StraighterLine’s CEO and Founder Burck Smith is proud to be a Partner for Transformation with the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). HLC’s Partners for Transformation is a blue-ribbon think tank tasked with offering innovative ideas on accreditation of colleges and universities.
Though the concept of digital education has existed for more than 30 years, and today 30% of college students have taken at least one distance course, the pricing model for online learning remains largely unchanged.
This StraighterLine partner school is one of the country’s largest online non-profit universities. To be admitted, applicants need to meet prior credit requirements and have proven college-level math and writing skills. Instead of rejecting these applicants who do not meet the prerequisites, the school wanted to provide a path to help them complete their requirements, allowing them to be admitted, and ultimately preparing for them for success in their degree program.
If you ask Dr. Amy Smith, StraighterLine’s new Chief Learning Officer, what gets her out of bed in the morning, the answer is simple: access to higher education for all adult learners.
“I genuinely believe that you should have the opportunity to decide your future,” says Smith, who recently came to StraighterLine from a 25-year-career in academia. “Nobody should say you can't go to college because you took a class when you were 18 at the local community college and got an F.”