Just in time for its first graduates, the University of the People, a tuition-free four-year-old online institution built to reach underserved students around the world, announced Thursday that it had received accreditation.
Now, with accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council, a national accrediting group, Mr. Reshef said, the university will expand significantly. He expects to have 5,000 students by 2016.
The university currently has 700 students from 142 countries enrolled in its degree programs in business administration and computer science. About 30 percent are from Africa and 25 percent from the United States, most of whom were born outside the country. While the first graduating class is tiny, only seven students, it shows the broad reach of the university: One of the graduates is from Syria and another from Jordan.
Classes at the university are 10 weeks long, and have 20 to 30 students — often from as many different countries — who have weekly homework and quizzes. The university depends largely on volunteer labor. Mr. Reshef said some 3,000 professors have offered to volunteer, although so far the university has only been able to use about 100 of them.
Its deans are volunteers from New York University and Columbia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/education/free-online-university-receives-accreditation-in-time-for-graduating-class-of-7.html?_r=1
(via withthingsunreal)
