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Before Coursera, before Khan Academy, before anyone thought it was a good idea to put the words “coding” and “bootcamp” into the same sentence, there was ArsDigita University.
Twenty-five years ago in July, ArsDigita University, or ADUni as it was informally known, graduated its first class of 27 students. ADUni was the first of its kind: a new, groundbreaking program to teach computer science in a collaborative, startup environment. With its innovative schedule and selection of courses taught by Harvard and MIT professionals, the program seemed destined to forge into new territory in online education and learning.
Unfortunately, due in part to the dot-com bust, ADUni would only graduate one class, and then close forever.
ADUni came about in the spring of 2000 when then-startupper Philip Greenspun posted on his personal site “me and my friends are starting a new university” and started accepting applications from every corner of the world.
Greenspun had built his credibility in the web-1.0 world by founding ArsDigita Corporation. ArsDigita built web applications based on open-source code and collaboration, and had attracted a lot of press by doing some unconventional things, like buy a Ferrari and park it in the front of the office. It was in this same vein of openness and un-convention ADUni was founded, providing the basic coursework for a computer science degree in ten months’ time, with each course taking a month to complete. The courses were to be taught by some of the best educators, in the shadow of MIT itself. In the site’s own words, “Our goal is to offer the world’s best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who are currently unable to obtain it.”
As a part of this pledge, all the lectures would be provided online and a community on the Internet could take part as well. Free online education in the year 2000 was in its infancy; consider that MIT’s OpenCourseWare would only be announced in April of 2001, and Harvard would offer its edX initiative starting in 2012.
Before the first applications arrived, Greenspun had already recruited ADUni’s teaching staff, starting with Shai Simonson. Shai was a professor of computer science at Stonehill College, when he was approached by Philip Greenspun to be the director of ADUni. Before ADUni, his research interests were in algorithms and theory of computation, and he taught at Tel Aviv University, University of Illinois, and local high schools and middle schools in Chicago and the Boston area, winning a number of teaching awards.
SIMONSON: Philip approached me, looking for someone known for exceptional teaching to direct his groundbreaking concept. A mutual friend at MIT recommended me. I was impressed with the overall concept, and hired the best people I could find to teach and assist teachers.
One of the TAs that Simonson recruited was Michael Allen. Mike graduated from MIT shortly before joining ADUni as the Chief TA.
ALLEN: A friend who knew I was looking for a job forwarded the listing for the professor (Shai’s) position. I was obviously not qualified, but I responded anyway and pitched that they would need a Chief TA to assist and handle more mundane tasks (grading… so much grading.) At the time, I was trying to have a career as an (outside-the-box) educator, and I was bouncing around trying to find where I would fit in. I was already in Cambridge, since I had recently graduated from MIT. At the time, I was between jobs and trying to get something in place before getting stuck in a lease for an apartment there.
Once ADUni started to recruit, a number of students started to take notice and apply. This was probably the first time that a university advertised through websites like Slashdot.
The admissions process was extremely competitive, with only 10% of the online applicants making it to the interview stage. The interviews were much like an interview to work at a startup, with puzzle questions and problems designed to elicit whether a candidate had problem-solving skills or not. The admitted class was an extraordinary group of people who had varying and diverse backgrounds: artists, developers, physicians, lawyers, hackers, and scientists.
Sharon Stern (applied to the program from Oregon): I read about it on Slashdot and immediately knew it was for me. A geologist friend had talked about wanting to take time off to “bolster my theoretical underpinnings” and that’s exactly what ADUni sounded like to me. As a largely self-taught developer I didn’t understand what made one approach to coding more efficient or effective than another. And I really wanted the time to learn that. I was living in a small town, which was lovely but made me feel stagnant. ADUni’s promise of intellectual rigor was energizing.
Seth Plough (applied from Haslett, MI): I read about it on Slashdot maybe. I was looking for a CS program, and it sounded amazing. Staff from MIT, free, what more could one ask for? I was very excited.
Shyam Visveswaran (applied from Cambridge, MA while completing his residency): I heard about ArsDigita in March 2000. I was in the final year of my neurology residency at Boston Medical Center and had become interested in the use of computers in clinical care, as an electronic medical record system was being rolled out there. I needed to get a basic education in computer science before entering the field of medical informatics. I came across ArsDigita and, if I remember correctly, simply sent an email describing my interest and background.
Doug Anderson (applied from Washington state): It started with an NPR “driveway moment.” I arrived at my graduate student office but stayed in the car to hear the end of an interview with Philip Greenspun. What stuck with me was his vision that technology could have a much broader impact on society when applied beyond traditional computer science fields. At the time, I was finishing a master’s degree in geochemistry and considering what came next. When I later learned about ArsDigita University, the mission resonated immediately.
Kevin McCulloch (applied from San Francisco): I graduated with a liberal arts degree from Haverford College in 1994 and moved to San Francisco, where I worked for nonprofits before becoming an “accidental techie” — e.g., the staff member assigned to technical tasks because I was young and could figure things out. A friend of mine in San Francisco saw Philip’s announcement about ADU on Slashdot and forwarded it to me. It clearly seemed like a good deal — a chance, as a liberal arts major, to fill in the computer science fundamentals I’d never been exposed to. I applied on a whim, never expecting to hear anything, and was surprised to find myself invited to participate.
Once ADUni had admitted its first class of students, the courses began in earnest, starting with Mathematics for Computer Science. Each lecture was captured on video and shared to a wider audience who had signed up on the university’s website.
SIMONSON: I felt confident about the courses I taught: Discrete Math, Algorithms, and Theory of Computation; they were my areas of expertise. I loved my teaching assistants: Tara, Dimitri, Mike, Rif, Mark Dettinger, and Rusty, who were instrumental in making these courses successful. I was also very happy with the Lisp, OOP (Java), AI, and the Architecture courses. The Software Engineering, Systems and Database courses were also good, although not quite at the same level. All the instructors and TAs I hired were exceptional teachers, highly motivated, and worked like they were at a startup. The success of the program was due to them.
ALLEN: It was all a blur for me. I was always preparing for the next course while trying to keep up with the current one.
STERN: The classrooms were sublet from a hacker collective turned legit cybersecurity firm I was pretty sure had been lightly fictionalized in the Neal Stephenson novel I had just read. ADUni itself was full of smart weirdos, so it felt like I was in the right place from the get go.
PLOUGH: ADUni itself was a great space, full of character, in a great location. But the people were amazing. I knew right away this was going to be special. Every day was something new and interesting. Really high quality instruction that held your attention, interesting homework, plenty of interesting diversions when you had the time.
ANDERSON: My first impression of ADUni itself was that it felt more like joining a startup than enrolling in a university. The environment had been thoughtfully designed, from the Aeron chairs and stocked kitchen to the unusual choice of using plants instead of full cubicle walls. The physical space reflected a philosophy that we were there to learn from one another, not simply sit in isolation and complete assignments. There was an expectation that we would collaborate, help each other, and grow together. Looking back, what stands out most is the combination of ambition and community. The workload was intense, but there was also a strong sense that we were all part of the same experiment and wanted each other to succeed.
Heather Van Aelst (applied after completing her bachelor’s degree at Oberlin): I don’t really remember which courses I didn’t and didn’t like. I know some instructors were better than others. Any course Shai taught was great and I know some of the others were fantastic too, but like anything, others were less so. I do remember really enjoying a lot of the day to day — we worked hard, but we also had fun. I know we made up some sort of frisbee game on a nearby tennis court we’d play at lunch when we didn’t have time (or in frozen ground) for full ultimate games. We had movie nights, we went out many, many Fridays. Those are the things I remember more than specific lectures or assignments, but I know there were plenty of those too.
Andy Hall (applied from Boston, MA): It was energizing to be sharing a space with smart and interesting people. I actually most enjoyed some of the introductory courses like Calculus, Discrete Math, and SICP that gave me a stronger foundation in software development. Object Oriented programming and AI were tough to digest at the time.
Donna Leclerc (applied from Wellesley, MA): It was pretty intense, like a full-time 9–5 job, with tests on Sundays! I recall liking all the courses, but also remember being frustrated by whichever course taught NP-complete concepts and taking a test that, because of poor semantics, included an open problem that had never been solved before. This made me realize that my liberal arts education had real value when combined with engineering. If you can’t clearly state the problem to be solved, or write the specs for a product correctly, the engineers can’t solve the problem or build the product. I think I most enjoyed writing our own mini-AI chatbot and was given recognition for my “AI therapist” bot that I wrote for one of the assignments.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last.
In mid-March of 2001, the ArsDigita Foundation, ADUni’s main organizer, was shuttered without much explanation. The announcement was also made that there would be no second class for the ADUni program.
SIMONSON: Ugh… This was stressful, as I had to keep it altogether until the year was over, and make sure everyone got what we promised. We lost Barbara Link, [Executive Director of the ArsDigita Foundation], and Philip was angry and frustrated with the VC’s. I owed it to Philip to maintain quality and minimize distractions.
STERN: I can’t recall how much the conflict affected me directly; I was pretty focused on surviving the problem set of the moment.
HALL: The only real impact of what was happening with the business was recognizing that we would probably be the first and last class of ArsDigita University and without a sustained program it would be hard to explain to future employers what the heck it actually was.
MCCULLOCH: We were all worried that the school would be shut down before the year was out, but that didn’t happen, so it didn’t bother me too much. I was sad that ADU didn’t continue after our one year, but not surprised.
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In true open-source fashion, Philip turned to the Internet and explained from his point of view what was going on. In a page entitled “From Start-up to Bust-up” he described the events in March and April 2001, leading up to a lawsuit filed by the CEO and VCs against him and his fellow co-founders. Most of this occurred while Philip was trying to teach the April course, Software Development for the Web.
Philip’s gamble to appeal to the court of public opinion paid off, because in June a settlement was reached and that page was replaced with the following text:
ArsDigita Corporation and Philip Greenspun have amicably settled all of their disputes to the mutual best interests of the parties involved. As a result of the settlement, Greenspun has resigned from ArsDigita’s Board of Directors and will exercise no ongoing management or stockholder control. The Company and Greenspun have entered into a confidentiality agreement with respect to the terms of the settlement.
On July 16, 2001, ADUni graduated its only class of 27 students. It then disbanded, only kept alive by its site, aduni.org, which eventually closed down. Only through aggressive searching today can one find the lectures for many of its courses on YouTube, or its problem sets on Github.
That next February, ArsDigita Corporation would be sold to Red Hat Linux.
Even with ADUni and ArsDigita gone, its students and faculty remain, and many recall it as a life-changing experience. An additional unexpected legacy of ADUni were its course videos, still viewed on YouTube 25 years later. Even in 2026, Shai Simonson still receives notes of thanks for his lectures at ADUni:
Hello Dr. Simonson
I wanted to reach out and thank you for the amazing lectures you recorded on Theory of Computation. I stumbled across them on YouTube while preparing for my exams, and they’ve been some of the best and most well-explained videos I’ve seen on the topic. I’m really grateful for the effort you took in recording them and making them available!
Akshay [redacted]
SIMONSON: ADUni was a highlight of my academic life and an opportunity to do something pedagogically unprecedented in computer science with long-lasting effects. I am proud of it, and pleased that the website it spawned was the very first (free) online education platform in computer science. I loved every minute of it. The students were great and made every day a joy. The admin and teaching staff were wonderful. I was strongly motivated and committed to making everyone’s efforts worthwhile, and fulfill Philip’s vision, which I admired deeply.
ALLEN: Having to scramble every day to present as a (sort-of) expert on a huge range of topics that I had fought through myself just a short time earlier at MIT was like a 2nd chance bootcamp for me to really master all that material. I’ve never learned so much in so short a time. I miss those days, but I don’t think I could survive it again.
Greg Ohler (applied from Boston, MA): Although I don’t write code anymore, I do value the ADUni education. I’m able to understand issues involving computer science much more clearly than I would otherwise and there is real value in learning to think like an engineer.
Jeffrey Radcliffe (applied from Eugene, OR): My life can neatly fit into “before ADUni” and “after ADUni.” The domain training was transformative, setting me up for not just employment but further learning. ArsDigita shaped my outlook on education and learning. It was a period of extreme learning, hard work, and fun, an earlier time in technology’s march.
VISWESWARAN: I am grateful to ADUni for providing a superb undergraduate-level education in computer science in just one year. The combination of exceptional teaching, a rigorous curriculum, and a cohort of intellectually curious people from remarkably diverse backgrounds made for a singular experience. ADUni arrived at exactly the right moment in my life and gave me the foundation to pursue a career I could not have otherwise imagined. Patrick Winston’s Artificial Intelligence course was a highlight: his teaching was masterful, and I was hooked on AI after that.
STERN: ADUni gave me the space to refocus my trajectory. The technical and systems thinking skills I learned there gave me a solid base when I continued on in a more traditional CS program. The Systems class was especially useful for helping me understand technology as encompassing so much more than hard engineering skills. I loved the camaraderie we shared, and the challenge of the curriculum. I’m so grateful and lucky to have experienced ADUni.
HALL: Spending an intense year around such smart and interesting people shaped a lot of my interests outside work and have had a lasting impact on my taste in music/books/movies and general worldview. Shai Simonson is an incredible math teacher and really held things together for us students throughout the program — the experience wouldn’t have been the same without him.
MCCULLOCH: It was a once-in-a-lifetime, only-during-a-dot-com-bubble kind of thing. An incredible stroke of luck, honestly. It was sort of a grand, absurd idea on Phillip’s part, and even from the get-go I was sure it couldn’t last, but for those of us who did it, it was amazing.
PLOUGH: ADUni gave me an incredible academic foundation. But it also gave me confidence that, with enough work, I could hang with anyone. Shortly after it ended, I took a job as a computer programmer (and then another, and another, until today). It put me on a professional trajectory I would never have been able to achieve otherwise.
LECLERC: ADUni provided me with a foundational knowledge of computer science concepts that helped me graduate from Bentley with High Distinction, sailing through my MSIT program with ease. Without ADUni I may never have transitioned to working in software and technology. It also taught me that I don’t like writing code all day, every day, but instead I enjoy being able to work with engineers who do, and I think they appreciate that I can speak their language of algorithms and data concepts when discussing projects. I don’t live too far from the basement office space we occupied, and I have watched the neighborhood change and grow over the years, but I will never forget that year in the basement.
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The author would like to thank Shai Simonson for his feedback, support and advice for this article, and the alumni of ADUni who agreed to interviews.
The author would also like to thank Chao Xu for converting many of the ADUni lectures from RealMedia files to YouTube. Many of the individual lectures and courses can now be found here: