The University of Southeastern Florida Offers University Degrees Based on Mooc Philosophies

Online, July 31, 2013 (Newswire.com) - The University of Southeastern Florida (USEF) is the first degree-granting university in the world that has been built from ground-up based on MOOC philosophies.

MOOCs refer to massive open online courses aiming at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and Teaching Assistants. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education and often use open educational resources. Typically they do not offer academic credit or charge tuition fees. USEF is the first university to embrace the MOOC concept and offer high quality degrees at a fraction of costs.

While USEF is the first university to launch full degree programs utilizing MOOC philosophies, it will not be the last. Established Universities such as Georgia Techhave announced that it will be offering an IT Degree for $7,000 in 2014. All degrees at USEF fall below this price point, and have an equal quality of education thanks to MOOC offerings.

The University of Southeastern Florida subscribes to MOOC philosophies that have at its foundation the belief that a great education should be available to anyone around the world, so that learning can be without limits. However, although most MOOC courses can be taken for free, credit is not given towards earning a University degree. USEF believes that those who undertake World-class university level education should be given recognition for work done; and thus USEF is the first US University to give credit (provided certain proctoring requirements are met) and provide a pathway for students to earn a University degree by doing all but two courses via MOOC education providers. The two compulsory courses done online via USEF are (1) Business Ethics and (2) Global Issues. These two courses are compulsory for all students, be they business; science; humanities or technology students.

The University of Southeastern Florida strongly believes that education is a right, and not a privilege; and that University degrees should not be restricted to only those who can pay the high fees charged. Good education is a human right that should be available to all. As USEF subscribes to MOOC philosophies, it charges, as a community service, only very minimal of fees even when the program is done completely in-house.

The University of Southeastern Florida (USEF) has aims at providing affordable high-quality education to its candidates, so as they can work towards attaining a recognised degree at a fraction of the costs usually associated with such degree programs. It has four Schools, in (1) Business; (2) Science; (3) Humanities and (4) Technology; and offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees
As a relatively new university with a small number of students; it was fortunate that it could completely transform itself to embrace MOOC philosophies by recognising for credit the free courses provided by some of the leading universities in the world; provided certain proctoring conditions are met.

As such, students from around the world can obtain a degree having had a world-class education via courses done via Coursera, EdX, Khan Institute, Udacity and other MOOC providers, at a fraction of the costs that other online universities charge. Students can obtain a degree, having studied under the tutorship of world-class professors, for less than $2,500 for an entire undergraduate program and less than $1,500 for an entire graduate program.

The degree programs now on offer are as follows:
BA, MBA, and DBA in BusinessBS and MS in Science
BS and MS in Technology
BA and MA in Humanities

All assessments of MOOC courses done externally are individually proctored.