London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) and Facebook set up a JV that will allow Facebook users around the world to get free access to MBA course materials, RIA Novosti reports.

All one has to do is download LSBF Global MBA application on one’s computer to get acquainted with the lectures, take part in discussions, look into case studies, ‘meet’ the top managers of the world’s leading businesses, and enjoy student interaction. The application provides the users with approximately eight hundred hours worth of multimedia materials, Vedomosti says.

At least 500,000 people from around the globe are expected to join in the project in the course of one year.

The program has already received the University of Wales’s approval; the students will have to pay a fee to take the exams for the official MBA diploma in case they choose to try and get one at the end of the course. The program coordinators expect at least 1% of all the course participants to go all the way through the course and to aspire for a diploma.

‘People normally have to pay first and study and sit exams later, which actually means they are buying a pig in a poke and have to make their choice of a course on the basis of advertising and other people’s recommendations. They usually have a rather vague idea of what they will be taught. Now we give them an opportunity to take a full course and to decide later if they want to pay for a formal certificate,’ LSBF founder Aaron Etingen told RIA Novosti.

‘We are not trying to make an MBA degree less expensive. What we want is to make it more flexible, convenient, affordable, and innovational. We feel now is the time when people are ready to give online education a try,’ he added.