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In a groundbreaking move, Cornerstone University has enabled Americans to pursue degrees at their own pace directly through their smartphones. This initiative, part of the university’s business program, is designed for students seeking a flexible, self-guided learning experience.
“We have launched the nation’s inaugural mobile platform for delivering an accredited undergraduate and master’s degree entirely through mobile devices,” Cornerstone University President Gerson Moreno-Riaño shared in an interview with FOX Business.
The program, which began in August, has already attracted around 250 students.
Through the SOAR program, participants have the opportunity to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree in strategic business management or a master’s degree in organizational leadership.
“We’ve observed an impressive persistence rate of 91% from month to month, indicating that students are committed and progressing towards completion,” Moreno-Riaño noted. He also mentioned that some students, who transferred previously earned credits, will be among the first graduates of this innovative program this year.
Moreno-Riaño said that Cornerstone’s price point for its SOAR bachelor’s degree is $24,000 from start to finish, while the master’s degree is $12,000.
“More than half of our current students enrolled in the program now are paying no tuition due to scholarships and grants.
“We see this as an opportunity to address a gap in our country now when it comes to education, and frankly, we’re convinced that the current American higher ed infrastructure cannot address this challenge. It was built for what I call traditional brick and mortar students,” he said.
“We thought, how can we take this ubiquitous piece of technology that everybody has, that everyone spends a lot of time on? On average, in our country, we’re talking about well over four hours a day that adults are on their mobile devices.”
Moreno-Riaño said Cornerstone tested the app for over a year with about 120 students, which informed the university’s process of revising and launching the SOAR app.
He said that Cornerstone is deeply concerned with how it reaches out to non-traditional students and disenchanted students, some of whom haven’t tried to pursue a degree while others tried a traditional college experience and aren’t willing to return.
Moreno-Riaño said that when Cornerstone was mapping out the program, it understood that the traditional curriculum of 120 credit hours in a degree program couldn’t be mapped over to a mobile app, so the school sought to unpackage those courses into “bite-sized chunks of educational content.”
“In the app, there will be mini-lectures, podcasts, book reviews, interviews, all with very closely, carefully designed learning objectives throughout the program,” Moreno-Riaño said, explaining that some of the lectures may be in the range of 5 to 10 minutes.
“We have micro assessments built-in that are immediately graded and feedback is given to the student.”
Some of the program’s first graduates told Moreno-Riaño that they listen to some of the lessons while commuting to work, while traveling or doing household chores.
“It allows them to, in essence, continue the learning experience amidst a complex schedule because we unbundle it, unpackage it, redevelop it and maintain the engagement criteria so that students stay studying and focused,” he said.