25 Universities, 100 Free Classes and the One Bold Idea That’s Making College More Affordable for Millions of Americans

Ditch your stuffy seminars and dusty libraries. A slew of big-name colleges are now accepting online courses for credit.
A consortium of 25 schools, including University of Memphis, University of North Carolina and University of Maryland, are allowing all or most transfer credits that students earn from a select number of online programs. The broad list of institutions — both public and private, two-year and four-year, for-profit and non-profit — will focus on roughly 100 intro courses in up to 30 subject areas that are offered either at a low cost or for free. It’s already received the stamp of approval from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with a $1.89 million grant.
This is welcome news to many, primarily the 31 million working adults who took a few college classes but never finished. Now, they’ll have a better shot at obtaining a degree, certificate or credential for the knowledge they’ve already accrued. The program also has major appeal to kids who followed a non-traditional path out of high school, first-generation and low-income students and pretty much any young person who doesn’t like the idea of graduating knee-deep in debt.
More and more students are taking some online courses: the most recent figure by the Department of Education says 5.5 million students took at least one virtual class. A degree earned online doesn’t always have the same heft as one from awarded on a physical campus, but sometimes it’s the only option.
The popular Kaplan University, for example, a school that’s been offering distance courses since 1999 and is a part of this program, draws non-traditional students. Two-thirds are over the age of 30, and nearly 8,800 active military, veterans and spouses are enrolled. On the flip side, at Kaplan (a for-profit), there’s been allegations that teachers felt pressure to pass underperforming students, and the school paid a $1.3 million settlement last month for hiring incompetent teachers without minimum qualifications. That’s not to say online education is inherently flawed, but there’s still a number of problems that must be addressed.
The American Council on Education (ACE), essentially a trade organization for colleges and universities, is working to resolve this. One of the most important aspects of the alternative credit program will be setting standards for online courses and helping the 25 schools verify sources and select criteria for evaluating quality. It’s also hoping this move leads the wider higher education community to have “greater acceptance of alternative forms of credit, in a way that ensures quality and encourages more people to complete their postsecondary education,” says Deborah Seymour, ACE’s assistant vice president for education attainment and innovation. If all goes well this year, ACE plans to recruit additional schools by the start of the fall term.
“The institutions serving in this pilot project will play a valuable role in helping enhance the work we have been doing for many years in developing quality mechanisms for determining the credit worthiness of education, training and life experiences outside of a formal higher education classroom setting,” says ACE’s President Molly Corbett Broad. Referring to the Gates Foundation, she adds, “We very much appreciate this generous investment and the commitment it represents to the effort to provide a more flexible and cost-efficient way to increase the number of Americans able to gain a college degree or credential.”
Wondering if your school is accepting online credits? Here’s the complete list:

  • American Public University, Charles Town, W.Va.
  • Capella University, Minneapolis
  • Central Michigan University, Pleasant, Mich.
  • Charter Oak State College, New Britain, Conn.
  • Colorado Community College System
  • Colorado Technical University, Colorado Springs, Colo.
  • East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.
  • Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, N.C.
  • Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kan.
  • Goodwin College, East Hartford, Conn.
  • John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, Calif.
  • Kaplan University
  • Lakeland College, Plymouth, Wis.
  • Metropolitan State University of Denver
  • National Louis University, Chicago
  • Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.
  • Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, La.
  • Notre Dame College, South Euclid, Ohio
  • SUNY Empire State College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
  • Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas
  • Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, N.J.
  • University of Baltimore
  • University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, Md.
  • University of Memphis
  • University of North Carolina

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This Program Shares Its Wisdom About Producing Minority Ph.D. Science Students

It goes without saying that the folks at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) know a thing or two about supporting and encouraging minority and low-income undergraduate students in continuing their studies and earning science Ph.D.s.
Impressively, over the past two decades, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC has produced 900 graduates who have gone on to rack up 423 advanced science degrees and 107 medical degrees.
Compare that to Penn State, which was recently named one of the top 40 schools for educating black students who eventually earned advanced science degrees. Despite the recognition, the public university earned that status by producing just four (!) degrees earned by black science students out of about 3,000 STEM students total.
“The data is shocking,” Penn State Chemistry professor Mary Beth Williams told Jeffrey Mervis of Science Insider. “Clearly we have to do a better job.”
So the people behind UMBC’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars Program will mentor faculty and staff at Penn State and the University of North Carolina in an attempt to increase the number of minority students enrolled in science Ph.D. programs. Over five years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will dedicate $7.75 million to the effort.
Clearly, UMBC has figured out a formula that keeps minority and low-income students on track to become scientists: Close monitoring of academic progress, a summer program for incoming freshmen, scholarships, research opportunities, and a close cohort of talented students who foster a sense of teamwork with each other. Its current four-year class of Meyerhoff Scholars includes 300 students, 60 percent of which are underrepresented minorities.
Williams said she plans to study these lessons carefully in the program’s implementation at Penn State. “My goal is to clone it as much as possible. It’s been successful for 25 years, so why mess with it? The more you change, the more you’re inviting failure.”
The president of UMBC, Freeman Hrabowski, is proud of how the scholars program has grown from its initial class of 19 African-American male science students in 1989. “What Meyerhoff has done is get us to think about our responsibility to students who say they want a STEM degree,” he told Mervis. “And what helps underrepresented minorities will also help the rest of our students.”
MORE: When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
Correction: June 5, 2014
A previous version of this post misstated the funding for this program. It is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, not the UMBC.

How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?

When a college dining hall is emptied and the students have had their fill, the kitchen staff has one more group to feed: the dumpsters. The day at most college campuses nationwide ends with perfectly edible food being chucked into garbage trucks, which roll the food along streets filled with the homeless and the hungry en route to a local landfill.
But on this crisp September evening, at the University of Maryland’s 251 North dining hall, things were different.
After the meal, the dining hall staff began placing stainless-steel trays filled with unused food on an island countertop near the end of a spacious industrial kitchen. One by one, steaming trays were stacked on top of the other as several college students snapped on latex gloves and discussed their game plan.
Their objective was simple, really: to intercept the food before it’s thrown away and deliver it to hungry people in need. That’s the ongoing mission of the ever-expanding Food Recovery Network, which was founded on Maryland’s campus in September 2011 by Ben Simon, the nonprofit’s executive director.
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Simon and seven student volunteers readied multiple plastic containers and scooped food into the bins. Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, spice-crusted tilapia, tomato and basil Caprese, pepperoni pizza, whole wheat penne, ciabatta rolls and chocolate cake were among the items they intended to deliver to a nearby church.
Then came the bacon. Everyone stopped. Simon, 23, darted toward the 1.6-pound tub of saturated fat and plunged his hands into the glistening mass of meat.
“This is just amazing,” said Simon, a vegetarian. “I’ve never seen this much bacon.”
He posed for a picture. The bacon grease faintly reflected the hairs of his perfectly manicured black beard and thick-rimmed Lacoste glasses. Once he was done swooning over the strips, the student volunteers loaded the dining hall’s food into the trunk of a silver Toyota Corolla and drove away.
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The type of food they packed, bacon included, is thrown out at 75 percent of college campuses across the United States. That’s roughly 22 million meals per year, trashed. Overall, Americans waste 36 million tons of food annually according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which leads to $165 billion in wasted costs and massive amounts of methane being released into the atmosphere. But since the founding of the Food Recovery Network at the University of Maryland and its initial teaming with Brown University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Pomona College in January 2012, the organization has expanded to 49 campuses nationwide. Simon’s short-term goal is to open chapters at 75 campuses by the end of the 2014 school year, all propelled by the seemingly commonsense mission of mobilizing students to salvage unused food and give it to local residents in need.
“We’re feeding someone,” says Allie Daniere, a sophomore at Maryland who went on her first recovery in September. “That is essential for life.”
Simon and the Alpha Phi Omega volunteers (one of many groups that mobilize volunteers at Maryland’s campus) delivered 126.4 pounds of food in 39 minutes to the Christian Life Center, a nondenominational church in Riverdale, Md., during their mission. They left their haul with 59-year-old Eric Thomas, a worker there, who grinned and vigorously shook Simon’s hand as the food containers were stacked onto a wooden table. Various Maryland students repeated the process two days later — chapters are required to average at least one recovery per week and vary their deliveries from shelter to shelter — while also salvaging meals from home football and basketball games.
MORE: Chef Fixes the Food Bank by Creating Healthy Meals for Four
Simon, who was named one of 2012’s Top 10 social entrepreneurs by ABC News and Univision, has launched a charitable effort throughout the country that may seem noble, even heroic, for anyone, let alone a college student. But Simon didn’t always see a future in social entrepreneurialism. In fact, there was a time when Simon, the founder of an organization that has helped recover more than 240,963 pounds of food as of January 2014, couldn’t open doors, couldn’t dress himself.
As a junior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., Simon was poised to become the football team’s starting quarterback. He worked out every day that summer of 2007 and bulked up to 195 pounds.
When Simon was at the peak of his athleticism, he began to experience recurring pain shooting through his chest, shoulder, biceps and back. He was forced to quit. The multiple tendonitis coursing through his upper body reached its height during his sophomore year at Maryland. Simon still attends physical therapy for two hours every day to combat the pain.
“This injury has been a blessing in disguise,” Simon says. “It’s taught me discipline and rigor. It’s taught me gratefulness.”
MORE: Turn Your Foodie Photos Into Food for Needy Communities
It also taught him about the world of social justice. Moping around Blair High’s hallways after stepping away from football, Simon was invited to attend a meeting of an organization called Students for Global Responsibility. There, he learned about the genocide in Darfur in Sudan; his priorities changed drastically.
“I spent most of my time before that hanging out and having fun, chasing girls and playing football,” Simon says. “I refocused all of my energy to try and make the world a better place. It was my way of turning a negative into a positive.”
Also during Simon’s junior year of high school his father, Vic, welcomed a homeless man into their Silver Spring abode. James, one of Vic’s tennis partners at a local public court, lived with the Simons for two years. He worked the night shift at Safeway and didn’t have health care, but helped Simon gain a better understanding of his priorities, of the world.
“It gave me a special glimpse at what it’s like to be poor and to not have your own place to stay,” Simon says. “To personally become a very close friend of someone like that was transformative.”
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As established as the Food Recovery Network has become — springboarding off of 2012’s grand prize victories in the Do Good Challenge and Banking on Youth Competition, contests that reward standout innovators, philanthropists and change-makers — the desire to expand is evident. Simon believes food recovery will one day become the norm, not the exception, in the U.S.
Currently stationed in an eclectic communal office on Maryland’s campus called the Startup Shell, Food Recovery Network’s staff is working to start a certification program, open a consulting line of business that empowers other organizations to eliminate food waste and ultimately house chapters at 1,000 colleges by May 2018, recovering 10 million pounds of food in the process.
Thomas and the Christian Life Center were simply thankful for the 126.4 pounds they received that night in September.
“We’ve been able to reach out to a lot of people because of this food,” Thomas says. “And that’s what it’s all about — just knowing that you’ve been able to touch somebody, to help somebody who’s in need.”
Editors’ note: Since the original publication of this story, Ben Simon, founder of The Food Recovery Network, has become a NationSwell Council member.
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