Testimonials

WOW! Quick, thorough, and honest answers to emails within minutes. I am impressed! Having dealt with several brick and mortar colleges where students sometimes get treated like a nuisance, the friendliness and attentive customer service at StraighterLine is a breath of fresh air.

This was a very helpful experience. I am so thrilled to know that if i ever need help it is just a click away. I was able to grasp many blurry subjects to me and the tutor cleared them up for me. Thanks for everything!

With StraighterLine what more could a military spouse ask for? Friendly support, cheap prices in comparison to traditional college credits per hour, you can do your coursework at home and still have time to attend to both your family and the duties that come from being a military spouse.

Finally, another product has just come out ... called StraighterLine that could really change the labor model in education in very disruptive fashion that could allow for far more one-on-one time for students with teachers.

I am not here to hawk StraighterLine or its courses, but rather to say more power to universities who embrace the position that 'we want to offer quality degrees at a low cost - no matter who does the teaching, be it a for-profit provider, the institution itself, or a series of different providers, each good at what it does.'

StraighterLine threatens the most profitable piece of a conglomerate business: freshman lectures, higher education's equivalent of the classified section. If enough students defect to companies like StraighterLine, the higher education industry faces the unbundling of the business model on which the current system is built.

But, really, all the old school online university efforts, like University of Phoenix, did was to take the traditional college model and move it online. True disruptive innovation is ... about embracing some spect of that new medium to offer something in a different way that really wasn't possible prior to that. StraighterLine offers online college classes, but it totally disrupts the traditional business model of university learning.

The idea of some kind of open-source, online, low-cost revolution in education has become a lit fuse, sparking and crackling its way toward an explosion ... Start-ups such as StraighterLine ... are offering online courses for college credit for hundreds of dollars, compared with thousands of dollars at most universities.

The September issue of The Washington Monthly features Kevin Carey's wonderful article on StraighterLine, a firm that offers students as many college courses as they want for $99 a month, far below the thousands of dollars charged by rival services. Like more expensive services, the education offered by StraighterLine is tailored to the individual student; you can move as quickly or slowly through the material as you'd like. Tutors based in India and the Philippines provide more of a personal touch than any overburdened graduate student.

Colleges "have set the bar pretty low for competitors" through a lack of competition says Kevin Carey. At the same time, many potential students are being underserved. "We need more institutions that are good at serving working students, immigrant students, low-income students, students who are basically going to college because they want to get a credential and have a career," he says. Carey points to the fledgling company StraighterLine.com, which offers college courses in subjects from algebra to business statistics, English composition, and accounting. Students can take as many courses as they want for $99 per month, the company's website says. The price includes 10 hours each month of one-on-one live support and a course adviser. Passing courses results in "real college credit" from one of several colleges affiliated with the program.