WELCOME TO TECH UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
Mission: To make higher education accessible to everyone.
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Given the power of the global economy, it’s time for a truly global educational system delivered via the Internet. The rationale for this paradigm shift in higher education is three-fold: rising cost of tuition, increasing demand of end-user innovation by faculty and students, and the right of everyone to access knowledge.
Social Networking Sites
By teaching our courses in social networking sites we can deliver distance learning courses in the most dynamic, interactive and current medium of online communications. This also allows us to significantly reduce our cost of delivering our programs and those savings are passed on to our students.
Open Source Content
We leverage the growing amount of open source content such as video lectures, course materials and scholarly research articles from world renowned professors. http://www.YouTube.com/edu and http://dspace.mit.edu and http://www.DOAJ.org
Free Online Electronic Textbooks
The use of free and open source scholarly materials makes an American education accessible to students around the world who will not have to buy expensive textbooks.http://www.TextBookMedia.com and http://www.FlatWorldKnowledge.com
End-User Innovation
Our approach affords our faculty and students the opportunity to actively engage in learning by being able to change and update course materials in a wiki-like manner in order to make them more relevant. Also, since most students will never open a textbook after they graduate, we place heavy emphasis on teaching students where and how to locate information using the Internet, and then how to accurately assess the validity and reliability of that data. This approach ensures our graduates have more relevant skills after graduation since they will all continue to use the Internet for work-related research.
Academic Quality
Our quality is comparable to nationally and regionally accredited programs offered via distance learning. All faculty possess a graduate degree from a regionally accredited university as well as practical experience in their field of study and evidence of college level teaching at an accredited university. Terms are eight weeks long and consist of weekly discussion questions, quizzes, tests, group projects and term papers.
Sustainability
Teaching courses online and eliminating the use of paper books is better for our environment since the carbon footprint associated with building classrooms, driving to campus and printing and shipping textbooks are greatly reduced or completely eliminated
I developed Tech University of America because I believe that education is one of the most basic human rights and if we have knowledge that others want, then it’s our duty to provide it to them for free or as inexpensive as possible. I was also inspired by William’s story to develop this model. William was able to build a windmill because he had access to a book about alternative energy sources. As a result, he was able to provide energy for his family in Africa. By making an open university, and pushing the content to where people hang out (social networking sites), even those who can’t afford our monthly $99 fee can still engage the same learning materials as our Tech University of America students.
As the Founder of the Zero-Tuition Model Using Social Networking Sites I would like to congratulate and thank the following schools who are also making higher education accessible to people around the world:
- Spring 2008: Steve Cooper developed the open access model using social networking sites to deliver college courses.
- 6/25/2008: Steve Cooper directed a graduate course to be taught in a social networking site by one of his staff members when he was the CEO of a pro-profit university.
- 11/24/2008: Tech University of America, LLC established in Arizona.
- 3/26/2009: Tech University of America, LLC established in California as a foreign business.
- 3/26/2009: Tech University of America, LLC offered its first course.
Steve Cooper is a highly decorated 18-year veteran (active and reserve) of the United States Army where he served as an Infantryman and Military Police Officer. Some highlights of his distinguished military career are: he developed the first Department of Army police academy shortly after 9-11 that currently serves as the Department of Defense model; taught and established the first military police school on the west coast which received the highest possible accreditation; taught and managed several leadership and instructor training courses at a leadership academy, all of which he led through full accreditation, unprecedented growth and innovation; and, developed a degree completion program for Army instructors based on prior learning and training. Mr. Cooper also enjoyed a prolific academic career where he served in various roles such as professor, director of education as well as university president and chief executive officer. Mr. Cooper has edited two books on criminology and holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice (minor in Sociology) from California State University, Sacramento, where he was elected national vice-president of the National Criminal Justice Honor Society, and president of his social fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, and received a Master of Science in Criminology from Florida State University.
He has worked with the best teams to build for-profit, online universities with a combined market cap greater than one billion dollars, which include:
- American Public University System (NASDAQ: APEI)
- Chapman University College
- ICMT which he sold to Nouveau University (PEDU.OB)
