You can learn many things from TikTok, like how to make a dense bean salad or how to tell if you have “good facial harmony.” Now, you can also enroll in college-level courses with TikTok as your classroom. Welcome to HillmanTok University.
With Donald Trump busy rolling back DEI initiatives across higher education, dozens of creators are taking matters into their own hands and posting video courses to form a free educational community, with lessons varying from herbalism to gardening to history.
Only a week old, HillmanTok is a growing movement with over 400 courses already on offer, all accessible for free. Named after the fictional university from late 1980s to early 1990s sitcom A Different World, the collection of courses are meant to provide an educational experience akin to attending a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities).
The idea for HillmanTok came to Cierra Hinton, a sixth grade teacher in Georgia, when she stumbled across a TikTok video by Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The video was solely intended for the 35 students enrolled in her Intro to African American Studies class. However, it quickly went viral, gaining an audience of over 4.3 million. “Not me scrolling into a lecture hall,” one user commented. “We have homework due tomorrow!?! Lawd let me catch up and read my syllabus,” another added.
Inspired by Barlow, other Black professors and educators began sharing their own educational materials on TikTok and Hinton had the idea to pull all of these course offerings under the umbrella “HillmanTok.” If Barlow’s class doesn’t strike your interest, how about a class in Black economics? Or organic chemistry? Lectures on any of these subjects are delivered in TikTok-length bursts, and in longer sessions over TikTok Live, with an audience of about 16,000 registered users on the HillmanTok official website.
As well as courses, the website features a school store that sells T-shirts and issues student IDs. The school song, as voted for by participants, is Kendrick Lamar’s “tv off” and their mascot, a black panther. School colors are yellow and maroon in a nod to the original Hillman’s University of A Different World.
Due to the unwieldy nature of TikTok, it’s been difficult for Hinton to regulate, with some bad faith actors using the HillmanTok hashtag as a way to monetize their own content and sell merchandise and ebooks. Late last month, the original page to Hillman was hacked and there were outside attempts to have the name trademarked.
Despite these bumps in the road, the mission for HillmanTok University remains the same: to provide free education for anyone who wants it.
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