Carum flowers: What hoops do you have to hop before asking for accreditation?

Hi Dirk,

Thanks very much for your email - and great questions.

Here are some of the initial accrediting forms (mostly from California agencies): 

BPPE (Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education) -

http://www.bppe.ca.gov/forms_pubs/approval_nonaccredited.pdf

http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsregs/ppe_act.shtml

http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsregs/regs.shtml

http://www.bppe.ca.gov/schools/comp_tools.shtml

WASC senior (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) -

http://www.wascsenior.org/

IB Programme (International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) ? -

http://www.ibo.org/diploma/development/dponline/index.cfm

( And here are ways to access these forms and related accrediting information again - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2013/07/bee-in-poppy-quakers-accreditation-and.html and http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2013/11/long-tailed-ground-roller-wuas.html ). 

I've talked with and or met at some length with both BPPE (state of CA) - $5000 - and WASC senior representatives - stage 1) $10,000 initially ; stage 2) a per student per annum fee with the first undergraduate online class in English graduating in 2020, if things go according to plans (hundreds of thousands of dollars?) ; stage 3) $25,000? - after WUaS graduates our first undergraduate class and pays this fee, WUaS will become fully accredited. Stage 2 will be a huge cost as WUaS also develops Ph.D., law and M.D. degrees, and in large languages with a possible undergraduate class size of 2,000 students first in English year after year, for example.

For planning and accrediting purposes, these Creative Commons' licensed MIT OCW faculty are WUaS's first professors - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/ - and in all nine MIT OCW languages - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/translated-courses/. WUaS plans to hire MIT, Stanford and HYP, Oxbridge, Cal Berkeley graduate students, if possible, for example, as our first instructors in group video online. Because of  Creative Commons' licensing, they can't take fees; I've met with MIT OCW external relations director twice in person in Cambridge, MA, and WUaS now adds "not endorsed by MIT OCW" in our outreach.

Former UC Berkeley Manuel Castells is one of my most influential professors and he would easily get a hypothetical $100,000 reward in the future, if he were to teach and communicate as effectively as he did in his talks in 2000 in which I sat. But WUaS wants face-to-face communication with instructors to be integral to our degree process in all languages, in group video, so it's the graduate student instructors becoming full faculty who might get such award monies eventually. 

CC MIT OCW audio/video - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/ - has around 30 majors. 

MIT, Harvard and Stanford attract some of the highest achieving students and faculty and are excellent in so many ways. WUaS plans however to focus on greatest universities' Open Educational Resources around the world, for example, these universities in this wiki list - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings - where you'll also find the universities you mention. Please wiki-add other great universities here if inclined. 

Exploring making learning as enjoyable as watching TED Talks is something WUaS would like to measure with time. If graduate students for MIT OCW courses in video initially "assign" TED Talks, then yes, TED Talks can be watched for credit. WUaS, however, will seek, in accrediting, to ask undergraduate students to take 32 MIT OCW courses over 4 years for free and MIT-centric degrees - which could include watching a lot of TED Talks. 

If you're available to meet from 3:30 to 4 tomorrow in Berkeley, where would you suggest meeting?

WUaS hasn't yet begun to explore collaborating with the UN, but the UN languages are some of the first largest languages WUaS will develop in after English. 

Friendly regards,

Scott

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