Studying Without Admissions Restrictions: The MOOCs Remedy

Bernau, 02.08.2013 - Due to ever-increasing numbers of students, universities are forced to set up registration limitations for their undergraduate study programs.
Only with a relocation of education to the internet is it possible to master the huge number of students. iversity offers free access to online courses at the university level.

As the „Sueddeutsche Zeitung“ reports, the 20 biggest universities will introduce the Numerus Clausus to two third of their undergraduate programs in winter 2013/14.
This is in response to the large influx of first-year students, caused by the doubling of highschool graduations and the increasing number of students from other European countries.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can help to solve the capacity problems of universities. The possible number of students in this type of online coursework is unlimited; they therefore offer a more efficient way to transfer knowledge.

Hannes Klöpper, co-founder of iversity, emphasises: “We need to see the educational expansion as an opportunity to rethink university teaching. Instead of excluding prospective students by setting high barriers to entry for a growing number of subjects, the universities in Germany should develop MOOCs and use them locally as well. Thus, it is possible to keep the quality of education while broadening access to higher education. No one will fail to access a MOOC because of a numerus clausus.”

In the U.S., the MOOC movement, with platforms such as Udacity and Coursera, has made ​​many achievements. iversity is a pioneer of MOOC development in Germany and Europe, and aims to become the market leader on the whole continent. This winter semester, the company will offer a dozen online courses in cooperation with different universities from Germany and Europe on their platform www.iversity.org. The courses are from a wide range of topics, from medicine to finance, from political science to design.

All who have not received a university place for the coming winter semester can prepare themselves on iversity while they wait for university admittance. For students enrolled in universities, MOOCs can be used to complement their studies and deepen their knowledge. Every successful MOOC participant, whether s/he is an enrolled student or not, can obtain a certificate that demonstrates course completion.

About iversity

iversity is a platform for quality higher education courses online. iversity allows the best professors to reach thousands of students around the world. Students can access the material anytime and anywhere. The multimedia content is interactive and adaptive, provides direct feedback on student learning and a state of the art user forum allows for effective peer-to-peer learning.