Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Shai Reshef Is Empowering Refugees and Underserved Students with Free College Education | E96
Tue, 15 Apr 2025
Growing up, Shai Reshef wasn’t the most enthusiastic student, but after earning a master’s degree in Chinese politics, he discovered the transformative power of education. Inspired by a UNESCO report predicting the future lack of access to higher education, Shai decided to act. He sold two businesses, leveraged open-source technology, and partnered with volunteer professors to create University of the People, the world’s first tuition-free, accredited online university. In this episode, Shai joins Ilana to share how the university is empowering over 150,000 students from marginalized communities and offers valuable advice for those seeking to make a meaningful impact. Shai Reshef is the founder and president of University of the People, a nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university dedicated to providing accessible higher education to underserved populations across 206 countries. In this episode, Ilana and Shai will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:52) The Power of Education in Nation-Building (04:41) Founding the First Online University in Europe (09:08) Creating a Global, Tuition-Free University (16:05) Overcoming Accreditation Challenges (19:34) The Global Impact of the University of the People (26:41) Building a Sustainable Model for Free Education (30:59) How University of the People Screens Students (34:18) Keys to Launching a Meaningful Project (38:18) Balancing Leadership Stress with Team Dynamics (40:33) Success Stories from University of the People (43:41) The Power of Philanthropy and Nonprofits Shai Reshef is the founder and president of University of the People, a nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university dedicated to providing accessible higher education to underserved populations across 206 countries. Previously, he led Kidum Group, Israel’s largest for-profit educational services company, and chaired KIT eLearning, the first online university in Europe. Recognized for his impact on education, Shai also serves as an adviser to the UN’s Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Connect with Shai: Shai’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shaireshef Resources Mentioned: University of the People’s Website: www.uopeople.edu Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Chapter 1: What inspired Shai Reshef to create University of the People?
This is a major milestone for us that actually puts us in line with the best universities in the world, which is important because again, being online, Well, I don't think that there is a single university in the U.S. They do not offer at least one course online. Still, people are not 100% sure that that's the right thing and the real thing.
So you need legitimacy and you need credibility, and that's exactly what accreditation gives us.
And I want to talk a little bit about the impact of this, because what it disenabled is ability to serve 150 plus students from, what, 200 countries? And, you know, including, I think you have incredible stories of helping refugees. And can you share a couple of stories just so people understand the magnitude of this?
University of the People is for the people who have no other alternatives. We do not want refugees. to have the people who can get into Harvard or Stanford, Yale, and others. We want to open the gates for those who have no other opportunities. By definition, we have people in the U.S. that are homeless, stay-at-home immigrants.
We have survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, the earthquake in Haiti, people who sell fruits on the streets. So we're opening the gates to those who have nobody else is willing to accept them. Among them, we have refugees. As a university, we have more refugees than any university in the world. We have 19,000 refugees. We have 4,300 Afghan women who are studying, hiding at home, studying with us,
because they're not allowed to study under the Taliban rule. Moreover, what we just learned is that they start graduating, and 60% of our graduates in Afghanistan work remotely as programmers with international companies. It's amazing stories. These are the people that we started the university for. And we have, in 2012, we started witnessing
Tens of thousands of Syrians knocking on our doors, trying to study, but could not make it because of the language. You know, the war in Syria and all the universities were closed. They were knocking on our door. They couldn't make it. So we said, OK, let's develop a program in Arabic. We developed a program in Arabic. Now we have 30,000 students studying in Arabic, and many of them are refugees.
So we are there for these people. And actually, our next project is to develop your people in Spanish, again, for Venezuelan refugees, because there are millions of them that do not have opportunities. And we can and we should open the gates to them. And that's what we do.
Incredible. And I believe you also have people from Gaza. You have people from all over. When they can't go anywhere else, they come to you.
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Chapter 5: What is the impact of philanthropy and nonprofits in education?
Chapter 6: What success stories highlight the effectiveness of University of the People?
You need content, but there was already open educational resources, which means content that professors put online for free. There is open source technology, free technology. And if there are professors that are willing to teach for free, actually, this is what you need for a university. All I had to do is to put it together and create tuition-free university. So that's where the idea came from.
From that moment still to pull the trigger and say, let me try to do this crazy thing that will only rely on donors and volunteers. And oh my God, Chai, yes. How did you get there?
So I said, okay, it was open source technology, open educational resources and volunteers. I said, this is a university. All I have to do, as I said, is to put it together. So I went to a conference in Munich. And I announced that I'm going to start a tuition-free university.
And by the way, I should have said that when I was in KIT, I realized that the main problem is that so many people need education. but they can't afford it. And when I was thinking about creating University of the People, I realized I read a UNESCO statement on that year in 2009 that in 2025, right now, there will be 100 million students without universities to serve them. So I said, okay.
I announced the university in Munich. The next day, the New York Times wrote a page about it. And the following day, I already had hundreds of emails from professors who said, wow, we want to help. And they built the New York City.
So let's dive into that, Chai. It's amazing that you got already the press to see it, and that really helps. And again, I can see why they would be drawn to something so beautiful. But tell us about the early days, because the early days still need... capital to some extent.
Even if a lot of people are volunteers, there's still operations and there's technology and there's infrastructure and there's marketing or travel, like there's still things. So how do you start rolling this?
When I announced the University of the People, I knew what it takes to build a university because I had a university in Europe and I knew what it takes, which was a great plus because otherwise, what do you need in order to create a university?
Second, from the very beginning, I had amazing people who came to help from our provost, who came from Columbia University and the vice provost, from deans who came from NYU and Princeton. And those people taught me what I need in order to build a university, and they built it. So most of the manpower was volunteers, which saves millions of dollars along the years. We did need capital.
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