An innovator who is changing the face of higher education as we know it will speak Wednesday at Purdue University, Boiler Station reports.
Anant Agarwal is founder and president of edX, a nonprofit venture that specializes in open-source education solutions, including massive open online courses — or MOOCs. Agarwal, an engineering and computer science professor at MIT, will present a lecture called “Reinventing Education” as part of Purdue’s Presidential Lecture Series.
When edX was founded as an open-source entity by MIT and Harvard University in 2012, the mission was to increase access to high-quality education, regardless of students’ income or education level. Agarwal’s first edX course on circuits and electronics drew 155,000 students from 162 countries.
Agarwal’s talk, and edX’s success, comes at a time when brick-and-mortar higher education institutions are trying to remain relevant to students who have an ever-increasing number of higher education options.