PALESTINE: Online university opens in West Bank

An American online university started by an Israeli entrepreneur has opened an operations centre in the West Bank, writes DD Guttenplan for The New York Times. Shai Reshef, the founder of University of the People, a non-profit institution that offers free online education to students in more than 120 countries, said his agreement with ASAL Technologies, a Palestinian software and information technology services company based in Ramallah, was just the first stage of a plan to move the university's entire back office to the West Bank.

University of the People uses specially adapted open course materials to offer courses in business administration and computer science. "Those are the skills most likely to help our students find jobs," said Reshef, an entrepreneur who started and sold two for-profit education companies before putting $3 million of his own money into his new venture.

Based on a peer-to-peer learning model in which students teach one another, the university has also recruited volunteer mentors from Brigham Young, Columbia, Harvard, Insead, New York University and Yale. Tuition is free.
Full report on The New York Times site