(Special Notice of 2.23.2023: We are currently redoing the courses and working to find a new online learning software system to better meet the many upgrades in our mission and educational materials that were first implemented in January of 2021 and to deal with the usage surge from remote learners due to the Covid 19 surge.
These are major upgrades that may take us until late 2023 or early 2024 to complete. We apologize for this delay in accessing our older and new online courses. Feel free to review the following pages while we work on getting our new systems operational.
To be sure you are notified when the Universe College courses go back online, please click the Subscribe link at the top of the page to receive our updates.)
Getting Started at Universe College Online
The Universe College is an "Open Access" learning environment designed to maximize your learning potential and help you create sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles and a better world. The college's courses are informed by the Universe Evolutionary Worldview, which is based on the most current evolution science.
Open access simply means that you donate whatever you think the course is worth after you after done with it. We've found that the open access and open-source model allows us to offer most of our classes in an open-access format, leaving you free to decide how (and to what degree) to contribute in return to the Universe College, according to the value you have found in what you've learned. Whether that's by volunteering, donating, tutoring, or sharing the information with others by teaching is totally up to you. Based on evolutionary science, we believe that applying the principle of fair exchange of value in an “open access” manner will help us maintain a high level of integrity in each class that we offer and ultimately empower you while maintaining the sustainability of Universe College for future students.
Don't forget to check back often! We're always expanding our classes, and we're laboriously collaborating with partners and volunteers to open up more of our courses. We also love feedback! If there's anything you'd like to share with us about how we can improve your user experience, please let us know! You can email us at manage@universecollege.org
For more information on Universe College select from the links below!
Universe College is comprised of an integral life-education curriculum that teaches The Three Great Types of Knowledge that are essential to creating successful, sustainable, and meaningful lives.
Our Basic Curriculum Goals Are:
1) To show students their natural place in evolution, both biologically and culturally, and to teach them about the evolution of the universe.
2) To teach our students new ways of living meaningful and successful lives -- individually and communally and if the student is so inclined, though the creation of a personal and personalized, universe science grounded spirituality.
3) To encourage the design of individual and group livelihoods and lifestyles that prioritize sustainable prosperity and meaningful existence for all.
4) To create a mini-culture and network of informed and responsible Universe Citizens who will help to evolve a just and sustainable future for humanity for generations to come.
5) To have our students recognize the most important task facing humanity: to preserve our physical and biological environment and to steer humanity toward a healthier, more sustainable future.
We strive to create a learning environment where commitment to consistent effort and continual study will result in lasting personal and social improvement.
You can expect that our courses may shift your thoughts, feelings, and attitudes into greater harmony with the patterns of the universe. This effect will then extend to your habits and behaviors and physical, economic, social, and spiritual lifestyles, making you a more ethical and effective leader, consultant, facilitator, coach, advocate, activist, or educator.
As a Universe College student, you will be informed by the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview in all that you do, making you a more conscious Universe Citizen and Universe Evolutionary.
Overview
We design all of our Universe College courses to include as many different perspectives, styles and methodologies as possible, giving our students an integral and coherent view of the topic.
To address different learning styles we use a variety of media wherever possible, incorporating graphics, charts, videos, and MP3s into our lesson plans.
Courses may include various types of exercises, some to build new lifestyle habits, others to deconstruct and reconstruct worldviews and information systems. All classes will include a discussion of the difference between objective and subjective claims about reality, and most will help students progress through Three Great Spiritual Adventures.
To learn more about the many practical art-of-living skills for successful and sustainable living we provide, click here.
Levels
All courses are arranged in beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, which correspond to 100, 200, and 300-level courses, respectively.
Certifications
Upon completion of a course, a provisional certificate will be issued.
A full-completion certificate is offered to students after a period of time in which they have successfully demonstrated their use of new life skills.
Some courses, when completed, will result in certification as a facilitator, teacher, coach, or consultant who can earn the right livelihood using their new skill set to assist individuals and organizations in a professional setting.
Course Support
We will possibly begin charging a course fee for some of our courses in the near future. These courses will have the benefit of an ample support system, including a course coach/buddy, teaching assistant, and course teacher who will, through various means, answer questions and provide encouragement.
We strongly recommend that first-time students at Universe College begin with one of the following three courses:
1.) Co-Creating a Thriving World, Essential knowledge for empowered action. (SE 130) This course will empower you to start the First Great Adventure of Life, assist you in doing your part in Job One for Humanity and is great for anyone who wants to learn more about collaborating with others to preserve the planetary environment.
2.) Introduction to the New Universe Evolutionary Worldview (NUWS 101) Good for the fact-loving life-science type of student, this course moves you forward on the Second Great Adventure of Life.
3.) Introduction to an Evolutionary, Integral and Open Source Personalized Spirituality (USS 101) For the more spiritually inclined among us, this course also moves you forward on the Third Great Adventure of Life
*Please note that if you are equally interested in life and spirit, choices 2 and 3 are good first options. They will also give you a basic understanding of Universe Spirit, the organization from which Universe College stems. For more information on the Three Great Adventures of life click here.
After you have completed one or all of these three basic introductory courses, you may get a new course recommendation by emailing us at manage@universespirit.org . Be sure to let us know what your strongest interests and most significant life or spiritual needs are so that we may advise accordingly.
Also please keep in mind:
- As course numbers rise, the material becomes more advanced. 100-level are entry-level courses, 200 and 300-level are intermediate and advanced.
- Certification programs in facilitating, teaching, coaching, or consulting usually have courses that need to be done in a specific order.
- We are always in the process of creating new courses, so check in regularly to see our new offerings!
The Mutual Exchange of Benefits
Participating in any of our free-access courses, services or events should provide you with real value and tangible benefits. These benefits and values can be in the form of a changed or improved perspective or attitude, a new commitment, or even a new behavior.
They also can be educational or personal support that helps you heal or develop and maintain some new habits to help you live better. For our spiritual courses, the general rule is that somewhere within the first one or two courses, you should experience some tangible and meaningful benefit. But research has shown that it generally takes about 6 months of both learning and practicing a new discipline to produce a personally significant and important change in one's life.
There are many faces to both the small and large benefits that our courses, services, and events can provide, but you always get to be the final judge of that when you decide what to exchange with us for any benefit that you receive! (If you want to look over a list of potential benefits from our courses, services, and events, click here.
For most of our courses, services, and events, you do not have to pay something to start or attend, but that does not mean that they are free from some form of fair exchange if you are benefiting from them. Most courses, services, or events that we provide are presented on a donate-what-you-think-is-fair or exchange-something-of-value-with-us basis. (We have only a few courses, services, and events for which we must charge a fixed fee, but even those can be negotiated, as described below.)
This voluntary donation or exchange system is based completely upon what you feel is the value of what our services and materials have brought to your life as well as what is realistic with your current financial situation.
We often have a suggested donation for our courses, services, and events. This is only a suggested donation level and is subject to the fair exchange principles in this summary regarding the importance of fair "energy" exchange with and within our community. Any suggested donation amount that we might list for a course, service, or event is determined by several factors:
1.) The costs required to create and administer the course, service, or event.
2.) Our best estimate of what a person at the average income median can reasonably afford in our area (We are in the San Francisco area of the United States).
3.) The value that we believe the course, service, or event can reasonably deliver.
If you are located in a different country or in a different area of the U.S., this suggested donation amount that uses the average income median of your area would therefore change to be more or less expensive than the San Francisco area. Our suggested donation amount also allows you to increase that amount or decrease it if you have a greater or lesser income than the median income that we use to set the suggested donation amount in our area. This whole voluntary donation or exchange system is based upon your honor and trust in your fairness of judgment.
For each course, service, or event, you will be given a suggested fair exchange/donation amount. To make a donation for this amount, click on the donation link which will take you to PayPal or some other donation payment method. Be sure to type in the name of the course, service, or event in the Pay Pal Description box so that we know what you are paying for. Click here to pay the amount of your choice through our PayPal. If you want to make a donation greater than or less than the suggested donation amount you can, using the guidelines given above.
Creating Fair Exchange with Us
If you DO receive a real value or benefit from the courses, services or events you participated in and you feel that they have improved your life in some tangible way, please do support us by exchanging "energy" with us in some way so that we too may continue to exist and grow! Individuals who take our online and offline courses or services or attend our events do provide an important portion of the total financial support for our mission. And, your fair exchange for them helps support the vital right livelihood for all of those individuals who create, administer and deliver our courses, services, and events!
As a mini-culture, living community system and a reflection of the deepest natural patterns and laws of the universe, our organization holds that maintaining fair and appropriate "energy" exchanges in life with all the sources that support one’s life is not just vital to our personal wellbeing. It is also vital to the planet on all levels! We realize that our members and visitors come from many different economic levels and completely trust that they will joyously donate to us according to both their means and the value that they have received in exchange from us. And, we will receive those generous and kind donations with equal joy!
Work Scholarships and Non-Monetary Exchanges For Courses, Services, and Events Gladly Accepted
Some individuals cannot afford any monetary donation, but they always can exchange their labor or other services with us to maintain the healthy practice of fairly exchanging something of value for something of value. Therefore, we are flexible and always also open to hearing about special and authentic need situations where no exchange is possible at all and, where our organization can help with a full or partial work exchange scholarship. If you need to negotiate with us, email us at manage@universespirit.org and tell us your situation and what you propose. If you have specific skills, let us know that as well. We almost always need help in many areas.
Click here to learn more about how to donate and exchange energy with us to support our amazing mission and beautiful community.
For more information on the evolutionary exchange principle of life and how using it can dramatically improve your life’s success, click here.
For information about becoming a member, click here.
(Continue reading below only if applicable.)
What if You Did Not Get Anything of Value or Benefit from Your First Course, Service, or Event?
Our community culture strongly supports fair exchange as a thoroughly proven basic evolutionary success law of life. Therefore, if you did not get some real value or benefit from our courses, services, or events, please do not donate! To ask you to donate in this situation would demonstrate a real value incongruity and disconnect within our organization. But, try Out Our Services Once More… if you did not get a real value or benefit in your very first course, service, or event. If after that second course, service, or event you still do not receive some value or benefit to your life for which you want to joyously exchange energy and support with our organization, then we simply ask that you do not participate in any more of our courses, services or events.
The Big Reasons Why and How is Fair Exchange Relevant to Ongoing Involvement in our Open Access Courses and Events
To continue taking our courses, services or events is to say in essence that you are a member of our community or are becoming one. Being an authentic community member always requires effort, energy contribution, and commitment. Supporting what is supporting you is part of being an authentic community member.
To continue taking courses, services, or events beyond the second course, service, or event without fair exchange according to the very flexible and situation-sensitive principles set out in this fair exchange summary would put an unfair drain on our community resources as well as our other authentic community members who are financially supporting our mission. Continuing to take any of our courses, services, or events beyond the first or second without fair exchange would be to take advantage of both our organizational openness and to freeload upon our generous members and staff and is completely inappropriate in both our online and offline communities!
We feel that to not openly educate visitors and potential new members to our community early on in their exploration of us about our shared and flexible community values concerning appropriate and healthy fair "energy" exchange practices would be both negligent on our part and, far more importantly, it would ignore the thoroughly proven spiritual and secular universal success law and principle about what makes life work, communities grow and missions flourish. It also prevents reciprocal fair exchange-related resentments, conflicts, and even wars from happening!
Our openness about this fair exchange issue serves your highest success and empowerment as well as the highest success and empowerment of our community, as it serves the world. If the natural reasons for the above principles are not clear, we strongly recommend that you examine the critical information on this 13.7 billion-year-old, time-proven energy exchange principle and prove to yourself how using it can dramatically improve your life’s success. To do that, begin by clicking here.
If you would like to design or instruct a course that would fit well into the Universe College curriculum, send an email to manage@universespirit.org with "New Course Proposal" in the subject line and we will send you all the information you need to get started.
Immediate Course Enrollment
1.) Select the course you want to participate in by clicking the course name. It is a link on the master course listings page.
2.) After you click the desired course link, it will take you to a new page where you will click the ‘enroll me’ button. You will now be taken directly into the course where you can start your first reading and assignment. (This enrollment process works for most courses unless other instructions have been given to you elsewhere or in the course description to the right of the course title.)
3.) You can now access the full course. And,
4.) Every time you return to the course you will only need to enter your Universe College registered user's personal username and password in the login form to get back to your courses.
If you need help, please contact our staff at: manage@universecollege.org
Thanks for choosing Universe College and our online courses!
The Universe College Staff
Immediate Course Enrollment
1.) Select the course you want to participate in by clicking the course name. It is a link on the master course listings page. Go to the master course listings page by clicking here.
2.) After you click the desired course link, it will take you to a new page where you will click the ‘enrol me’ button. You will now be taken directly into the course where you can start your first reading and assignment. (This enrollment process works for most courses unless other instructions have been given to you elsewhere or in the course description to the right of the course title.)
3.) You can now access the full course. And,
4.) Every time you return to the course you will only need to enter your Universe College registered user personal username and password in the logon form to get back to your courses.
If you need help, please contact our staff at: manage@universecollege.org
Thanks for choosing Universe College and our online courses!
The Universe College Staff
To enroll in our Universe College online courses, you'll need to take a minute to create a new user account for yourself. Here are the new user account sign-up steps.
How to Create Your New Account