Skip School, It’s Time for a Webucation.
Want to dance? Want to write? Want to start a business? Been putting off starting your side project because you don’t know how? Understand that school isn’t the future, it’s the Internet.
The Internet gives us the tools of connectivity and the freedom of sharing knowledge and information.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of California — Berkeley, University of Texas, Boston University and multiple other international universities have grasped on to this growing trend to provide free online classes that offer University credit. This “webucation” is for the masses and for those looking to get ahead, catch up or learn about something and acquire new skills without the burden of student loan debt or monthly payments.
This is one issue that is especially apparently for the American public, with one presidential candidate proposing an idea radical to the United States while other countries in and around Europe have already adopted it.
“How can the United States be competitive globally if higher education is unaffordable? Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Scotland and Sweden have no tuition for college. Other countries have low tuition. We need the best-educated workforce in the world. Instead of spending endless amounts on the military, we need to invest in our young people.”
- Senator Bernie Sanders
What some American Universities are doing now isn’t new. Academic classes and information has always been available “somewhere” online. With many unknowing on how to access it, expensive textbooks, online classes and software codes have been available on the black market of the Internet for years. Many of those who have been able to grasp and understand how to access such information have started their college careers with more knowledge then their peers, saved money or even been able to skip classes altogether.
My example of this is my struggle to learn Korean. Unwilling to pay nearly $278.00 per credit hour at the University of Missouri (12 credit hours of Korean would of cost an average of 3,336.00), I instead used free online resources and downloaded textbooks to obtain the class credits for free.
“CR” means “credit,” essentially that it was just added to my academic record without physically taking the classes, just testing above them.
Do you know what I did with the thousands of dollars I saved? I decided to take an intensive three month immersion class for half the price.
Language is just one thing that is cheaper, and sometimes easier to learn online. Others have levitated towards their passions to learn things that just improve their happiness including…
Don’t you understand? It’s all available for free, you just have to search hard enough for it.
