Saylor University
Non-profit initiative offering free and open online education
The Saylor University, formerly known as the Saylor Foundation and Saylor Academy, is a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. It was established in 1999 by its sole trustee, Michael J. Saylor. Since 2008, the focus of the foundation has been its Free Education Initiative which has led to the creation of 241 courses representing 10 of the highest enrollment majors in the US.
The Saylor Academy assembles courses from openly available texts and resources. The foundation also funds the creation of new materials when needed, which are then openly licensed for use by other organizations and individuals. In March 2018 Edovo partnered with Saylor Academy.
Courses
On its website, the foundation offers 317 free, college-level courses, which are selected as typical courses in high enrollment majors at traditional U.S. colleges. Content is accessible without needing to register or log into the website; however an account is required to gain access to final exams and a free certificate of completion.
The foundation works with consultants to design the courses, typically university and college faculty members or subject experts. The consultants develop a blueprint for the course, then research open educational resources (OER) to supply the course with lectures, texts, and other resources. If suitable texts and documents are not found, the foundation works with faculty to compile new materials which it releases to the OER community under a Creative Commons license. Each course is accompanied by an assessment.
The public source identifies “Saylor University” as non-profit initiative offering free and open online education. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Saylor, University and Non-profit.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Saylor University”, the useful work is to connect “non-profit initiative offering free and open online education” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7762372. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2008 and 2018.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Saylor University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.