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Gen ed startup partners with university to offer transfer credit for online classes

educationdive | August 15, 2019

A new company from the co-founder of MasterClass — which offers expert-taught online classes in disciplines from photography to home cooking — wants to bring large introductory college courses online and scale them for several colleges and universities to use. Outlier.org is set to launch Sept. 9 with two, three-credit, 14-week courses: Calculus I and Introduction to Psychology. They will be offered through the University of Pittsburgh, which will facilitate the transfer of credits. Priced at $400 per course and targeting students who want to affordably complete general education requirements, the classes address the growing interest in reducing college costs. But questions remain as to how widely the credits will transfer. "They're greasing the skids, they're trying to make it easy, but that's not the same thing as (saying), by definition other schools will accept it," Phil Hill, co-founder of Mindwires Consulting, told Education Dive in an interview. "There still is that step of, 'Will other schools accept these credits?' That's going to be the make-or-break."

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