive school, or at least their chances are much lower. So I like the overall idea here and I hope it will grow in strength

Plagiarism is damning in many aspects of life and a critical part in learning the pros and cons of modern society. However without communication we are going nowhere fast. Simply put "Get right in what you know,say,and do in life or be left behind in the idiocy of the ones that are laden in ignorance" the don't give a shit group of people who do nothing but wait for the world to be handed to them on a silver platter. If you don't put your hands on it, trust and believe you will not gain the skills of what you are seeking to further yourself in life. Knowledge is power... Further more if you don't have failure in your life you are not going to learn anything either. Good intentions, everyone has them in order to be able to succeed in life, but some of the worst events in humanity were conducted with the best of intentions. Education and communication is fully important and key to get what you want in life. Without them were just dust in the wind.

Uopeople has in many ways made my life easier, physically i am glad to say that Uopeople has been my final alternative when nothing else felt available enough for me. Im financially relieved knowing that my sholarship will carry me through my educational journey at Uopeople. When i first heard that Tuition-free doesnt mean what i probably thought it meant. It did stress me out abit ,or for little longer as my admission process was pending. I wanted to opt out because even the small amount of registration fee was alot for me. But it became the least of my worries when i attempted to apply for their suggested sholarship,not the first try but the second try i was made known that i can actually rely on Uopeople with access to a scholarship, i can complete what i started. Thus far, ive had a ball of a first semester and i really enjoyed it. The future definitely dont look impossible for me with Uopeople by my side. Thank you.

Hello guys studying at UoPeople has really helped me a lot especially academically. When i first heard about this great online learning plartform from a friend i was not really serious about it because i taught it was not possible for there to exist a tuition free university but my friend then i should just give it a try since there was nothing to loose by trying and that was how i registered at UoPeople .I just finished my 2nd term at UoPeople and trust me its be absolutely amazing from the instructors to the students from different parts of the world to the beautiful and easy to move around learning environment . I do not regrit ever considering registering on this learning plartform at all and i can recommend this plartform to anyone at anytime. thanks a lot UoPeople am really grateful.

My experience at UoPeople has been great both in education and culture. Truth be told, I want to say that in my case, with my associate in computer science from UoPeople, back in my country it is considered to be of higher standard. And this is not because the standard of universities in my country is low but I think that it is because my performance and know-how in my present company has improved tremendously, and in all the other companies I applied for a job,from my performance in the evaluation, they consider me to be over qualified for them to pay me and they make reference to the school I studied which is UoPeople. And that is how I got to share with them and many others about UoPeople. that is my little experience for now. Thanks....

How are the faculty paid? Are there faculty? And if not, why can’t Khan Academy go for accreditation?

yes, they get an "honorarium" according to the signup page, which means peanuts most likely (probably a portion of that ~$200 proctoring fee, or whatever they call it).

has anyone here applied to be an instructor?

University of the People is changing the way we face our educational system. Firstly by showing that education is freedom and should not be the privilege of a few. Secondly, by showing that the traditional educational model is outdated and not enough to keep up with the changes of modern world. It is accredited and I saw some people saying the level is very basic. Well, it might seem like that, but it really gives one the basics they need for a given degree. In today´s world it is impossible to expect to learn everything in the class. It is more important to know how to filter and deal with the astonishing amount of information we can get in a safe, critic and ethical way.

There is always a negative sentiment towards novel approaches towards University, especially that the degree might not be as useful. At the same time there is the constant complaint that Universities tend teach things that are supposed to be too theoretical for the workplace. (And for practice focussed courses sometimes the curriculum is not as up-to-date as what is done in the workplace.) But since most people actually want to take a job outside of University after studying, this model seems ideal to me. It would literally give more space to traditional Universities, probably make admissions faster, studying cheaper and allow the different models to focus on what they can do best.

Let's be honest about schools like UofP and WGU. They exist to provide a cheap and easy way for experienced professionals to get that piece of paper to bypass a HR checkbox, nothing more. If you are serious about learning, look elsewhere.

I somewhat agree. I don't think UoPeople and WGU were individually founded for this purpose. But, I think they were made necessary by cultural forces which necessitate "that piece of paper to bypass an HR checkbox."

> If you are serious about learning, look elsewhere.

This is unfair though. You can still acquire a decent education through the school. Depending on your goals, it might be better to look elsewhere.

Is this conjecture or is there some truth to it? Got any reading or sources? Thanks.

University of the people is an online university I joined it about a year ago and found a great level of professors in it and in the way of presenting the courses and weekly assignments as well. I got to know a lot of friends also from all countries of the world and forge a friendship with them I also studied with professors at a very high level and helped me to improve my level in programming and computer science in general because I study this specialization in it. Cultural diversity is a lot found in the University of the people of the best things in it Really, it is a very special experience and worth sharing.

Hello to HN in general and those who know more about the University of the People. I have a question... I've been a Web Developer for 7+ years. I'm in my mid-30's. I never graduated college, and definitely went for the wrong reasons. I'm fully employed, but I've always wanted to land an engineering degree (software engineering most likely), and I'm wondering if this University would be a good option. I know little about it, but it seems like some of you know much more. Can anyone comment on if this would be a good fit for me for a college run in my mid-30's?

It really depends on your goals. If you're simply wanting to complete a degree or learn more about the field (like myself) then it's a great opportunity. If you're looking to pursue pure CS research, it might be better to go elsewhere.

There are plenty of students around your age range. There are plenty who attend school full-time (2 courses per 8-week term) while also working full-time. Some are also raising families in the process. So, definitely feasible.

If you have more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

I can confidently say that, UoPeople has really helped me a lot in so many ways. Before, I did not understand what academic integrity was but with the help of the online education strategy that I took, has given me an indept understanding of why you need to provide a source. Time management was a problem for me because I did not have the knowledge of how to manage my time effectively. I have also come to understand different cultures from different countries. I have also made some friends through this school. To me, this school is a life changer.

I am a proud MBA student of UOP. As I am currently living in the US, transferability of courses credits doesn't apply to me. I am enjoying the Tuition free and have already made arrangement with a Public University in Florida for a PhD in Public Administration.

One of my short-term goals is to help the community where I am living now and my home country with this degree.

Uopeople might not be accepted yet in other regions but I heard that they are working on it. When you want to help, you can get the most out of "a little". Uopeple degree helps you make that happen!

Hi, I recall my first day at UoPeople, was like a small paradise. The module was exceptional, not until I met realism in form Plagiarism and bias peers it was a knock down. Some Professors are a bit unkind without understanding the background and nature of some student. It's treating all animals the same way without considering their innocence, size, situation and intention.

Howbeit, I 'have enjoyed the company and experience with good and positive professors and students. Thank you for raising the bars of education and professionalism

UoPeople has given me an opportunity that the universities here in my country would never have given me. I really appreciate it in the sense that students are given the opportunity to assess their peers. I have really picked a lot of ideas from assessing my peers most of the time. I can also confidently say that I have gotten the opportunity to meet new friends from different countries, which has given me the idea of how they also relate to issues or how they approach things in general.

Hello how did u send the link

I'm a student from Nigeria, and I'd say UoPeople educational system is something I really enjoy. The peer-to-peer system is quite nice, and is primarily meant for learning and not grading as the instructor goes through the grades and re-awards unfair grades. The communication and the instructor-student relationship for me, is commendable. They also embrace self learning which is even more effective when done properly. Even if there are lapses, they'll get better with time.

My name is Kahlan, I am an ambassador and student for the university of the people. I have had nothing but a positive experience there as well as have been fortunate enough to receive a scholarship. The quality of education is fantastic, the professors and peers are so respectful and friendly, and I never thought I would even be able to attend a college due to lack of flexible time as well as finances. I feel so lucky to be apart of and to have found this wonderful university.

Because of my special circumstances and the war in my country, I could not enroll in any university, when I heard about our university I felt joy and hope, and finally, I can study, now the study is. My opportunity and my dream of the People's University are among the best options that I have chosen in my life. It gave me hope and strength, it is distinguished With a very organized and beautiful learning system, I advise everyone to register! It is your best choice.

A university's selling point to an employer is their degree ensures a student knows the material and can reason about it. That is the practical point of academic ethics. If a student cheats, sure they may get a decent job, although their lack of competence will eventually catch up with them. However, what they've done will impact the worth of everyone with a degree. So, getting a degree by cheating is essentially stealing from those who got the degree ethically.

My experience at UoPeople has been great. The courses are up to date and relevant in today's world. I remembered when my friend who is also studying Business Administration at a local university in my country looked at my school notes, she was surprised at how she did not know most of the things I had learned. This showed me that UoPeople offers quality education while there are still universities offering students outdated information.

Reading the comments in this thread, it seems like there is a real need for a version of this that focuses on being more rigorous and achieving regional accreditation.

I wish the school were more rigorous, but they are working towards regional accreditation. It takes time, unfortunately (or fortunately?).

I want to clarify, I’m not at all saying that UoP isn’t rigorous enough for what it is. While it may look like a cake walk to some HN readers, I’d guess that the curriculum poses a significant challenge and a real opportunity to learn for most people.

If this is the low cost, online version of a average public university, I think there should also be a low cost, online version of a “top-tier” school.

No worries. I didn't take it negatively.

I would prefer a more rigorous program, but for what I pay I accept it for what it is.

And you're right that many of the students struggle with even the basic courses, and there's very little in the way of support for them. Then again, that tends to be the nature of online education in general.

I don't know of any low cost "top tier" bachelor's programs, but I do know the University of Texas Austin and Georgia Tech both offer online master's for ~$10k. As I understand the programs, they're supposed to be more for students who didn't major in CS in their undergrad though.

I actually find some of the coursework in the Tech program interesting like Computational Photography.

Current student in the CS program. Feel free to ask questions.

As both the OP and you are new accounts, I will ask the first question I can think of:

is this a marketing move to post it here?

Also, I watched the "Who is behind it" video and it did not answer the question, who is actually behind this? Is it a non-profit? Is it owned by by someone? Who founded it when?

>is this a marketing move to post it here?

Nope, I had found the university before but ignored it. Then was looking for cheap math degrees from the recent math books thread today, and came across this school again. Figured I'd post it, but I have no interest in attending there, as they don't have any programs I care about

Thank you for explaining.

Shai Reshef is the person who started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kH-uYwt0qs

It's non-profit. Not sure who "owns" it. It started in 2009.

Edit: Addendum. I'm not sure they need marketing. When I started last year (Sep 2019), they had ~20k students. They've added another 10k over the course of the academic year. I believe they were at 5k students in 2016.

I'm actually concerned about the sustainability with this growth, but we'll see how this ride goes.

Is posting here a marketing move? you seem to have skipped that question.

1. Does it feel worth the time you are investing? 2. Do you hope that the degree itself will be a valuable credential, or just (!?) that the learning is good value-for money? 3. What, to you, are the advantages of this over self-teaching using MOOCs or any of the other online resources (which are better for computer science than for any other field)?

Thanks for offering to take questions. I'm intriegued by UoPeople and other similar ventures. I have a son who will graduate in a few years who may have social trouble at a regular university.

1. Yes, absolutely. I love learning. I dislike that courses are only 8 weeks long because I would like to dig deeper into the material than that timeframe allows. However, I definitely feel the time is well spent.

2. I am less concerned about the credential. I already have a bachelor's degree and some graduate school. Thus, it's not likely to give me any extra weight, and I don't plan to pursue jobs with it. However, some of my colleague who've moved on have found it both helpful and valuable in that regard.

I will note that the school is nationally accredited, so this can be quite limiting (e.g., grad school options are very limit, transferring credit is limited, etc.). So, this is a consideration that must be taken. However, I'm happy with the return on my investment (knowledge) so far.

3. Real, college credit which can be transferred. While it has limits in that regard, I am not aware of any colleges that will accept MOOCs for transfer unless they were explicitly designed to be credit granted (e.g., some of edX's stuff or maybe some Coursera's new stuff).

That said, I would argue that UoPeople is really "self-teaching" like you would with MOOCs. While the school implements a form of "peer learning," I find it to be poorly done and not very helpful. I do meet some others who are genuinely interested in the topics, but most students are just interested in getting through the courses.

And, ugh, I loathe peer assessment. While it's not the only form of assessment which takes place, it's the most obnoxious part of the school. It's worse when you peers don't understand basic things like how files and directories work.

This part term I was told by a peer, in the discussion forum, that my post was "wrong." (It wasn't.) And the student told me to read so-and-so's post to see why. The student subsequently marked me down. (Fortunately, it had minimal impact. So I didn't bother appealing it.)

I couldn't really give any advice for your son. If he can handle academic work on his own fairly well, then it might work for him. However, some students struggle with online learning and there's not a lot of support structures in place at the school yet.

How are students supposed to take exams? Who grades the exams?

Exams are taken online. Some courses, which are marked in the catalog[0], require the use of a proctor for the final exam.

The proctor requirement can be fulfilled through a professional local to you (librarian, minister, etc.) or through an online service called ProctorU.

If you use a local professional, there is no fee and you are not permitted to pay them. If you use the ProctorU service, you must pay a fee to that service. None of these fees are provided to the school. It's purely a payment to the service.

[0] https://www.uopeople.edu/about/uopeople/essential-uopeople-d...

Rigor?

Modest to "it depends." I'd place it on par with a local community college for myself. However, I think it depends more on the student.

The instructors act more as moderators rather than instructors. There are no lectures, and they have limited interaction (e.g., a few posts in the forums and responses to our weekly learning journals). Thus, it's hard to really take advantage of their knowledge.

Instructor are also volunteers. I've read that they're paid a small honorarium, but I've been unable to find supporting evidence in any school documentation. (Granted, I haven't looked hard.)

You will primarily teach yourself through course materials. The materials can vary from excellent to awful. Thus, it can be a challenge sometimes. (Fortunately, I've been to grad school [education field] in the past, so it's not much of an issue for me.)

The school talks about "peer learning," but it is poorly integrated. It mainly amounts to peer assessments and required discussion forum posts. So, as you might guess, the quality of the latter varies wildly.

There are definitely quite a few students who struggle, and there's not a lot of support structure built into the school yet. (It's still young. ~10 years old.)

The CS curriculum is fairly standard (e.g., operating systems, programming, algorithms, data structures, etc.).

Why?

Why not?

I don't need the degree. I don't intent to pursue employment which will require it. And should I decide to continue at the graduate level, I already have a regionally accredited bachelor's degree and grad school. Thus, I have options for that path.

I like the structure and grades. Sure, I could I learn just as well using MOOCs, textbooks, and so on. However, the grade hovering over my head provides a touch of external motivation to stay focused. Plus, it's nice to interact with students from different places and with different interests.

So, basically, it provides me a cheap means to fulfill my curiosity.

I just started studying at the University of the People. but I gained a little bit of experience. It gives the opportunity to get to know people from around the world, we are still in the lockdown, all studies stopped but luckily I still can study and do my homework and do my exam in my house totally safe, plus my instructor is so kind and so helpful and full of information I would never regret studying at the University of the people.

I am really happy to be a student of UoPeople which is one of the world highly rated tuision free online University. The school has helped me to overcome my problem of time management and communication at work place has improved. However, I am glad that it has given me an opportunity of having my degree certificate in the future. Being a student at UoPeople requires internal motivation and patience because the workload is much.

I almost lost interest with the school but I was motivated by my supervisor through her constant messages and quick response that made the university processes easier for me.

University of the People is changing the way we face our educational system. Firstly, it is showing that education is freedom and hence it should not be the privilege of a few, but rather something anyone can have access to. Secondly, it is showing that the traditional educational system is outdated to keep up with nowadays worlds demands and we need to come up with something new!

I attend this school now and as long as you are smart and can teach yourself it is a good school. You pay practically nothing and you get what you put into it. If you want to take the subjects the instructor gives you and master them all you can, if you just want to learn the minimum to pass the class, that is your option to do so too. This school really is what you make of it.

This school is not a regionally accredited school, and therefore the vast majority of other schools will not accepted their credit if you decide to transfer somewhere else or use the degree you earned to try & get into a graduate degree program.

It is borderline fraudulent for schools like this to operate without being very clear on the limits of the credits earned and their portability.

I don't know about borderline fraudulent, but I really wish there were better explanations by the school.

I already knew what I was getting into when I started because I've been in and around academia for more than 2 decades. However, many of the students don't understand the intricacies of American higher ed. And they can be hard to explain to current and prospective students who just want to know if the degree will help them get a job or obtain some other goal in life.

That said, if I am not mistaken there are rules about to go into place at the US Department of Education which is supposed to eliminate the distinction between national and regional accreditation[0]. This should be fun to watch how it plays out.

[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/03/17/pros-and-con...

If they're prohibited from treating credits from non-regionally accredited schools differently, then I suspect schools will put into place policies that are not "blanket" policies, but instead policies that dictate individual evaluation of each student, which will turn out to accomplish the same thing. Which really wouldn't be great, but also would filter out a lot of people of questionable academic credentials: regionally accredited schools generally meet some minimum standards, while non-regionally accredited schools are a crap shoot: some are just fine, but many are awful degree mills that don't even grade work beyond assigning an "A" for any submission.

In this kind of time, i believe online study is the way to go. It takes self-motivation to study on a computer in the comfort of your home with lots of distraction.

What is there to against a revolution that serves a great purpose of demolish education shortage in different parts of the world. I personally enjoy the flexibility the school gives me so i can be partly working or traveling.

University of the People is changing the way we see education. Firtsly, it is showing that education is freedom and hence it should not be the privilege of a few. It is also showing that the traditional educational system is outdated and needs to be rethought and reformulated into something that fits the needs of the modern world.

This school saved my life in more ways than I can relate. It is like any other school, where students copy paste and struggle with plagiarism, so if you think that there is a college without these, you are so wrong. The only issue here is the accreditation and how limited the transfer places are for now. I hope they work on this.

In all fairness, UoPeople has afforded me the opportunity to get an American education that is accredited and also transferable to other regular universities without leaving my home country. The most interesting part is the numerous scholarships available can be easily accessed regardless of wherever you might come from.

Why do you need scholarships for a free university?

The school is not free. It's tuition-free.

My experience at UoPeople has been nothing but a positive experience. The tuition-free aspect is the whole reason I could even go to a college. I am so grateful for this opportunity and even admire the diversity this higher-education opportunity brings, I have met the BEST people and honestly the best professors.

Uopeople is the best that has ever happened to me as a person . At the institution , I am exposed to quality education and highly qualified instructors whose tutoring has affected me positively bringing about academic excellence . The institution's curriculum is up to date .

I have no regret studying at the University.

Great initiative!! I wanted to volunteer, but they only accept if you can teach in two semesters per year or 15h per week. I am a researcher and I find it is too much! Once per year and then 5 h per week is the maximum I am able for a usual paid course in top 200 university, sorry.

University of the people is giving opportunities for people who previously were not able to secure admission into college. I am a medical doctor currently pursuing a bachelors in community health and i must admit the institution is up to date and top notch!

An interesting question would be whether governments and teachers agreements accept this program.

Many of those have rules about how if you have a Masters, you earn X more and you can just keep earning more the more degrees you get. $4000 lets the payback period Be quite fast.

The school is accredited by the DEAC which is recognized by the US DoE. It's national accreditation which is less prestigious and not always "accepted" by regional accredited schools.

https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/institution-profile/233675

The Master's in education is recognized by International Baccalaureate (IB) which is a well regarded program. I'm not sure of the exact relationship as the program is new. (It just started this year.) However, it likely wouldn't be accepted by the various state education bodies for teaching licensing. (This is a guess based on my past experience in education.)

They sure ask for a lot of information for signing up, which make me think that it is not free.

Tuition-free, not completely free. There is a require one-time app fee and exam fee for each course.

You pay I believe ~60USD signing up fee and then 100USD for each class (or 200USD for each graduate class). It's tuition free, not free.

Is that $100/$200 not "tuition"? I mean, it's cheap tuition, but it seems like it's tuition nonetheless.

Well, the term "tuition" refers to a part of the overall university expense. For example, for NYU, a quick search reveals a whopping $55,018 in annual tuition. That's not the total cost, which is higher since you might be paying for room and board, administration fees, classes/credit-hours, etc.

In general, universities in Europe tend to be free, so I agree with you, 100USD per class is indeed tuition for me. But, it is not the US-centric "tuition" of the brick-and-mortar schools.

It’s infomercial pricing. Absolutely free, all you have to pay is shipping and handling.

I've had a wonderful experience at the Uopeople. Meeting different people with diversified cultural views and knowledge. Great and more hands on course instructors and program adviser. Am pleased with the course content and study materials.

could’ve renamed “of the People” to something in Latin to make it sound more legitimate.

University of Populi

Homines University

I am a student at this University. This is what has saved my life in the last 2 years. I have an associate's degree now, a way to gain money and a lot of knowledge. I thank to this opportunity at UoPeople and I think it is all worth it.

The university gave me the opportunity to realize my dream of an American education without leaving my home country. There are also numerous financial aid available to all seeking and deserving students.

Finishing college honorably demonstrates an ability to finish something having a foundation to be a contributing member to society and in turn the society gives you a certificate to recognize you for it.

I am a student from UoPeople, I recently graduated from the associates degree in computer science. I am working on a good portfolio to present to employers! Thank you UoPeople for all your help! =)

Here's the movie with similar idea: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384793/ :)

Will employer acknowledge this university? That will be the ultimate test

Seeing a lot of negative comments here, especially around accreditation and pricing. As a co-founder of an accredited online university, son of a retired state university professor father, and grandson of a retired state university professor grandmother, I'd like to offer my own perspective.

University of the People is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), a national accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). CHEA recognized accreditors can be browsed here: https://www.chea.org/chea-recognized-organizations

DEAC is a US-based, non-profit accreditation agency founded in 1926. Our university (quantic.edu) was also accredited by DEAC. It was a multi-year process, and extremely rigorous; we were evaluated across all aspects of our organization: academic, operational, financial, etc. Many schools that begin the accreditation process do not successfully complete it. As the name suggests, DEAC specializes in distance education, so it's a good choice for a university that offers purely online programs. Some accreditors have requirements that implicitly or explicitly exclude online universities; for example, there might be a requirement for a physical library of a certain size. Regional accreditation also often takes longer, or requires you to have been in operation for more years. However, when comparing notes with my retired academic family members, there were similarities in the required documentation for DEAC to what was needed in the regional accreditation renewal process.

A prerequisite for accreditation in the US is licensing at the state level and compliance with all state laws within which the university has a physical presence. This means that you need to be very careful about where your school has physical offices and from which states you advertise and enroll students. Note that licensing is also required for issuing certificates, not just degrees; this is a common mistake for education startups, especially bootcamps. Lambda School [1] and Flatiron [2] were both slapped for this.

The differences between regional and national accreditation often boil down to "regional accreditation means credits are more likely to transfer." However, one thing that's thrown a huge wrench into this is that in 2019, the US Department of Education revised its rules to eliminate the distinction between national and regional accreditors! [3] This rule change will take effect in July 2020. The impact of this (and related) rule changes on credit transfer and how universities market their accreditation are open to speculation.

Regarding the University of People's pricing, it's important to note that they advertise as "tuition free." Terms like tuition have a very specific meaning in the world of higher education, and are considered distinct from "fees," for example. This is why UofP does not market itself as simply being "free," like we do for our early career MBA program. To use the word "free" unconditionally, DEAC requires us to prove our early career MBA students can apply, enroll, study, and graduate having paid no tuition or fees whatsoever. On the other hand, if you do charge for tuition, like we do for our Executive MBA, DEAC requires you to disclose all payment details up-front; this is why almost anywhere on our website where we reference a price, or even affordability, we also include a link to display a breakdown of tuition, payment plans, scholarships, discounts, and other potential fees.

The higher education space is very regulated, so innovation can be challenging. It's important to remember that most innovative organizations have to (at least initially) make tradeoffs to better serve a subset of the market over incumbents. Our raison d'etre is active learning, for example; we eschew passive lectures (no video professor) in favor of a proprietary interactive learning format that's mobile-first and broken up into small modules. This has numerous advantages for the learner, but it also means that our bespoke curriculum structure can't be easily packaged up into transfer credits. As a graduate school, we decided that was a reasonable tradeoff to enable innovation in the core learning experience. Likewise, we decided to pursue a quality-first strategy (see: Tesla master plan), building a deep, challenging curriculum with a selective admissions process (less than 10% admitted) to establish the value of the school and alumni network, with the plan to launch more open programs down the line.

If you've read this far, I hope that you at least take away the fact that building something new in the higher education space is hard. If some aspect of a program appears odd at first glance, consider if the diversion from the norm might also confer an advantage with a specific audience. And when evaluating educational program options, don't discount the value of a licensed and accredited provider recognized by the US Department of Education or CHEA.

[1] https://www.educationdive.com/news/running-without-state-app... [2] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2017/ag-schneiderman-announc.... [3] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-education...

[EDIT: some sentences tweaked for clarity]

So your business model is let everyone who signs up access the courses but only let the top students get a degree and then make money by selling access to those students?

How much energy would you say goes into the student part vs the employer part?

Im happy to be a student of uopeople cos I get quality education and for far less!! Looking forward to my uopeople diploma. To be honest the school is very smooth and convenient

I think plagiarism cannot be completely avoided since there's nothing new under the sun. Tha challenge becomes how to present an already existing idea in a new way

I go to this school and as long as you're really smart and can teach yourself the material without an actual class it's great. Low cost and you learn a ton.

my experience so far has been nothing but pleasant, great quality content in their courses (majors), I'm currently in my first years in my third term in June, i have learned about python like I haven't gone into the programming in any depth before, I joined uopeople in a computer science degree (BSc). plagiarism is a big NO in this wonderful university and so is creating. more about me, I am Nadine lynch, and I am south African.

Was this thread posted on Yammer or in a WhatsApp group?

The University of the People is an innovative school where you can meet and talk to students from all over the world. The faculty is of high caliber as well.

I wouldn't called the school "innovative." It's fairly unique in higher ed, but definitely not innovative. The pedagogical approaches it uses have been around for decades in most cases.

And the faculty can be hit-or-miss. Some are awesome, some of okay. A few are just awful.

Personally, I had an instructor for Java who had difficulty managing different JDKs one a single machine. If I, as a student new to Java, can figure it out, I absolutely expect my instructor to know how to do so. Granted, this particular instructor was a "standout" in the negative sense. Most have been okay.

Fortunately, instructors are mostly inconsequential as there's very little interaction with them.

What does Health Science mean? medicine?, is there any way to study medicine deeply on the internet for an outsider? a programmer for example?

So, Correspondence Learning? Like http://www.open.ac.uk/?

Seems to be a fair bit cheaper than the Open University. But maybe you get what you pay for ...

UoPeople has given me a really amazing experience so far, I don't regret signing up with them and I would absolutely stick with them

Im happy to be a student of uopeople cos I get quality education and for far less!! Looking forward to my uopeople diploma.

hello to all, I have found this amazing university where I can learn whenever I want and whatever I want to study. I never have the liberty to study on my availability but know I can and I am very happy about that. I would like to that UOP for being there for me and so many people to provide quality education.

Am I reading this correctly that they are nationally accredited but have not gone through one of the regionals?

Yes. They announced about a month or two ago that they received permission from WASC, a regional accrediting agency, to start the accreditation process.

My experiment with university of the people is very well, I think it's good idea, online learning.

My first experience with a tertiary institution and I could not have a better institution than UoPeople

I have nothing to say accept thank you Uopeople for everything you've gave an oxygen

This seems too good to be true and I’m trying to figure out the catch.

The catch is your degree will be from “University of the People” which will send red flags to hiring managers who check. Hopefully one day this will be a normal thing, but it’s questionable whether your degree will signal what you want it to signal.

Graduates work in FAANG companies though, probably hiring managers comsider it trustworthy enough. Btw, what red flags do you mean?

> Btw, what red flags do you mean?

It looks like a lesser education. And it further makes it look like there’s something strange about you that made you pick it.

It's true. The current "catch" is that the school is nationally accredited. This means you can encounter some issue getting your degree recognized (e.g., some grad schools in the US will not consider nationally accredited degrees, some schools only accept their credits on a case-by-case basis, and so on).

However, if you know that going into it, you know the primary shortcoming. (Fortunately, I have a regionally accredited degree already, so I didn't care about that.)

Ah I see! I didn’t realize this accreditation distinction you’re making. My googling from here makes much more sense. Thanks.

I looked at their CS degree. Just one semester of Calculus?

I have been programming professionally for 15+ years, working in web and app development, system administration, designing custom language extensions, image processing, protein folding, and sundry other tasks.

I can count on one hand the number of times I needed any calculus beyond first semester, and those were for very specific scientific domains.

Now statistics and linear algebra, on the other hand...

Link: https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/cs/degrees/computer-scienc...

Their data structures & algorithms course: https://my.uopeople.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=45606&chapterid...

I'm more worried about the the apparent lack of basic algorithms (Dijkstra? DP?) than not having more semesters of calculus.

Algorithms is a separate course.

https://my.uopeople.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=45606&chapterid...

Note that this syllabus is somewhat out of date. The second textbook link is a bad link. I can't find any material on the (unofficial) CS Discord about updates to the course.

Ah, it's not on the curriculum, it's an elective: https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/cs/degrees/computer-scienc...

> I looked at their CS degree. Just one semester of Calculus?

I have a reputable masters and PhD in CS and don’t recall ever studying a ‘calculus course’, except lambda and pi calculus.

Just to note, majority of online CS programs I've seen, even many from state schools, seem to have less math courses than traditional programs.

Sadly, yes. College Algebra, Stats, Calculus (one-term), and Discrete Mathematics are all the math requirements.

I plan to do my math elsewhere.

AFAIK, CMU, Harvard, Yale and Princeton all require only one semester of calculus or less.

CMU appears to require 3 semesters (but will give credit for people who took a course in high school)

http://coursecatalog.web.cmu.edu/schools-colleges/schoolofco...

Yale has only one semester but warns students they may need additional math to succeed in some of the coursework.

I didn't check the rest.

It's not a real CS program. Very clear from their front page description of the program. It looks like an IT degree with a side of Java and some web programming.

I guess this is a promising project, bookmarked.

There are no advanced or master degree courses

Not in CS, but the school offers an MBA and an master's in education.

Is there a tuition-free CS masters anywhere?

You might find some in European countries. Though, I think they've cut back on a lot of their "free" programs last I remember.

However, Georgia Tech and the University of Texas Austin both have online MSCS degrees that come in around $10k.

Is this available to international students?

Yes. In fact, I believe most of the students are international students. In my last course, I had students from Nigeria, Italy, Germany, the US, Vietnam, and China.

Tell me how many are from India?

No idea. I don't recall anyone from my classes who has specifically mentioned being from India. I did a quick search on the internal social network, and there's quite a few students who mention being from various parts though. So, "some" is the best answer I can offer.

Nationally accredited. Not regionally accredited. Hence useless for academic purposes.

Not true. There are schools which will consider nationally accredited degrees for admissions into graduate schools. Even the University of Chicago will consider them.

However, it's potential utilization is much, much more diminished compared to a no-name state school.

This might change when (if) they acquire regional accreditation, but they've only just started the process. Thus, it could take upwards of 5 years.

Not really. It's a story that nationally accredited schools like to tell, but it's not really true.

Regionally accredited schools simply don't take credits from schools that aren't.

I know several students who've transferred to WGU (RA, non-profit, online) to complete their bachelors degrees.

There are also students compiling lists of schools which will consider and/or accept UoPeople credits/degrees.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UoPeople/comments/g55smv/list_of_in...

The idea that UoPeople is some kind of academic dead-end is simply not accurate. It's not going to get as far as a degree from a no-name state uni on its own, but it can definitely be leveraged to further one's goals.

Stanford CS is not accredited at all. Is it useless for academic purposes?

Stanford doesn't need accreditation. Neither does Harvard. You're not seriously comparing the two, are you?

"tuition-free"

"tuition-fee free"? I would hope you get at least some tuition!

The only required fees are an application fee and an exam fee per course. There are fees to transfer courses in, and many courses require a proctor. You can opt to have a professional in your community or use the online service ProctorU for a fee charged by that service.

Tuition in American English is what would be called tuition fees in Commonwealth English.

How is this possible?

Are professors paid?

I'm taking this Uni in my free time. I am a full-time at a large IT company, and when I started, I had too much free time. I thought, I don't have a degree, I learned everything myself, let's see what the rigorous side of CS is.

Well, UoPeople is both good and bad, as everything in life.

On the bad side, some teachers are not only useless, but actively making your experience worse. This is mostly cultural, but teachers coming from Africa and some Asian countries really make you want to stick to the tiniest details of rules and assignments.

For example, if you have to write a learning journal (and you will), and the example of an LJ contains entries starting with date such as "DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM", African and some Asian teachers will ask you to correct it from any other format. I found this infuriating. What's more, when I had questions, most often, I got no help from these teachers. Some teachers would be amazing, most teachers would give me a non-helpful question, some would ignore my question outright.

I also feel like there's a ton of hoops you have to jump through. An associate CS degree consists of a number of health/philosophy/econ classes that I have zero interest in. This is, again, cultural, as UoP is highly US-centric. If you're coming from other country, you'll realize how many assumptions you had (and how silly the UoP/US system can be).

On the good side, however, I do feel like I'm learning a lot. If you really spend time in reading the materials, I have found the exercises in courses quite useful. I'm 100% sure it's not as rigorous as a brick-and-mortar university, no. They will let pass students who have learnt nothing as long as they put in work.

But, if you want, you can surprisingly learn a lot. Even after being a number of years in IT (engineering and now architecture), I found something new (especially their Database and other specialized courses are quite good). I haven't done math since high school (my brick-and-mortar degree was not in CS) and some of the math courses were really kicking my ass, which is great.

It's also insanely flexible in that it's online. You decide when to do stuff. You decide when to read. There's only deadlines for every week. Other than that, it's up to you.

Overall, I think my experience with UoP is quite good, but it takes a very specific mindset. If you're from a poor non-US and non-EU country, I'd say UoP is great for you (provided you can pay for it, since it's still not free). If you're from US or any EU country, UoP degree will have almost zero value in terms of having a degree, but might provide you with a lot of new knowledge. If you're in for the knowledge, I'd say it's nice. If you're in for the degree, I'd say go for Georgia's Tech OMSCS.

Feel free to ask any questions if you'd like. I'll be checking replies to this post for a day or two.

Nice review, how does one takes exams at this university?

All classes have multiple graded activities. There are weekly assignments, that are peer graded. There are three graded exams throughout every term that count to the final grade. There are learning journals that I mentioned, which are teacher graded and contribute to the final grade. And then, there is one final exam, that accounts for something like 30% of the whole grade.

Most often, this final test is done online, without any supervision. For some classes (like math classes), there is an online proctor required (ProctorU, costs around 15 bucks an exam). You might have your own proctor somehow, I didn't try that.

Grading is another area that I am ambiguous about. Peer graded exercises are kind of hit or miss. Sometimes, the peer marks something as incorrect because they are incorrect. Sometimes, they mark everything as correct because, I don't know, they want to be nice or something. Sometimes, there are mistakes in the grading key that peers should use, and that's the most infuriating to me, because the teachers' attitude towards mistake in grading keys vary significantly (and they mostly correct your grade but not the grading key, so future students will hit the same thing).

Overall, the tests for CS courses were, so far, somewhat unimpressive... I've seen questions like "who created C", or "what is the output of this python code" type of questions. The tests are mostly multiple-choice. I'd prefer if the class could elect not to do tests, and do a large project instead. Maybe for more advanced CS courses, that's how they do it, but so far, I've not seen anything like that (and I started 2 years ago, though I took some breaks). It's mostly the exercises and assignments that students are graded on throughout the course where the bulk of learning happens.

For the math classes, they were much tougher, where even a multiple choice answer is not making it significantly easier. For math classes, the tests are no joke. The strange thing was that the math classes teach quite advanced concepts that require you to calculate, for example, e^x or a sum of squares, or straight out use R, and then, in the final tests, you're allowed only a four-function basic calculator. That's amazingly frustrating to me, and I ended up guessing a lot of the questions (as in, e to the power of 4 would be probably less than answer A, but more than answer C and D, so B it is).

hi, the first day when i attepted the apply the uopeople is im so afraid becaurse they many university online which is non accredited in the world,but when i recognized the uopeople is accredited im try to fill the application then im locky to get this university.becaurse is higher education in the world.im totally changing my life becaurse of uopeople. as now im expiriance too in my feild at uopeople. im happy to get uopeople in my life. and also thank to my programme advisor,which is farhanaz.

hi everyone. since i attend this achool and i accepted the admision.the first topic that i registering in the first terms it is psychoogy and online stratagy i have learn how i discusion in student portal,and also i learning the method of education how i prepare for study amd how prepare gor the exams. and meet the sevaral people in others country. my expiriance is writing and read and how the controll my self.

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