About UMassOnline

CEO Ken Udas

As we at UMassOnline near the start of our second decade, the principal mission of our formative years has been achieved: The University of Massachusetts has demonstrated that distance learning offerings under the stewardship of a quality institution and its on-campus faculty provide a practical, affordable, and enriching alternative to traditional educational models. Few people today with experience in online education doubt its effectiveness.

In our second decade, while we must remain vigilant to sustain and enhance course quality and variety while constantly advancing learning and teaching outcomes, our overarching mission is to demonstrate that online learning can be a critical factor in bringing economic parity and human rights equality to people and nations where access is restricted because educational resources are scarce or too costly or simply, denied to some or all. Why this mission? Because it points to our humanity and recognizes a responsibility to the whole. The economy, stability, and growth of all nations depends on the economy, stability and growth of all nations and education is by all standard measures the fastest and most permanent way of ridding the world of practices or beliefs that foster or enable the dehumanization of ourselves.

This mission has significant implications for the current and next generation of UMassOnline student constituencies. That’s because the world today – and increasingly in the future – isn’t going to consist of the United States and then everybody else. In fact, this perception, although held by many, has never been true and has served us all poorly. A college education that denies this world view and minimizes international participation not only leaves students unqualified for a world class career but for meaningful world citizenship. This means that while convenience, cost, flexibility and other well-known factors may influence the learner’s decision in favor of online courses and programs from the University of Massachusetts, that student is also going to be part of the growing global movement in the world community that shares the mission of coupling the quality of an education with nothing less than the quality of life.

I look forward to this journey and am privileged to have the support of those of you who will be making it with me.

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