Average cost of education at four year private colleges as well as public schools in the United States has risen, considerably, for year 2008-2009 to 5.9% and 6.4%, respectively, which is more than the national average of rate of inflation in the United States and have made education out of reach for many people.

However, at this puzzled situation, it is the social media tools which can bring down cost of learning to lower levels. It can cut down administrative expenses like compensation for professors and equipment charges to reasonable lower levels.  The University of the People model as proposed by the United Nation’s Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development is based upon principal of non-profit to teach people who can not afford leveraging social media technologies and ideas. This school of learning is a full time online institution using open source course material and peer-to-peer learning to provide educational material to the students without charging tuition fee.

However, some fee is charged for appearing in tests and application and that too vary country to country and never exceeds $100. Presently, university is teaching courses in two streams comprising information technology and business administration that are the two most job oriented courses. In order to attend lectures and discuss things with peer group a student needs to log onto the school’s website. More, he can discuss subject matter with other students, download course materials, get help from other students or volunteer professors and can advance tests to next level of course unit. On same line, US President Barack Obama administration is also considering to setup a Free Online University.

Open Course Ware: A College Education for Free

Open courseware, an initiative started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 to put its 2,000 courses catalog online for free over an ambitious cost of $100 million and at present day has uploaded nearly 1,900 free courses at its site and is now posting it from time to time online social media sites like YouTube (YouTube), Flickr and iTunes U. And the OpenCourseWare initiative has reached to over 200 institutions of higher education around the world, including Yale, Norte Dame, Tufts and the Stanford School of Engineering.

Free Textbooks: An Innovative Idea

Text books costs for four year college course in the United States ranges around $1,077.  However, to reduce the costs of textbook Wikibooks project that started in 2003, aimed for CC-licensed textbooks written by volunteers. Wikibooks now have nearly 38,000 pages of free textbooks. On the same pattern are books provided by Flat World Knowledge that offer free, CC licensed textbooks and educational material however charges for hard copy of textbooks. Books at Flat World Knowledge are written by expert authors having advanced degrees or professors. The books are currently used for learning purposes at Eastern Michigan University, the University of Rhode Island, the State University of New York system, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Sam Houston State University, and others. This trend clearly indicates, later or sooner social media would become carrier of free education.