THE RISE OF VIRTUAL UNIVERSITIES - the Scholar's Avenue

It takes a hefty sum for a student to get through graduate college in the US. Despite the existence of world class universities, state of the art infrastructure and teaching facilities, the pedantic appetites of a majority of students who cannot afford expensive college tuition goes unsatiated. While this is the case in the west, the opposite face of the earth presents an entirely different problem. In developing Asian countries, the global market for qualified professionals is under a major manpower crunch and their governments are investing in human capital building by sponsoring most of the college expenses of the student. However with the increasing number of substandard colleges and universities, the quality of education has taken a nosedive. At a juncture like this, when Salman Khan, a Boston analyst first created math videos for his nephew, he could not have realized how revolutionary his idea would be. Encouraged by the popularity that his Youtube videos attained, he quit his high paying job and created Khan Academy with the sole purpose of dispensing knowledge free of cost. Now initiatives like MIT’s OCW, NewBoston and our very own NPTEL (which we covered in the previous issue) are freely available to anyone with a computer,an internet connection and a passion to learn.