Let's start our own University!

Our own university-without startup capital

We could obviously not start our own university right away. We would not have startup capital, or the credibility to get any. However it might be possible to evolve into a university through a series of small steps.

Our first step could be creating open source textbooks. This would play to our strength (free labor), while giving us credibility. Given the high cost of textbooks these days, if the books we created were half decent, they would gain at least some acceptance in the B&M world. Even if its not the offical text in the class, it would still be used by many students who do not want to shell out the $100 for the official book.

Since the textbook would be digital, it could be configured to match other textbooks. A student assigned to chapter two out of a McGraw Hill textbook could type in the name of his textbook into our book and read a chapter that covers the same topics.

The next step in the evolution would be our own standardized exams. While getting regional accreditation seems hard, getting your credits accepted by one apparently isn't. Just look at all those small business colleges accepted by Charter Oak. The big three would probably be very friendly to this idea because of the lack of exams for second and third year courses.

There might be some cost associated with this-but not much. We could use the Prometric testing system like Excelsior (SP!), or the remote proctor system used by many other schools.

The final step would be the unversity itself. It could be entirely online with little physical infrastructure (the min you would need for accreditation). At this point, you would probably have the credibility you would need for some sort of grants, as well as money from small charges for the exams.

While the university was waiting for accreditation, you could model programs after the big three. While the degree that a student graduates with from our school would be unaccredited, he/she would have enough exam credits to take to one the big three. They would take the classes at our university, but graduate from one of the big three. After accreditation, we
would simply offer our own.

 

guys please direct your post to this thread thanks a million

 

A few questions and comments:

What's your motivation in all this? Everyone is saying 'great, I want in'. But why? Is this just a vanity project, or is it something more?

What's this thing going to teach? Maybe you have already decided that, but I missed it. Is it going to be a general all-subjects university, or specialize in one subject?

Who is going to teach? Does Degeeinfo have a sufficient number of people willing and suitably qualified to teach any particular subject?

Who is going to lead it? Do you have anyone with real experience in guiding a new institution from groundbreaking through accreditation?

Frankly, all of this sounds unrealistic to me.

Before you start talking about Ph.D. programs in everything, you might consider starting out by offering one simple non-credit class in something.

Get the mechanics down. Get your class state-approved. But don't start out offering grandiose non-accredited graduate degree programs that you can't support. Choose one academic subject and then concentrate on gradually expanding your offerings in that one single area.

When you get several different classes up and running smoothly, maybe start offering a certificate. I'd guess that you will have more success getting funding if you have something tangible to show the foundations.

Eventually you might end up with a small institute with limited means and correspondingly limited but achievable ambitions. And significantly, something that's accreditable. But if you want to be UC Berkeley right out of the gate, I'm afraid that you are probably gonna blow it bigtime.

I hope that this little potential debacle isn't closely associated with Degreeinfo. This board works fine as a discussion forum. But if it turns into an incubator of questionable non-accredited schools, then that could discredit all of us.

 

Harumph!