Hi Kathleen,
Your post is a great lead for Monday's discussions where we will explore the quality related aspects and the risks associated with degree mill operators. I can assure you that no partner of the OERu will be prepared to compromise its accreditation status or brand through sub-quality operations.
For now - -a few comments.
The OERu is first and foremost a philanthropic collaboration in responding to our community service agendas. The OER Foundation is committed to building sustainable open education ecosystems. We are not opposed to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which includes the rights for individuals to earn a living wage including private service providers like yourself. However, we are committed to a level playing field because all OERu learning materials will remain open without password access as a matter of policy.
Our commitment to open philanthropy is clear. Since our inception, all meetings have been conducted openly and transparently -- like this SCoPE seminar preparing the agenda for the next meeting of OERu partners which will also be streamed live with opportunities for the remote community to participate in our breakout sessions.
The OERu's core principles of engagement are also clear -- we do not apply the non-commercial restriction to our courses. I see no objections to enterprises like yourself providing high quality RPL services using OERu courses. In fact, I would encourage this. If we are serious about widening access to education for the millions of learners excluded from a formal credential -- we need hundreds of operations like yours to make a difference. Learners who can afford it will pay top dollar for the quality of the service you provide. We are not like some networks in this space, for instance, Coursera, who claim economic rights to an individual's learning from their courses through their terms of service. You, for example, will not be able to assess the experiential learning from Coursera courses without prior permission from Coursera.
The OERu partners will also be offering new services to support OERu learners - -we can do this through the disaggregation of the traditional university package. If a learner, for example, needs a few hours of tutorial support, as publicly funded institutions we will be offering these services on a cost-recovery basis – this is the “new” business we are referring to.
Our mission at the OER Foundation is to build a sustainable ecosystem for the mainstream adoption of open education approaches worldwide. To be clear, the OER Foundation is a registered charity which means all operations are restricted to charitable activities. We are not building a for-profit start-up here, but we will by the nature of our operations be building a model which the commercial start-ups will find hard to compete with. I'm thankful that we're not trying to find ways of paying back millions of dollars of venture capital investment. All our course materials will always be open. Watch this space :-).