Study at Elton University is more self-directed than in traditional schooling, and students have the support and freedom to study what interests them within their program. Professors will require certain work, and work must meet objective standards. There are transparent systems of accountability, and coaches and professors have very high expectations for students' behavior and work. All students must arrive to meetings with their professors and coaches prepared and have completed their work. All students must be producing work and growing their portfolio, knowledge, and mastery in order to continue their enrollment at the school.

Elton University offers a range of different financial aid options, including Merit-Based Grants, Diversity & Inclusion Grants, Income Share Agreements, Living Stipends, and Personal Loans through our loan partners. You will be awarded your financial aid package upon enrollment in the program, so if you are curious about what you would qualify for, just enroll and see. It takes about 30 minutes. Elton students cannot qualify for any federally subsidized student loans or grants to attend Elton University because Elton has deliberately decided not to seek Title IV federal funding, as this is incompatible with Elton's unique 1-on-1 agile model.

You don't actually have to apply — just enroll directly. It takes about 30 minutes. The first month is for you to try Elton and for Elton to assess you. You can withdraw or Elton can dismiss you in the first month for a full refund if it is not a good fit. If you would like to get started, you can enroll directly using our Enrollment Form.

Yes. Elton University is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Many colleges claim to be "non-profit" while maintaining close, working relationships with for-profit consulting and management companies or earn enromous profits by investing their endowments in the stock market. Elton does not. We have no close relationship with any for-profit entity and we do not have an endowment that operates as a hedge fund. At present, we are funded entirely by the tuition of our students and a few small donations from friends and family.

Students can begin studying immediately upon finishing their enrollment. Every three months there is a Cohort Kickoff where students who began in the last quarter form into a cohort.

Yes. You can work with your coach and professors to plan a trip overseas. Students who go abroad can continue to attend Elton University and keep working with their coach and professors. They will help you find learning experiences wherever you go and integrate your travel into your education.

Yes. There are only a few required meetings every week with your professors and coaches. Workshops that happen during the day will be recorded, so students who are not able to attend are able to watch online. Full-time students at Elton University should plan on roughly 30-35 hours of Elton work per week, so we recommend not working more than part-time, so there is enough time to do the in-depth study and projects that the Elton University program requires. There are also opportunities for jobs working for Elton University, such as tutoring and event planning.

Elton runs year-round and takes only traditional holidays off. The only large vacation where everyone is gone is two weeks over the winter holidays. Students can take a vacation at their discretion by giving notice, just like at a job. Students are not reimbursed for tuition for the time they take off. This vacation time is technically unlimited, but we recommend that students don't miss more than eight weeks during any full year or more than three weeks at a time. If a student plans to take off more than a month, we recommend they go on a leave of absence, which suspends their tuition payments.

An Elton University student's days consist of 2-4 hour periods of deep, focused work. The rest of their day is peppered with meetings with groups, teams, professors, friends, coaches, and Icons. Depending on when they work best, a student might set up their deep work time in the evening, morning, or afternoon, then schedule their other meetings around their deep work times.

Elton University is an online community. That means that our students connect online to share what they are working on, collaborate, and make friends. We have events, online hang outs, talent shows, open mics, show-and-tell fairs, and spontaneous collaborative conferences called "unconferences". All of these mean making friends and close connections with other Elton students.

Why do we think college should last four years? If everyone starts at different levels of preparation, learns at different paces, and has different learning goals, how could all students take the same time to finish? Traditional schooling is very inefficient because of seat-time requirements, required courses, scheduling conflicts, and the availability of courses. Traditional college takes 4-6 years to complete. Elton University students are not constrained by the same requirements. They move at their own pace, so they can take as long as traditional school, but often only take 2-3 years to complete the undergrad program, and 1-2 years to complete a master's level program, and 2-4 years for the PhD by Publication depending on publication speed.

Yes, Elton University accepts transfer credits from colleges from around the US and the world that are relevant to the program of study you are pursuing. There is no limit on the number of credits you submit, but at least 25% of your credits must be awarded by Elton University to be certified to have completed an Elton program.

Students from anywhere in the world can study at Elton University from anywhere in the world. Elton University has chosen not to register with the federal government to sponsor student F-1 visas to the United States. This is because registering this way severely restricts Elton University from operating in a way that is best for our students. So students outside the US should know they cannot qualify for an F-1 visa.

Tuition can be paid upon enrollment for a 10% discount. For the Master's & PhD programs it is also possible to pay on a monthly basis for the first 12 months of your program through a digital recurring payment form. For the undergraduate program it is possible to pay monthly for the first 24 months of the program.

No, as a new university, Elton has not yet been accepted into an accreditation association.

However, there are many misconceptions about what this means that are worth explaining here in depth.
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In the United States, accreditation means that the university is member of a private, non-governmental organization, sort of like a trade association for higher educational institutions. Membership to these associations is often used as a signal of an institution's quality; however, there is no empirical data suggesting that accreditation does assure or improve the quality of higher educational offerings in any way. This is like if many professional bowlers were in a national bowler's association, but there was no evidence that those bowlers bowled any better than those outside of the association.

Accreditation is an entirely optional private membership that colleges and universities have the option to seek and is not required by law to operate. For instance, Northwestern University's Master's in Journalism deliberately dropped their third-party accreditation and is a leading program in the field (read more). Much like an architect can choose to seek LEED certification of their environmentally green building, but it is not required to build or operate that building or publicize that the building is environmentally sustainable. An architect might even build a building with a higher sustainability than a LEED certification requires but still not seek a LEED certification because of cost and time commitment.

"One of the biggest myths in higher education, I tell parents, is that accreditation has anything to do with the quality of a college or university. It doesn’t, by law. Since the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act, all an accreditor can do is rate student achievement by the standard each institution sets for itself. That means no accreditor looks at the quality of any of the ingredients that go into any college course or degree: not the professor, not the reading list, not the time spent mentoring or writing letters of recommendation. Nothing about what makes a college “good." Hollis Robbins, PhD Princeton; MPP Harvard. Professor of English and former Dean of Humanities at University of Utah.

It is even enshrined in federal law that accreditation is not a reliable authority of quality of education. "No accrediting agency or association may be determined by the Secretary to be a reliable authority as to the quality of education or training offered for the purposes of this chapter or for other Federal purposes” (20 U.S.C. §1099b(a))"
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While Elton has a practical plan to secure accreditation in the coming years, Elton's current evidence-based approach and continual self-scrutiny is a far, far higher bar of quality than any existing accreditor would require. Elton's leadership and faculty conduct in-depth program- and institution-level self-studies on a monthly and annual basis. Elton adheres to a rubric of quality measures that are both qualitative and quantitative, taking into account both educational inputs (instructional style, curricular materials, formative assessments, and so on) and educational outputs (career outcomes, graduate and alumni satisfaction, research output, summative assessments, and so on). Elton prides itself on applying proven evidence-based educational research to make our students a success—something that is rare among other colleges. No accreditor currently uses evidence-based standards for assessing school or program quality.

No college or university, whether accredited or not, can guarantee that another school, employer, or institution will recognize their credit or degrees. The acceptance of a degree or transfer credits is entirely up to the recieving institution. Institutions can recognize or reject any program or credit independent of another college's accreditation status. Always check whether certifications of completion of the Elton program with transcripts will work for your goals.

Absolutely. If you can achieve your goals with only a certificate you certainly can join Elton with that as your goal. For instance, if you earn a certificate in Software Engineering & AI, so long as you have a good portfolio and interview well, that could be enough to launch your career in tech. Or earning only a certificate MBA might be enough to improve your hard skills and resume enough to reach the next level of your career.

No. It is optional for colleges and universities to register with the federal government for student financial aid. Elton has decided not to register with the federal government for two reasons:

1. Elton's tuition with financial aid is more affordable already than other schools, removing the need for federal financial aid.
2. The Department of Education puts unnecessary burdens and restrictions on schools, stopping or slowing down their ability to change and innovate to serve their students.

Elton University was built both for people who don't know what they want to do and want to explore, and for people who have a good idea of what they want to do and want the space, time, and support to get started and succeed. The only people who won't thrive at Elton are people who don't know what they want to do and don't care to find out, or who know what they want to do but refuse to get started.

What a lovely, complex little question! At Elton, we take a very old definition of liberal arts—it was Aristotle who invented the idea, and he defined them as "those skills that support a free citizen in a free society." So, what are the liberal arts of today? What skills support a free person in a free society today? We have built Elton to be the perfect place to explore, define for oneself, and study the liberal arts in this original sense of the phrase.

Being well-rounded is an excellent goal—to be a polymath, a multipotentialite, a Renaissance person. So how do we become well-rounded in practice? At Elton, we believe having the freedom to study what fascinates you is the most natural and rapid way to develop a broad and rich palette of interests and knowledge.

We find that when students are free to choose, students generally take the path of most resistance — not least. That's right — the path of *most* resistance.