Anjuli Gupta – Our mission is to increase access to quality

Our mission is to increase access to quality education and reduce student debt, and through our courses, we can build multiple partnerships to create new or accelerated educational pathways for students. Our bet is that good colleges, strong student support, intensive instruction, and rigorous curriculum will help more students find new pathways to their dream colleges. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that if we want to solve these problems in online education, we must create courses that are engaging enough for students to want to learn and rigorous enough to open other doors. The Student Success Team also offers prospective students an Outlier.org transfer guide so that students know where and how their Pitt credits will count before any of our courses begin. Based on the experiences of many students, including our founder Aaron Rasmussen, we know that offering rigorous, need-based options for prerequisites and depth requirements will help students stay on track to graduate and manage their debt. Our Student Success Team helps us align student outcomes on campus. It helps students with everything from registration issues and platform questions to tutor recommendations, checking free discussion boards, and more. From the moment admissions decisions are made, institutional decision makers are under a lot of pressure to help students graduate on time, and that often starts with summer admissions preparation. Of course. My job at Outlier.org is to create partnerships so that our courses are available to as many students as possible. We are in talks with a partner about the possibility of offering a summer Calculus I course for students who are underperforming in the current semester and want to stay on track. The ultimate goal of Outlier.org is not to replace the college program, but to provide a flexible, high-quality, affordable option for one of the top 20 or 30 introductory college courses. It is likely that many students will use it for certain courses in addition to a college education that they might not otherwise be able to attend. I’m glad we can help both students and colleges by maintaining dropout and graduation rates. Active learning, problem sets, and assessment make up the majority of our courses, and that part of the experience is built on our investment in student success and our core learning platform.