University of the People (UoPeople) was founded in January 2009 by educational entrepreneur Shai Reshef, and is the first tuition-free online academic institution in the world. UoPeople values e-learning and peer-to-peer teaching and allows access to open-source technology and courseware, thus providing universal access to higher education by overcoming geographical and economic barriers. The target audience of the university can be considered those who may not have the opportunity or resources to attend a college in the US. With over 170 enrolled students, UoPeople includes refugees, survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, and the genocide in Rwanda, and about a quarter of the American students in UoPeople are undocumented. In 2014, the Distance Education Accreditation Commission reviewed the then three-year old institution, providing accreditation on Feb. 13, 2014. The school then proceeded to graduate its first class of seven students later that year. The University currently offers a graduate degree in MBA, as well as Bachelor and Associate degrees in Business Administration, Computer Science, and Health Science. NYU pursued collaborations with UoPeople after former President John Sexton heard founder Reshef talk about the online university in a conference. The partnership began in June 2011, launching the Global Learning Opportunity that provides recognized disadvantaged youths admission at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). NYUAD had distinguished itself “not only by the quality of its students and the selectivity of its admission, but also by its broad international reach” according to Sexton; “...We admire that UoPeople is seeking to bring higher education to so many of the world’s disadvantaged, and we anticipate a productive collaboration between them and NYU in identifying exceptionally bright and ambitious young people worldwide who could join our Abu Dhabi campus.”Reshef stated in his personal blog that this bold move by NYU shows disadvantaged youths worldwide that opportunity is available if you look for it: “NYU is a pioneer in its effort to aggressively recruit low-income, globally disadvantaged youth. Possibly, and hopefully, this will serve as a model for other institutions.” Other than NYU, UoPeople has also partnered with Yale University, Oxford University, and University of California, Berkeley. The support of four major schools has increasingly boosted the academic expectations and rigor of at UoPeople. OCA got the opportunity to interview Joe Jean, a graduate of the NYUAD Class of 2016, who was born and raised in Haiti and joined UoPeople after the 2010 Haiti earthquake to pursue Computer Science. Jean commented, “The quality of the education at UoPeople was great. We had well qualified instructors and we were using course materials similar to what is used by top schools in the United States. It was great to study with people from all over the world even though we were thousands of miles away from one another.” Jean was one of the top students at UoPeople, and was thus selected to apply to NYUAD during the first year of the partnership. He then had to go through a regular application process, which included sending his high school grades and TOEFL scores. “I can confidently say that integrating into NYUAD was easier because of the multicultural experience that UoPeople had offered me. I would definitely recommend UoPeople to other students and I have actually helped a couple of my Haitian friends apply.” Since 2009, several current and former members of the NYU community have served in academic programs or administrative leadership positions at UoPeople, including Dr. Russell Winer, Chair of the Marketing Department at Stern; Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, NEC Faculty Fellow at Stern; and Paul Affuso, the Associate Dean for Administrative Services and Facilities at Stern. While the school is tuition-free, it requires all students to pay $100 for every course exam, which allows it to support its $1 million budget. Thus, a four-year bachelor’s degree usually costs $4,000, but those who do not have that money can also apply for scholarships. Over one-fourth of the enrolled students do not pay any tuition due to generous scholarships funded by prestigious companies like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Intel. This article was written by Lathika Chandra Mouli. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: htxt