VANCOUVER (CUP) – Money could be becoming less of a factor in getting a university-level education.
Next Generation University (NextGenU) has opened its virtual doors to become one of the first services in Canada to offer university-level education. Erica Frank, founder and executive director of NextGenU and a professor at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, began working on NextGenU a decade ago.
“For most people in the world, secondary, much less postsecondary, training is a dream,” says Frank, adding that this lack of education has created a world “grievously under-supplied with healthcare professionals.”
She has made training people for the health sector a priority for the program, which began offering courses this December in the health sciences field. It’s free of cost, barriers, and advertisements.
Though primarily directed towards people in developing countries, NextGenU.org’s courses can be taken by anyone for either credit at an accredited institution or solely for continued education and training.
A partnership with the new College of Health Sciences at the Presbyterian University of East Africa, located in Kenya, is largely geared towards that goal.
“They will provide the hospitals where trainees will practice and have labs under local supervision, and then we’ll provide the computer-based didactics and the overall direction,” says Frank.
Content for the courses comes free of charge from professors and institutions from all over the world, and evaluation is done through peer and mentor assessment in addition to quizzes and final exams coordinated by NextGenU.
David Anderson, head of the department of education studies at UBC, sees advantages to free education and the recent open access trend.
“This is an example of a modern version of extending education to the wider population, and then of course its aims are enormously high,” he says.
Anderson retains some doubt over the use of the term “university” with NextGenU site. He points out that historically, universities have been chartered and “approved by the state in some way or other to guarantee quality.”
But Frank defends the quality of NextGenU, saying state-approved institutions have contributed greatly.
“All of these materials only exist because professors at other universities posted them online, and said, ‘Please repurpose them and use them freely,’” she says.
Ash Milton, a first-year UBC student, believes NextGenU will have a positive impact on the world and would consider taking courses from a free university.
“There’s more of a stigma attached to doing a degree online,” he says, “but I think that will go away as time goes on and more people use online degrees.”