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The constantly increasing cost of college is blocking our American Dream. Today, student loan debt in our country has crossed one trillion. There is fortunately another alternative that could open the path to a college degree based on a combination of simple regulatory change and technology that is available readily.

Harvard and MIT have recently announced the edX program which has shifted focus and movement towards a massive open online course. Courses offered by MIT and Harvard will now be available online.

An MIT program already offers free courses to students and this latest initiative builds on this. Students will be graded by edX which will support their learning. Certificates will be issued for those who successfully complete the course. Institutions wishing to distribute their courses can benefit from the online course delivery software offered by edX.

An Artificial Intelligence course was offered by Stanford for free last fall. This was a rigorous course attended by 160,000 students from across the world in different age groups. At least 22,000 of them successfully completed the course.

Similar initiatives are being developed in University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan and Princeton. This philosophy has also been pioneered by the Open University system in the Western Governor’s University in the US and also in the United Kingdom.

Cost of education can be revolutionized by digital technology. However the area of accreditation needs strong regulations in order to advance. Accreditation is nothing but acceptance of course online credits by graduate schools and the ability to transfer credit to other institutions.

As of now, students who complete the course will not receive MIT or Harvard University accredited degree. Rather, they will receive mastery certificate from edX. Those who have completed the Artificial Intelligence course from Stanford University did not receive and accredited course credit from the college. They earned a “statement of accomplishment”.

We cannot blame institutions like MIT, Stanford and Harvard for following this distinction. There is no reason for them to devalue their traditional degree. Reality must however be reflected based on measurement of individual achievement of students and how rigorous the course is.

It is time for our government to make sure that high quality free edX style courses are offered to students. They must support this strategy and ensure students benefit from courses that are spread across prominent categories of Career College and university training. For this, course developers must be offered modest federal subsidy.

The trend is on and there are numerous online courses already on offer. It is only a matter of time for the market to realize that rather than serving few students at high costs, it is better to serve many students at affordable costs.

Online courses offer a wonderful opportunity for the best educators to reach out to thousands of students online allowing them to achieve their academic goals.

This self -reliant approach reduces student’s reliance on student debt and financial aid and enables them to use their individual initiative to succeed. This affordable path will help those seeking higher education and is a way to strengthen American Dream.