Free Open University

Does anyone have any experience with this school ?

 

You mean this thing?....

CIS Free College Classes providing Free Courses for a Free University Education for all.

It looks like their web site was purpose-built to earn revenue from advertising. You can see they have a lot of affiliate advertisers on both sides of the page. No real school would do this.

 

This is not a school.

Scott Provost teaches everything in the world at this "school."

Do you know anyone who could teach in 3, 4, 5, 6 different concentrations at a grad level?

 

Sorry about that. I was just curious about it thats all. I haven't seen anything like that before, it sounded like a good idea. With the skyrocketing cost of tuition these day's, it caught my eye and I was curious.
Thats why I enjoy this forum so much. Thanks for the feedback.

underdog

 

Yeah.....IF.

 

Here is a real "free tuition" university that offers courses (most likely non-transferable at the moment) but no degrees yet
University of the People
I wish the project success.

 

Not really free,
the funny thing is you have to pay to be educated how to use open coursewares. Ocw is free but if you earn money upon on their works you still have to pay.

 

The last time I looked at Free Open University, they seemed to be trying to do a good job at offering free, unaccredited degrees by recruiting those with knowledge to work with students. However, I think the quality could be (or is) very uneven, as one would expect with unaccredited degrees; also, the broad focus of the degrees offered seemed way to ambitious. In sum, this might be better than just starting a self-styled degree from scratch in a library but the actual degree is probably of little utility; you might be better off writing a meta-analysis of the current research in your field of interest in the form of a monograph (e.g., book).

 

Hi SteveFoerster,

I noticed that you are starting PhD economics at SMC. Are you taking advantage of the tuition free offer? Approximately how long is it going to take you to complete the degree?

 

So are you currently taking advantage of their tuition free offer?

 

FOU is no longer offering any kind of new degrees but rather a sort of certificate stating that you have completed course work to what is believed to be the equivalent of which ever degree. More a certificate of recognition for your independent studies.

 

I'm not sure what it is. It's hard to imagine a more confusing web presence. That may or may not be intentional.

http://freeopenu.org/

He's listed as 'teacher' for all of the classes in their biology "department". Each class is accompanied by what looks like the image of a text-book cover, so I guess that students are supposed to read the books.

http://bio.freeopenu.org/

When we turn to the philosophy "department", we see images of book covers (some of them dictionaries and encyclopedias, and others quite technical) and once again, Scott listed as 'teaching' everything.

http://philosophy.freeopenu.org/

I think that Wally Provost (I'm guessing that he's Scott's father) teaches some philosophy classes of his own as well. 'Professor Wally' seems to be a retired community college philosophy instructor from the Tampa area who now appears to be in his 80's and apparently now lives in Texas.

http://philosophy.edocio.com/

It looks like the geology classes are taught by a South African gemologist (there you go, Kizmet!) so there are some additional teachers tucked in here and there. (Whatever 'teach' means in this context.) I think that it's safe to say that Scott probably isn't personally competent to provide instruction or assess students' work in all of the subjects that he's listed as teaching.

There's talk on the FOU site about independent study, links to several open-courseware and e-book sites, and mentors.

"Your certification will have room for your mentors and others who look at your work and agree to sign as well. You must recruit mentors who know you as well as leaders in your community to look at your work."

So the question arises, if this is independent study taking advantage of publicly available materials and employing mentors that students recruit themselves, then what additional value is Free Open University adding? Students can avail themselves of everything except Professor Wally's philosophy classes without contacting FOU.

What premise? We need to inquire into what it is that FOU is offering students.

They start out by suggesting that they are offering degree-equivalency diplomas to independent scholars.

"Independent study is not like a traditional college education because you are the institute of your own learning. What Free Open University provides is guidance in determining what must be studied to accomplish the desired degree of education and documentation proving that you have done the work and know the subject matter.
If you follow our recommendations and properly document your learning, we will look at your documentation and offer an opinion or certification of substantial equivalency. This is not the same as a degree and your documentation serves as proof of your educational accomplishment."

Then they dump on conventional universities for a while...

"When a university grants a degree or diploma there is no proof that you have learned the subject matter. Many universities grant degrees to people who never attended, studied or learned any of the required materials. In many developing countries universities sell degrees and corruption renders their diplomas worthless... If writing is difficult for you or you do not write well, you should go to a traditional university and rely on whatever un-certified diploma they grant."

But despite the denial a the top of the page that they award degrees, they seem to be talking about degrees at the bottom of the page.

" Thank you for choosing to join our independent study learner community.

This is the place to tell us what degree you are interested in."

It's pretty clear that they are indeed awarding degrees in at least one instance.

"New Doctoral Candidate
Wallace H. Provost Jr.
Doctor of Independent Philosophical Studies
Entropy verses Evolution

Sign up at his site to be in his doctoral committee
Doctoral committees at Free Open University are always Free and Open. Do not worry about your qualifications, all are welcome.

Professor Wally's Doctoral Program will be completing soon and we would like a large committee. All committee will receive a free copy of his book upon completion."

I don't know what to make of this. If it's just an elderly teacher trying to remain intellectually active and his friends and his son trying to bestow an honor on him by acclamation because they love him, then it's kind of touching.

But the "Doctoral committees at Free Open University are always..." suggests that there have been or will be more of these "doctorates".

The distinction between a degree and a degree-equivalency-certificate is awfully fine and perhaps even meaningless. Aren't all degrees already degree-equivalency-certficates? Isn't that precisely what degrees are?

The distinction might be an attempt to avoid the jurisdiction of state educational regulators. We've already seen CUFCE using a degree-equivalency-diploma dodge in Los Angeles in hopes of evading the BPPVE/BPPE.

 

The open courseware is very useful if you just want to learn a few things, in particular programming.

 

There's some history here...

Hi -

I knew I'd heard Mr. Provost's name before...Looks like he was the founder of FreeMIT in Minneapolis, before relocating in Bryan, Texas.

Heres a quote from his tigweb.org page:

"In 1998 I started Free MIT in Minneapolis MN across from the Minnesota Institute of Technology. Later that became Free A&M when I moved to College Station Texas
It is now a completely independent full scale university called Free Open University."

I think there may be some old threads around here dealing with the schools he has founded previously.

Johann

 

What's in a name.

You've got to hand it to Mr. Provost - at least for chutzpah.

It takes brass ones to name a school "FreeMIT" across the road from the non-free MIT and then start "FreeA&M" in Texas!

Johann