Hank Green on offering a low-cost introduction to college via YouTube

Thought leaders share ideas with WorkingNation Overheard at SXSW EDU 2023
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There is way to provide people a lower-cost introduction to college, according to Hank Green, science communicator, co-founder, and CEO of Complexly. Green is also the creator and host of the educational YouTube channels Crash Course and SciShow

WorkingNation sat down with Green at SXSW EDU 2023 in Austin.

His company has teamed up with Arizona State University to offer a new program that allows students to earn college credits at their own pace. It’s called Study Hall. “The idea is to lower as many barriers as we can for the sort of introduction to the college process. Get the cost barrier down. Get people some of the information that they need – the complexity of interfacing with the bureaucracy of higher education so that’s less of a black box. And also try and make it so that the information is easier to learn with accessible YouTube videos that are in a platform that people are familiar with.”

Green continues, “You pay $25 to sign up, go through the course, and at the end of that, if you like how we taught you college math or rhetoric or whatever, you can pay for that to be a college credit. Those college credits are then Arizona State University credits that can be transferred to any school that takes ASU credits. That’s $400, which is about a third of the cost of a public university in the U.S.”

Learn more about Complexly.