Kepler has yet to graduate its first class, so it’s too early to tell whether the education will give way to steady employment. By most accounts, though, the school has made enormous strides in its first two years. Forty-nine of fifty students in the first class are on track to earn their Associate of Arts degree this June; the one exception is a female student whose graduation has been delayed by pregnancy. Kepler has engaged an independent data analysis firm to track student progress, so the model can be nimble as per student needs.

That said, no one at Kepler is under the illusion that they’ve perfected the system yet. “We’re building this airplane as we’re flying,” said Hedrick.

English proficiency has been a constant hurdle. This is due, at least in part, to the government switching the official language of instruction from French to English in 2008, which left many in the country in linguistic limbo. The hope is incoming students’ level of English will eventually improve. The Kepler staff estimates they currently spend as much as a quarter of their time addressing language issues.

A bigger question is how effective course facilitators can be without subject-area expertise. “I did not study economics,” said lead facilitator Aurore Umutesi, “but I’ve taught macroeconomics and microeconomics.” Using generalized instructors, who act more as guides than as teachers, saves money. But students like Sereverien Ngarukiye can find it frustrating. “[It’s a] challenge when they’re also not able like to explain the full content.”

It’s unclear what qualifies Kepler’s facilitators in the first place. Command of English and familiarity with Rwanda (almost all the facilitators are Rwandan) are paramount, said Russell, but after that, it gets murkier.

“We don’t look for skills that teachers come in with, as much as a willingness to be innovative,” she said. Kepler tries to round out the staff with a range of backgrounds. The school has even started experimenting with using students as teaching assistants, precursors to the course facilitators. “We’re confident that Kepler [students] will be our biggest pool of talent for hiring once they graduate.”

Although finding quality teachers at a low cost is a perpetual challenge for blended models like Kepler’s, Dr. Mark Brown, who directs the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University, cautions against underestimating the importance of educators. “It’s not always a particularly popular view in today’s age,” he said, but especially at advanced levels, “education does require knowledge.”

Beyond retaining skilled teachers, his broader criticism of blended learning is actually that it isn’t transformative enough. He contends technology is being used to merely “tinker toward utopia” rather than fundamentally change how students learn. MOOCs, for example, still largely come in a lecture format from predominantly Western sources, which, Browns says, risks “dump[ing] a Western curriculum on parts of the world that probably, desperately, don’t need that.” However, if Kepler is indeed providing young Rwandans greater access to education and employment, he sees their approach as a creative step toward meeting local needs.