Giving Compass' Take:

• MissionU offered a one-year alternative college to students with a unique tuition payment plan. However, after WeWork acquired MissionU, the founder became the new CEO of WeGrow-- WeWork's alternative k-12 school. 

• How will the affect the current students enrolled at MissionU? Will this acquisition be more harmful or beneficial for MissionU?

• Learn more about WeGrow and how exactly WeWork came up with this idea and the idea to acquire MissionU. 

Traditional colleges don’t open, or close, very often. But in the world of experimental higher education, new entities can pop up quickly, and can shut down with little fanfare.

That seems to be the story of MissionU, which was billed as a one-year alternative to a traditional college when it opened just last year. It was even featured on The Today Show and on CNN as a promising alternative to the four-year higher-ed model at a time of rising student debt. But this week the experimental institution announced that it would cease its one-year program and only continue serving existing students until later this year.

MissionU students did not have to pay upfront for the program, but instead agreed to hand over up to 15 percent of their incomes for three years once they land a job that pays $50,000 or more.

MissionU has been acquired by WeWork, the company that runs coworking spaces in 22 countries, and which recently announced that it would start a network of K-12 schools called WeGrow.

The founder and CEO of MissionU, Adam Braun, will become the chief operating officer of WeGrow “While we'll continue to serve our current students through later this year, we will not be adding new students to our one-year program and instead will focus on driving impact through WeGrow and the broader WeWork community at large,” said Braun in the statement.

Critics of MissionU argued that the one-year program should not claim to serve as a replacement for a four-year college experience, and worried that its students may not get the broad-based education needed to prepare for life and work beyond their first job.

Read the full article about MissionU by Jeffrey R. Young at EdSurge