Accessible Post-Secondary Schooling

In his higher education talk, Shai Reshef discusses how the online university he founded is making post-secondary schooling more accessible to people everywhere. Due to financial, cultural and capacity issues, qualified people who graduated high school and want to study can't under the current system.

The University of the People is tuition-free and degree-granting. The affordable and scalable alternative disrupts the system by allowing people to study regardless of what they earn, where they live or what society says about them. By looking at what wasn't working and using the power of internet to get around it, Reshef built a model that cuts down cost significantly. Since bricks and mortar, capacity and textbooks are not an issue, this virtual college can offer an almost free education. Through peer to peer learning and the volunteered services of over 3000 professors, any student from any part of the world can get a business administration or computer science degree as long as they have an internet connection.

The higher education talk demonstrates the shift where a degree is no longer a privilege for the few but now a basic right for all.