Free Higher Education

Imagine a world where we eliminate poverty by educating everyone. A world where everyone realizes his or her full potential and contributes to the society at his or her maximum capacity and productivity. Imagine how many times more the global productivity would increase if all could get free higher education. Imagine how many more healthcare professionals, scientists, thinkers, teachers and other professionals would cater to our collective needs and well-being. The hard reality that there is enormous cost of higher education hasn’t deterred some to still do whatever they could to help towards this dream.

Just as when the dot com bubble was reaching its peak and the entire world seemed to be like a village for the first time in history, in 1999, University of Tübingen in Germany published videos of class lectures online for anyone to study and learn free of charge. This would have been unthinkable just five years prior due to enormous technological burden and was only possible due to wide acceptance of the internet. Three years later, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) followed suit and published their course lectures and materials as well in 2002. This opened the floodgates for many other American universities to do the same. These free course materials became known as open courseware (OCW).

OCW made the learning materials including videos of lectures, lecture notes, and in some cases exercises available to anyone with an internet connection. There were no assessments and there was no way for the learners to submit their work to the professors for feedback. That came 10 years later in 2012 when MIT and Harvard University partnered to form edX, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform. edX allowed anyone from the world with an internet connection to learn from the world’s best universities a wide range of subjects. edX has simple registration and enrollment processes that keeps track of a person’s progress in a course and provides automatic assessments throughout the course. This is a major difference between open courseware and edX. This automated assessment at least partially filled the gap of lack of feedback on the learner’s progress.

Tens of millions of learners learn from thousands of courses each year free of charge from edX and other MOOC platforms. Corporations partner with MOOC platforms to have their employees gain skills. Universities look at MOOC platforms as an extension of their courses and offerings. For a small fee, typically a couple of hundred dollars, universities may even give credit for the MOOC that can used to complete the rest of the degree at that university.

So far, we have an opportunity to learn for free from OCW, get automated feedback from MOOCs, maybe get some transferrable credit for a small fee, but no way to get a complete degree for free. That changed with the establishment of University of People (UOP) in 2009. Based in Pasadena, California, UOP is an US accredited university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees with free tuition but a hundred-dollar assessment fee for each course. UOP is not totally free but is very affordable compared to other higher education institutions.

These are some of the efforts different institutions have tried towards the goal of free higher education. In this regard we cannot ignore thousands of American corporations that provide tuition reimbursement to its employees for pursuing degree programs. Some corporations have partnered with universities and colleges to provide higher education to their employees. This has enabled many to learn where they work and earn a degree. Some of them could not afford higher education prior to working fulltime and could not afford the time after they started working fulltime. It is like a lifelong dream come true. A handful of the corporations have gone the step of creating their own universities to teach their employees specialized programs aligned with their core competencies.

In 2017, New York State announced the Excelsior program to provide free tuition to New York state resident students with families of income less than $125,000 per year. Students may attend any of the state’s two-year or four-year colleges. All these efforts to bring higher education to alleviate poverty have made some inroads towards that goal but have not eliminated it. We need to think of another way to address this issue.

How about if the corporations hire high performing high school graduates as apprentices who have difficulty affording college? Most corporations would shy away from teaching their employees general skills that they can take elsewhere after completing their education and the corporation would not be able to realize the returns on the investment made on the employees. This policy may also attract employees to join the company who do not really want to be with the corporation in the long run but use the corporation as a stepping stone and leave after completing their formal education. Human Capital Theory agrees with these conclusions and suggests not investing in the human capital (i.e. employees) for general skill development because human capital may leave the corporation at will.

Addressing this concern, corporate universities should specialize their education programs so that they align closely to their core competencies, instead of general skills. General skills can be built by partnering with local community colleges and working a discount for the employees. The corporation may or may not subsidize this component of the formal education. Corporate universities should get accredited and by accepting credits from partnering colleges and universities, giving credit for work, and teaching specialized courses, they would be able to grant degrees to the employees in the specialized fields of the corporate core competencies. The employees would not only be more attracted to join such an organization, they would also be engaged and retained by the organization at least for the duration of the program. In fact, there is evidence to show that if the employees are appreciated by the corporation at completion of their educational program by a promotion, the intent to turnover reduces. The educational program may run twice as long as educational programs in higher education institutions because the education at the corporate university would be taking place part-time simultaneously with fulltime employment at the corporation. This would increase retention and engagement of the employees.

This model is not new. It is like the residency program for physicians where graduates of medical schools complete their residency requirement practicing medicine in a hospital or clinical setting under supervision of a more senior physician. The physicians get a salary during the residency that increases several folds at the completion of their residency program, which may last three to five years depending upon their specialty.

This approach would still not eliminate poverty altogether through education. But if it is widely adopted by corporations it would assist millions of qualified individuals having difficulty affording college. It would provide corporations with a specialized workforce in their core competencies. It would also help them attract and retain talent that is inclined towards intellectual growth. For the employees, it would provide them with a formal education that would have been difficult to afford otherwise.

There are many ways to chip away at the problem of eliminating poverty through education. Open Course Ware, Massive Open Online Courses, tuition-free university, tuition free university state programs for qualified families, and corporate tuition reimbursement are all part of this effort. Millions of people have already benefited from these programs. Corporations are uniquely poised to help in this effort by brining work and education together to create a more educated and better trained workforce. The employees also benefit by growing intellectually and getting formal education. Many employees who may not have been able to afford higher education to get professional jobs can get both simultaneously. As we are transitioning from an information economy to a knowledge economy it is increasingly more important to have a more educated and better trained workforce.

Dr. Assadullah is a senior technology architect at Accenture Federal Services and a professor of software engineering at University of Maryland University College (UMUC). He has a baccalaureate degree in Computing Science and Mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University, a master’s degree in Computer Science from New York University, and a PhD in Computational Sciences and Informatics from George Mason University. He has also taught Software Testing Management graduate course by UMUC on edX MOOC platform.

Related posts:

Watched a James Bond movie and one of the characters had undergone genetic therapy in Cuba. More specifically, he had undergone DNA replacement therapy that changed him into a completely different…

One of the huge benefits of owning property is the home equity you can build. But with equity comes the temptation to dip into it if a large expense or possible investment arises. There are many…

Often when I mention to friends or family I’m currently a freelance writer, they wonder how I got started. It wasn’t the easiest walk in the park, but these 4 resources proved invaluable in my…