Reinier SchuurIn the summer of 2012, I started at the Objectivist Academic Center, the predecessor program to Ayn Rand University. The value I got from that program is something I continue to benefit from. I had already been consuming ARI’s content, but it was the structured classes, assignments, and expert guidance from ARI’s high-caliber faculty that truly accelerated my understanding of Objectivism.
But for some, that structure can be a barrier to learning with ARI. This is especially the case for busy professionals who would love to learn from ARI’s experts but who do not have the same flexibility they might have had in their early twenties.
This posed a challenge that ARU’s faculty was determined to solve: how can we make ARU’s expert-guided content accessible to those who cannot commit to ARU’s structured educational programs? With this question in mind, ARI instructor and fellow Dr. Aaron Smith started a pilot program with a select group of busy professionals eager to try out a new education product – one tailored specifically to their needs.
The first step was easy: make sure students had access to world-class content. ARU has accumulated years’ worth of high-quality recorded lectures by our faculty that have never been released to the wider public. Putting these assets to good use, Dr. Smith assigned students to do the readings for and watch the recorded lectures of Dr. Onkar Ghate’s linchpin course Seminar on Objectivism. The students could start listening to these lectures and completing the associated assignments at any time, at their own pace.
Dr. Ghate’s lectures alone can be life-changing, but to ensure that students got their full impact, we paired them with graded assignments. These question-based assignments are pivotal in helping students internalize class material on a much deeper level. But instead of requiring students to turn in assignments on a weekly basis, we let them submit their work at their own pace. If their schedule was packed, they could take a month to make it through a lesson. If they had some free time, they could do two or three assignments in a row.
The final component of this pilot program was weekly discussion sessions where students could discuss previous lectures and receive feedback on their assignments from Dr. Smith. They could attend as often or as seldom as they wished.
The pilot program combined the best of both worlds: access to ARU’s best lectures and expert guidance from faculty – with enough flexibility so that even the busiest professional could reap the rewards of studying with us.
The best way to illustrate the outcome of this pilot program is to look at the experience of one of its students. Jackson Ford is a lawyer who defends businesses in court, a professional commitment that regularly requires him to work 60-plus hours a week at unpredictable hours. On top of that, Jackson is a first-time father of a baby girl. If we could develop a program that allowed someone as busy as Jackson to benefit from ARU’s expert-guided content, then we’d know that we had a product that could reach many more like him.
The result? Jackson, along with the other participants of this pilot program, thoroughly enjoyed this new flexible way to access ARU. Jackson was surprised how much he was able to accelerate his learning of Objectivism with just a few hours every week with this flexible model – learning that made a meaningful impact on his life. As Jackson explains, “Discussing Ayn Rand’s essays and the cardinal value of purpose with Aaron Smith enabled me to apply this knowledge to my own life in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to from listening to the lectures alone.”
Based on the success of this pilot program, Tal Tsfany announced at OCON 2024 the launch of ARU Flex – a growing library of self-paced courses designed to meet the needs of students at every level of familiarity with Ayn Rand. Our first two courses are available now for anyone who wants to take them: Objectivism Through Ayn Rand’s Fiction and Advanced Seminar on Objectivism.
At ARU we are very excited about ARU Flex as a new way to learn and as a means to furthering our mission of advancing Objectivism within the culture. You can start taking ARU Flex courses today by visiting aru.aynrand.org.
Tara Smith
Ibis Slade
