Starvard
Our Vision
That is the goal, stated plainly so you can hold us to it. Everything a great university knows, in one place: every book you can imagine, every course, every video, every article, free to everyone on Earth, in their own language, loading in a blink. This page describes what finished looks like, where we honestly stand ten days in, and how we compare with the giants we admire and intend to catch.
Written on October 25, 2026. Every number on this page was counted from the live site that day, and we will keep updating it as the numbers move.
The Vision
A finished Starvard is the only learning site a person needs. Not a video library with a logo on it, and not a course store with a paywall in it. One university, one library, one front door, with all of it inside and all of it free.
The full classic canon and far beyond it: novels, philosophy, science, history, poetry, practical manuals. Complete texts, free to read online or download, each opening with a plain English guide written by Finn, and many read aloud as audiobooks. Today the shelves hold 649 books. Finished looks like thousands.
From AI agents and piano to plumbing, calculus, canning and career changes. Short lessons in plain English, most courses twelve lessons long, each opening with the whole course in 60 seconds. Today there are 286 courses. Finished looks like a course for every subject a person could ask for.
Today we curate the best recorded teaching in the world in order: Yale, Harvard, Stanford and MIT lectures, plus Crash Course series and our own 16 short films. Finished adds filmed Starvard classes of our own for every major course, so you can read it, watch it, or hear it.
Stories, guides and essays that route curious people into courses and books. 48 stories are live today, on everything from deep work to building your first AI coworker. Finished looks like a magazine that never stops and always points somewhere useful.
Starvard Radio already carries a 42 minute narrated course in 8 chapters, books carry LibriVox audio where volunteers have recorded it, and listening counts as learning here. Finished looks like every course and every book playable as audio, for commutes, walks and slow connections.
10 free study tools today, from a GPA calculator to a Pomodoro timer, plus challenges like 99 Days of Piano and a Discord campus where students actually meet. Finished looks like a campus that happens to live on the internet: clubs, teachers, office hours and friends.
What Best Means
No tuition, no freemium tier, no certificate upsell, no paid AI tutor waiting behind a lesson. And since October 25, 2026 we run it the other way: new students get 60 bucks just for joining and saying hello. We call them Starvard Bucks, and the amount shows in your own currency wherever you live. A university that pays its students. See Future Ideas.
No account, no application, no popup, no modal asking for your email before lesson one. Click a course and you are reading it. Click a book and it opens. If a page ever puts a wall between you and learning, that page has failed our test.
Our pages are plain documents, not apps. The homepage is a 32 KB file with one small stylesheet, cached on servers all over the world. Our house standard is a page in under 0.75 seconds, with 0.5 as the stretch goal, because most of the world learns on cheap phones and slow networks.
Every course is written for a smart reader, not a specialist. Jargon gets explained the first time it appears. If a lesson needs a degree to understand it, we rewrite the lesson, because the point of a university is to hand knowledge down, not guard it.
The library already speaks 16 languages and courses speak 6, with more landing all the time. You land in your language automatically, a manual switch always wins, and we test the switchers by clicking them, because a translation that only covers half a page is not a translation.
This page is the proof of concept: real counts, real dates, real gaps, updated as we grow. When we get something wrong, and we do, there is a public place to tell us and we fix it in the open.
No Spin
Starvard opened its doors on October 15, 2026, with 115 courses and 102 books. This scoreboard was counted on October 25, 2026, ten days later. Small numbers, honestly labelled, growing fast.
The Gaps
A vision page that only brags is an ad. Here is what is actually missing today, in rough order of how much it matters.
Khan Academy has tens of thousands of interactive exercises with instant feedback, built over 18 years. We have quizzes on a handful of courses. Until lessons here come with real practice and real feedback, Khan stays the better place to drill maths and science, and we say so.
Starvard certificates are our own: five courses carry a quiz you can verify online, and that is all they claim to be. Nothing here is an accredited degree or transferable college credit today. Anyone who tells you otherwise about us is wrong, including us, so we will not.
The great lectures on our video pages were filmed by Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Crash Course, and we organise them in learning order. Our own filmed teaching is just starting: 16 short films and a radio course. A full Starvard film for every course is a goal, not a fact.
Courses here are drafted with serious AI help and checked, taught and fixed by a small human team around our founder, Dave. That is how a ten day old university has 286 courses at all. It also means errors happen. We would rather publish, get corrected in public and fix fast than wait years for perfection.
Our Discord campus opened on October 19, 2026 and counts its people in the hundreds. Khan counts its learners in the hundreds of millions. Community, alumni, study groups that run themselves: all of that is ahead of us, and it cannot be faked or rushed, only earned.
Some subjects here are already deep; advanced maths, lab sciences and exam drilling are still thin. And Starvard is funded by its founder out of pocket, with no venture money and no ads. That is a strength for honesty and a limit for scale. The plan to fix the money side without charging students lives on our Future Ideas page.
The Honest Breakdown
We admire everyone in this table. Khan Academy proved a free world class education could exist at all, MIT gave its classrooms away a quarter century ago, and Saylor has quietly offered free college courses since 2008. We are not here to pretend they are bad. We are here to beat them on the things students feel every day: speed, openness, and everything in one house.
| Starvard (Day 10) | Khan Academy | MIT OpenCourseWare | Saylor Academy | Coursera / edX style MOOCs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2026, ten days ago | 2008, 18 years ago | 2001, 25 years ago | Free courses since 2008 | 2012 era |
| Courses | 286 plain English courses, growing daily | Courses built from 10,000+ videos, strongest in school maths and science | 2,500+ real MIT courses, the deepest catalog here | About 100 full length college courses | Thousands, from real universities |
| Books included | 649 complete classic books in the same library, with guides and audio | No book library | Course readings, not a public library | Open textbooks inside some courses | No |
| Practice | Quizzes on 5 certificate courses. Our biggest gap, stated above | Tens of thousands of exercises. Best in the world at this | Problem sets and exams from real MIT classes, mostly files to download | An exam at the end of each course | Graded work, often behind the paywall |
| Price | $0 for everything, and new students get 60 bucks to start | Lessons free. The AI tutor, Khanmigo, costs $44 a year | Materials free | Courses free. Some credit bearing exams and partner degrees cost money | Free to look. Certificates and degrees cost money, degrees cost thousands |
| Account to start | None. Click and learn | Not required, but sign in prompts and accounts are pushed throughout | None | Needed for exams and certificates | Required |
| Popups and banners | None. No donation banners, no upsells, no modals, no autoplay | Donation banners and appeals are a regular part of the experience, on top of sign in prompts | Few. It is a quiet site | Few | Upsells to paid certificates, degrees and subscriptions |
| Speed and weight | Static documents: homepage HTML is 32 KB plus one small stylesheet, cached worldwide. Built for cheap phones | A large web application: lessons load inside heavy JavaScript, with accounts, progress tracking and an AI tutor attached | Homepage HTML alone measured about 893 KB when we checked on October 25, 2026. Powerful, and heavy | A course platform: pages wait on the platform and your account | Large platforms: video players, paywalls and tracking on every page |
| Languages | Library in 16, courses in 6 and climbing | About 50 | Mostly English | English | Many, varies by course |
| Certificates | 5 courses, free, verifiable online. Not accredited, and we say so | No public certificates | None | Free certificates, and college credit on some courses through partner schools. A real strength | Yes, paid |
| Budget | One founder, a small team, AI help, community builders | Tens of millions of dollars a year in donations | Part of MIT | One foundation | Large companies and university partners |
The Fight Ahead
Not by outspending them. By building in the open, at a pace they cannot match, on ground they have left empty. These are goals we are publishing so you can grade us, not promises with dates attached.
New courses and books land here every week, counted on this page. First targets: 1,000 courses and a library in the thousands, starting with the complete classic canon and the practical books people actually reach for.
The Khan gap closes lesson by lesson: questions, worked examples and feedback inside every course, until drilling here feels as good as reading here. Until then we will keep pointing students at Khan for drills, because students come first.
Radio first, then filmed classes: a Starvard teacher on screen for every major course, alongside the curated greats. The videos page is where it will show up.
The library already speaks 16 languages. Courses speak 6. The job is to close that gap completely, with native speakers paid to check translations through translation bounties.
Error bounties for catching our mistakes, paid tasks inside courses, teach and earn for students who master a subject. A university built by its students grows in the directions its students actually need. It has already started: see Future Ideas.
This page gets updated as the numbers move: courses, books, languages, gaps and all. If a gap closes, we will say so here. If one stalls, we will say that here too. Judge us in a year, by this page.
How You Can Help
Starvard is free for students because other people carry it: one founder paying the bills today, builders and teachers giving time, and readers who pass a course to a friend. If this place matters to you, here is how to carry a piece of it.
We are asking for $5. One time, no subscription, no tiers, no tote bag. Right now Dave funds Starvard out of his own pocket: the servers, the library, the courses, and the Starvard Bucks that pay new students to start. Five dollars at a time, from people who have learned something here, is how a free university stays free without charging the students who cannot pay. Every donated dollar goes to the same places his dollars go.
Donate $5Honest small print: payments run through Lemon Squeezy, our payment provider, and Dave sees every gift and what it funds. Starvard is a nonprofit project, not yet a registered charity, so gifts are not tax deductible. And you will never see this ask on a course or book page. It lives on this page, where it belongs.
There is real work here: writing, checking, designing, translating. Our Help Us page pays for help, starting with a $10 task, because a university built by its students grows toward its students. See the Help Us page.
Mastered something the hard way? Apply to teach it here. Good teachers are the scarcest resource a young university has. Apply to be a teacher.
Spot a mistake in a course or a book page and tell us. Corrections make the whole library better for everyone behind you, and paid error bounties are on the roadmap. Report an error.
The library speaks 16 languages and the courses speak 6. Native speakers who help close that gap put a university in front of millions who are waiting for it. Say hello in the Discord and we will find you a course.
Growth here is one share at a time. Send a friend the one course they need, or just send them the front door: starvard.org. A free university nobody hears about helps nobody.
Show up, learn in public, answer a newcomer, join a challenge. Community is the part of a university that cannot be downloaded, and ours is ten days old and forming now. Join the Discord.
Start Today
The best way to judge a vision is to use the thing. Pick a course, open a book, or join the campus and get your 60 bucks. Then come back and watch this scoreboard move.