Subscription University - Something New At BFU

Bastiat Free University is considering creating a monthly payment college program.

For much less than a student loan payment or a college loan you will be able to pay for college as you go. There will be no admission fees - just a very small monthly payment that may be canceled at any time.

The BFU subscription university will be about as informal a quality education as you could want. The charge will be enough to encourage you to finish college, not enough to force you to quit. This may be the best route yet to offering cost appropriate self-directed learning.

You will still be able to register and monitor classes for free, this college monthly payment plan will only apply to degree track students.

A subscription based college program - we may be the first to offer such a plan for acquiring a degree. This will offer maximum flexibility to the student; in exchange for the college student having sole responsibility to follow through.

BFU's subscription university -Knowledge at the speed of learning.

Take as many college courses as you can handle. When you complete enough university classes to earn your degree, let us know. We will confirm your efforts - and mail your newly earned college degree.

This will take effort, you will earn the college degree, but you can now earn it on your own terms.

I have just decided on a subscription university concept test.

I may retract this later and let anyone that has applied continue. If I do continue to offer this pay-as-you-go college program, I plan to raise the price for new applicants only. Your price will remain as quoted.

If you do need a more structured college program - consider the Achievement Certificate program, also just starting.

Before you sign up for either, you will want to review the BFU summary page.

For now.

• Pay for your Bastiat Free University education by clicking on this paypal hyperlink and have a seven day "think it over" period.

• No sign up fees, just US$ 39.95 29.99 per month total fees. Finish as quickly as you wish - while completing all the course requirements. Let BFU know when you are done - we will review your learning history.

• Stop or re-start at any time. To stop just contact PayPal and say stop. They will not refund already collected payments - but you will not be billed again.
  

Was that all a bit too fast?



Here is the button to escape.

Bookmark this page, I will also put a link to this information over on the left under Favorite Posts. It will be labeled simply "Subscription University."

There is a comments section down there - let me know what you think.

You can also go over and register for free right now - and stay free as long as you wish. Only those seeking to acquire a BFU degree should consider this program.

Here is Albert's take:

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." - Albert Einstein

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Start A Business Instead Of Getting A Job

As a student There are always jobs available.

Most of those jobs include asking "do you want fries with that?"

I've just built an e-book with teen and student business ideas. You may skip all of these ideas and go start something else, that's fine.

The freedom you will gain, the knowledge you will acquire, and the confidence you will display if your dad-bummed entrepreneurial business idea thing actually does make money are tremendous.

You will find several courses in our College Of Entrepreneurship that will help you stabalize and grow your new company - but the first step is to get started.

Dont put it off.

I've shoved enough start-up business links into just this posting to give you plenty to think about today.

Plan on starting tommorow morning.

Best,

Allan

P.S. SiteSell has even more no cost information about student directed business ideas -- check it out also.

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i am both humbled and excited

I have just received an e-mail from Ghana.

Eric would like to enroll in BFU.

First a quick diversion, did you know most American's will say they prefer their coffee strong and dark? If given taste tests however most will consistently chose coffee that is weak and milky.

If you had asked me yesterday who the target student was for Bastiat Free University I would have said "an independent businessman that has succeeded without formal schooling and now wants to acquire deeper learning and a college degree to prove it."

Our student base has been a great deal broader than that. We welcome and appreciate current high school students, WHAM - or work at home moms, ESL - English as second language students, budding Internet entrepreneurs with start up businesses, folks with Master's and Doctorate degrees who just want to learn more in an informal setting, etc.

We do not see the students - everyone is equal. In fact we are going to add a forum to BFU to enhance communication within the student body - but everyone will remain equal.

Yesterday I would have said I was thrilled. Today I got an e-mail from Eric in Ghana. I have now seen through a door that was standing open - and I am quite excited. In part:

daer sir
> i will like to register for the distance laerning.
> i will you to send the information through

> GHANA
>
> thank you.

Eric is representative of the opportunities we have to reach and teach those that would not have had a chance to learn before. I do not know his situation, or even if he is real. What I do know is the world is full of real Erics that just want to improve their lives.

We are in a position to do that. You have heard of the "hundred dollar computer" that is being developed for governments to provide their citizens. Yes, it will probably cost more than that once it goes through government bureaucracies. Yes, many will be stolen or sold by corrupt officials - all governments are notorious for having 80% overhead and beyond - with just a tiny bit of their budget actually accomplishing something.

That is the point.

There was someone that posted a note that in effect asked "how could BFU want freedom when it would result in wage slavery to capitalists." I'll let a talking pencil answer that one - or Eric.

I don't want liberty for all nearly as much as Eric wants personal freedom.

Freedom is coming even if the inefficient and greedy central planners, and the capitalism haters, don't want it. It is individuals like Eric and you that will create it - empowered by technology.

The industrial age has been nothing but a few centuries of painful transition from the agricultural age to the Netcohort Society. It will one day be a historical footnote.

Too big, all centralized, industrial age decision making is ending. Instead of the information age or netcohort age we could welcome this new period of man's development as the age of the individual.

Eric is an individual - he could wait for ever lengthening centuries for someone else to help him - he prefers to get started now. With access to a computer and an Internet connection he is already learning.

Eric is our "taste test" target student.

The world is full of Erics. Bastiat Free University is just starting and not yet able to give Eric the full attention he deserves - but he doesn't want attention.

Eric wants to know. He wants actionable knowledge.

Next year we will possibly be able to snail mail the Erics some support and instructions - right now everything we are is on the Internet. That is okay with Eric - he just wants access to learning that can improve his life.


Eric and those like him will change the world.

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Universities Created By The Instructed

This is an interesting report about the University of Bologna.

We have spent the last two hundred years or so under the influence of the economies of scale operations of the industrial age. Many people now have a hard time understanding how complex systems can be operated without a strong, central, managing authority.

How do things operate without central powerful controls? How can progress happen without a central agenda and mandate?

Much better - thank you very much. Society will operate and progress much better if individuals are free to create.

You can click on the title to get a look at a university that was facilitated and governed by the students - a type of free university.

You can read this entertaining story about "I Pencil" that demonstrates how the loose ties of enlightened self interest can accomplish much more than bureaucrats could imagine.

But what is most important is to realize that large tasks are best handled by free and independent individuals rather than through the coercion of large organizations.

The Netcohort Society is moving in that direction - and it's about time.

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Creative Commons and Jo's Toolkit

Click the link in the title and it will take you to Jo's Toolkit, "The essential journalism toolkit for students and grassroots journalists."

Jo's Toolkit was featured in ICommons, a blog showing the expanding world of Creative Commons. Using Creative commons to share your creative works while retaining certain controls is a great fit for the Netcohort Society.

While Jo's Toolkit contains articles and helps to student authors, it is a student editorial I will reprint here - licensed under the creative Commons banner.

Ahead of the mainstream media

By Gregor Röhrig (Editor - Jo’s Toolkit)

Sharing and developing content is not only a challenge, it is a valued commodity lost by the mainstream media.

Promoting our media is essential. More specifically, freeing the content we produce from conventional and outdated constraints. As student media practitioners, we are often so involved in logistical and administrative battles while juggling content production, that we often overlook the expansions and developments that we could be involved in.

Content needs to be released from its conventionally constrained borders. As student media producers, we tend to generate content on a regular basis, yet restrict it from being accessed and used effectively by those outside our designated readership. Limited and old-fashioned copyright conventions and stagnant notions of media ownership have, until now, limited our sharing capabilities. Style-guides and editorial policies also prove to be much more beneficial to a greater number of student media practitioners if shared among publications.

As independent and primarily non-commercial student media publications, we have an advantage over the mainstream media. There is minimal conflict of interest to prevent various student publications from sharing content or editorial policies with each other. We are in a situation that gives us a vast amount of freedom and flexibility. I believe we should make use of this before we are forced into the limited rules and regulations of the commercial media world.

As vital learning facilities, student media should offer services to each other over and above the borders of our academic institutions. For student media to be considered more seriously by onlookers, whether readers, student councils or mainstream media houses, it needs to improve and be more dominant in its field.

A system where we share ideas and content will not only benefit student media circles, but could also assist external grass-root publications.

The Creative Commons licence agreement is precisely such a system. Creative Commons allows anyone to use and modify the licensed content under the condition of attributing the work to the original author or publication and using this content for non-commercial uses only. Activate has tailored Creative Commons to open up its own content and editorial guides to other student and grass-root publications. These licences can be modified individually and are easily acquired online (creativecommons.org), making the sharing and modification of content completely legal and trouble-free.

Setting up a licence for your publication’s content is the first step to allowing it to be used elsewhere under the same licence. Once licensed under Creative Commons, your articles and photographs can be used nationally, and even internationally, creating exposure not for authors, photographers and the publication itself. You can adapt and discuss your own and other publication’s policies and style-guides openly, providing the opportunity to modify and improve them legally and easily.

Since moving away from the conventional copyright regulations and agreeing to Creative Commons, Activate has been exchanging content with international universities and journalism websites; swapping story ideas, campus issues and setting a new standard.

I believe in the values and responsibilities of our relatively untainted medium. It’s one which is often based on the values and ethics we learn at our institutions. Student media demonstrates leadership and progress, ahead of the profit-based commercial publications which have moved away from the values we maintain.

Let’s license, let’s share, let’s work together. Let’s make a statement that this is a more effective manner than limiting our content. It deserves to be freed.

This text is certified under a Creative Commons License.

Here is a chance to learn more about the Creative Commons.

enjoy,

allan

Adult Learning At A Virtual College

If you like the concept of attending a virtual college, an online university, or a distance learning college degree program as an adult learner - BFU is not your only choice.

You probably want to avoid diploma mills - although if all you want is a brag rag for a business card they do serve a purpose. Pay a flat free - they give you a worthless diploma you can display "proudly."

For a diploma from an accredited distance learning program - expect to spend a lot of money, and if you wish to do the work - you can learn a lot. Most accredited colleges will give you up to a years credit for "life experience," or lifelong learning - for cash.

Bastiat Free University is proudly unaccredited - and does not intend to seek accreditation. If you wonder why, look at the costs and regulation involved in attending an accredited school. BFU feels self directed adult learners deserve better. While BFU will accept transfered credits from real colleges, we do not grant credit, or charge, for life experience equivalences - we are here to help you learn.

Our degree track and professional certificate programs are inexpensive enough as it is. A year in the BFU degree track program will cost less than most single classes at an accredited university.

If you wish to compare - investigate the quality distance learning degree and professional programs at the accredited Thomas Edison State University - you can even get a fully accredited New Jersey State University diploma there for "life experience." If you jump through enough hoops - and pay enough cash. TESC may be a viable option for you - consider them.

If you decide to attend Bastiat Free University - enjoy.

We are here to help you discover the joys and pleasures of self-directed adult learning.

The pleasures likely stomped out of you at a young age by bureaucratic schools.

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The New Learning Achievement Certificate Programs

The College Of Entrepreneurship at Bastiat Free University invites you to examine our new Learning Achievement Certificate programs.

Using a mix of new and existing courses the certificate programs develop root competencies in students and then recognizes your accomplishment with a certificate.

An example is the - Entrepreneur Achievement Certificate - earned by successfully completing two required courses and three elective courses at the online College of Entrepreneurship within four months.

Not only will you earn an achievement certificate, you will earn it by starting and growing your own business. Each step you take prepares you for the next one. Progressing from the simple to more complex structures you will find your learning and your tools increasingly useful.

You will also find that you are no longer a "newbie" to business once this program is complete. You will have an entrepreneur certificate. You will have built your own business.

Knowledge combines with action to create results that raise further questions, requiring more knowledge - and it is both satisfying and fun. Bastiat Free University - rediscover the pleasures of self directed learning.

Join us now:

Bastiat Free University
Learning Achievement Certificate
programs

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Fixing Broken Schools

Seth Godin makes a good point here.

Okay, part of the reason I like his point is that I agree with him.

Lecturing and speeches are dead. Sound bites, emotion, and interaction are alive. Media and methods that don't allow interaction are passing away.

That is cool for kids that are growing up with life 2.0, but what about the rest of us?

As Seth proposes we have spent our lives bored when we knew what was being said, and lost when it went past us. Schools were broken before the Internet came around - we just didn't know how much better learning could be.

Children are born loving to discover and explore new things, and then have that love pounded out of them by an industrial age economy of scale education.

Those of us that are products of that bureaucratic educational system are going to have to unschool ourselves. We will have to relearn to how to enjoy learning.

Start now. What have you once been passionate about, but no longer pursue?

Look it up on the Internet right now- start the fire of discovery burning in your life once again.

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Daily Lit

Here is a great idea.

Public domain books sent to you in small chunks, by e-mail.

Daily Lit offers over two hundred books at this time, and they appear to be growing fast.

If you spend too much time at a computer or on homework - a five minute literature break may be a welcome thing.

I've just found out about this, maybe there is some way to hook it up with good old BFU.

As an example you can get Aristotle's Poetics sent to you in 19 pieces, or Baum's Wizard Of OZ - sent in 51 pieces. Either one would be a welcome disruption in an overly intense day.

There are some exceptions that may not make sense, Don Quixote by Cervantes has been cut into 448 parts. I think a nice read over a single weekend might flow a bit better.

If you just want to try it out, Robert Browning's The Pied Piper Of Hamelin is only cut into three parts - they almost could have sent it whole.

Take a look and try a book.

Let us know how it works for you.

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