ArsDigita University: Five Years Later
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Tom Hickerson<br>arsdigitaeducation<br>3501 Words<br>… ⏲ Reading Time:<br>15 Minutes, 54 Seconds<br>2006-07-03 19:39 +0000
UPDATE 2026: I’ve taken this post from the defunct ADUni site (archived here) and included it in my website. Enjoy.<br>Ever been a part of something special? Something unique? Something<br>groundbreaking? I was a part of something like that, when I read the<br>following words off a webpage in spring of 2000:<br>“Our goal is to offer the world’s best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who are currently unable to obtain it.”
Five years ago, Arsdigita University graduated its first and only<br>class of 27 individuals. I was one of them. The program was the<br>brainchild of Philip Greenspun, founder of Arsdigita Corporation, and<br>was meant to be a new experiment in education, both online and in the<br>classroom. Five years later, we've all split and gone our seperate<br>ways, but the website it still up and serving the lectures and<br>materials.<br>It's been a long road since then, but hey, it was a long road during<br>too. What follows is a brief history of me, and my life, in Arsdigita<br>University.<br>My Career: Pre-Arsdigita Days<br>I first found Philip Greenspun's site in Ukraine around 1999. I had<br>just gotten a new computer and was able to start using things like the<br>browser and email. I had used email for work for three years prior to<br>that, but we only had a 386 laptop with command-line UUCP programs to<br>connect, grab email and disconnect. In the world of the Web, I was a<br>definitely a late bloomer.<br>It wasn't always this way; thanks to my father's career at IBM for<br>thirty-odd years, we had a computer around the house since 1980. My<br>first computer was an IBM PC jr (!!!), and I did pretty well in the<br>computer math courses that were in high school that taught me Pascal.<br>However, going into university I felt at the time that I wanted a<br>well-rounded and liberal arts education. I majored in English, and<br>switched ro russian after spending a year in St. Petersburg.<br>So, in a nutshell, I wandered off the math-and-hard-science road that<br>most computer science majors take. I graudated, got a job, had many<br>life-enriching experiences, but found out that I wanted a better<br>career, something that I had some experience in. Returning to Texas<br>in 1999, I wanted to go back to school and earn a second degree, this<br>time in Computer Science.<br>The problem was, it would take four semesters. Wait, eight semesters.<br>Well, maybe only six and a half semesters. Those were the answers<br>that the undergraduate Computer Science department of the University<br>of Texas kept telling me, anyway. Since the curriculum was a long<br>list of courses based on prerequisites, I couldn't take many of them<br>in parallel, and would have to go through the same chute-and-ladder<br>route that all the college freshmen were taking, the route that<br>usually takes four to five years to complete.<br>So, in the fall of 1999, I enrolled in a few courses and got a job. I<br>was hopeful that something else would come along before I had to<br>complete four more years of coursework, studying alongside students<br>who were ten years younger than I was.<br>Luckily, I clicked back onto Philip's site in spring of 2000, and<br>found a link stating "me and my friends are starting a new<br>university." Intrigued, I clicked further.<br>The Future's So Bright...Well Not Really<br>I had read most of Philip's online book before 2000, and while I<br>didn't absorb any of the SQL or Oracle tips at that time, I did absorb<br>most of the stories about the creation of Arsdigita Corporation. The<br>salaries, the attitude that Philip had about treating engineers, the<br>sports car that was driven by the employee with the most referrals<br>that month...well, it was all part and parcel of the spirit of the<br>times, I guess. Spirit or not, it was intoxicating. So to hear that<br>Philip was starting up his own university where a select few would<br>learn everything about computer science from MIT lecturers in the<br>space of eleven months and P.S. it's for free, well, heck, where do I<br>sign up?<br>So, I filled out an online application. The application was pretty<br>streamlined, compared with other online college applications I had<br>filled out at the time, and after a while I got a message requesting<br>an interview.<br>The first interview was with Rajeev and Luis, both Arsdigita employees<br>who later went on to teach at the University. The interview was<br>mostly problem-solving questions, and while they did not rely on a lot<br>of math or stats, they did elicit how people work problems out. The<br>second interview was a one-on-one phone conversation with the Man In<br>the Black T-shirt Himself, Philip Greenspun. I remember gushing a<br>little, since I had already read his book, seen his photos, and<br>thought I grokked a lot about the geek wunderkind. Gushing a little?<br>Okay, maybe I couldn't shut my trap. But the end result was that I<br>got an...