ArsDigita Offers Free High-Tech Program

Aug. 18 -- Who says you can’t get something for nothing?

As students gear up for the back-to-school season, tightening their wallets after a long summer break, some are heading back to class for free … but there’s a catch. You have to be a tech whiz.

Just down the street from the esteemed institutions of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lies ArsDigita University, the new kid on the block with an entirely new approach to higher learning.

With an acute focus on computer science, the 10-month, tuition-free, post-baccalaureate program is attracting the attention of thousands of people around the world, says Barbara Link, executive director of the ArsDigita Foundation, the school’s parent company and money-raising arm.

But only a choice few will fill the 35 spots available for the class of 2001.

The school is geared toward people excited to learn the ins and outs of computers and who have SAT scores above 1400 and an undergraduate degree with a solid grade-point average, says Link. Though the school is not accredited, officials believe students can theoretically learn in a compressed amount of time as much as an MIT or Caltech computer science undergraduate learns in four years.

ArsDigita is the brainchild of Philip Greenspun, MIT professor and author of Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing. Part of the ArsDigita Foundation, which has the backing of such high-tech heavy hitters as Internet developer Dave Clark and World Wide Web developer Tim Berners-Lee, the school is partially funded and supported by the ArsDigita Corporation, a software company that builds and maintains open-source application software for e-commerce sites. It has ties to high-tech companies such as Oracle and Hewlett-Packard.

This may be the first year of its unconventional computer science offering, but the school and the corporation have a history going back several years. The company began developing Web services for itself in 1993 and then for other companies the following year. And since the beginning of this year, the school has offered a Web programming boot camp. (See sidebar, below.)