Cornerstone University allows students to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from their phone
Americans who want to earn degrees at their own pace can now do so from their smartphones after Cornerstone University integrated degree offerings into its business plan to cater to students who prefer a career program that can be completed on a smartphone.
“We’ve developed the nation’s first mobile platform to deliver accredited bachelor’s and master’s degrees, all through your cell phone,” Cornerstone University President Gerson Moreno-Riaño told FOX Business in an interview.
Moreno-Riaño said the program started in August and has about 250 students enrolled.
Students in what is known as the SOAR program can earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in strategic business management, or a master’s degree in organizational leadership.
“One of the good things we have seen is that the rate of persistence in the month reaches 91%, so the students continue with this and complete it,” he said, adding that some students who have transferred to other credits to complete their degrees will be the first students to graduate this year.
Moreno-Riaño said Cornerstone’s price for its SOAR degree is $24,000 from start to finish, while a master’s degree is $12,000.
“More than half of our students enrolled in this program are now not paying tuition fees due to tuition fees and grants.
“We see this as an opportunity to address the gap in our country now when it comes to education, and to be honest, we are sure that America’s high-level infrastructure cannot meet 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 everyone has, that everyone spends so much time on?
Moreno-Riaño said Cornerstone tested the app for more than a year with about 120 students, which informed the university’s process for revising and rolling out the SOAR app.
He said Cornerstone is particularly concerned about how it reaches non-traditional students and discouraged students, some of whom have not tried to pursue a degree while others have tried the traditional college experience and are unwilling to return.
Moreno-Riaño said that when Cornerstone mapped the program, it realized that the standard curriculum of 120 credit hours in the degree program could not be mapped to a mobile app, so the school tried to break down those courses into “bite-sized chunks of academic content.”
“In the application, there will be small lectures, podcasts, book reviews, discussions, all with carefully designed learning objectives throughout the program,” said Moreno-Riaño, explaining that some of the lectures may be between 5 and 10 minutes.
“We have a little test built in that is quickly released and the feedback is given to the student.”
Some of the first graduates of the program told Moreno-Riaño that they listen to some of the lessons when they go to work, when they are traveling or when they are doing chores around the house.
“It allows them to, in fact, continue the learning experience in the middle of a complex program because we deconstruct, deconstruct, reframe and maintain engagement criteria so that students can stay engaged and engaged,” she said.
