Paying for college has gone from challenging to absurd for many. Unless you live in France, most of us have seen the price of tuition rise precipitously each year. While surfing the internet, I have found a few institutions that offer free courses. I haven’t taken them in too much detail, but the quality seems be pretty high. Here are a few I have noticed:
MIT OpenCourseWare – MIT has tons of courses available at no cost to the student, most of them based on the same curriculum at MIT. Obviously, MIT is known for the quality of their education so the name somewhat speaks for itself.
Carnegie Mellon University OLI – CMU, just like MIT is renowned for being a leader in research. Their “open” program is not as extensive as MIT, but still offers some quality courses in economics, physics and more.
ItunesU Itunes started ItunesU earlier this year, offering podcasted classes and lectures available for download. The institutions included range from Stanford and Berkely to UIS and Yale. ItunesU is a great resource if you love learning through lectures, as compared to the “open” formats which have a lot of content based material.
The main caveat – You can’t take 40 courses through MIT and expect a degree 4 years later, nor can you take 60 credits and expect for them to transfer over without any problems. I noticed that CMU does have a “for credit” option, but this must be agreed upon with the institution you are already attending, or with your prof. should you be a student at CMU already.
Either way, a cool resource for autodidacts. If you like learning stuff on your own, I definitely recommend these 3 places. Knowledge is power, right?
- Feel free to leave a comment or email me. Back with new stuff tomorrow.
