Free College Courses At Elite Universities

Education:

  • Gotta have it
  • Too expensive to buy

What to do?

Why, take the courses for free of course:

Durham, N.C. —

Duke University is joining what has been labeled the revolution in education – online and free of charge.

Duke, Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology have joined Stanford and Princeton universities in offering courses through startup Coursera Inc.

A total of 16 schools are now partners with Coursera, the Mountain View, California-based company said Monday in a statement.

Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania are partnering to an even greater degree, investing a combined $3.7 million in the company.

Coursera, founded last year by two Stanford computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, offers university classes online, with the aim of educating millions of people globally for free. The company, which raised $16 million earlier this year from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, will receive an additional combined $2.3 million from the venture capital firms, both of which are based in Menlo Park, California.

Duke, CalTech, Stanford, Princeton.  For free.

If you aren’t taking these courses…if you aren’t advocating the attendance of these course among our kids…I’m not saying that you don’t value education, I just think you’re valuing fair access to success and not fair access to opportunity.

2 responses to “Free College Courses At Elite Universities

  1. Well, they don’t get college credit so it’s nice to learn stuff, but if places require a college diploma (or if one is competing against someone with a diploma), it may not help. Also, having taught on line courses, I think they are most effective for students who already knows what college is about and doesn’t need the kind of attention many new students require. That said, big universities with intro lecture classes of 200 or 300 also tend not to offer enough of that kind of help.

    • Well, they don’t get college credit so it’s nice to learn stuff, but if places require a college diploma (or if one is competing against someone with a diploma), it may not help.

      There are some places that require a degree, any degree, for a job. In those circumstances, this wouldn’t help. However, certainly not all jobs are so stringent.

      Further, many of the degrees that kids actually pay for these days aren’t helping them get a job. As we continue to advance in technology, we need more of the hard sciences. We have less and less need for the East Asian Literature majors.

      Also, having taught on line courses, I think they are most effective for students who already knows what college is about and doesn’t need the kind of attention many new students require.

      Perhaps college ain’t for those kids then.

      That said, big universities with intro lecture classes of 200 or 300 also tend not to offer enough of that kind of help.

      My very first college course, Calc 1001, had more kids in it than I graduated high school with. My intro to Psych course was taught in an auditorium and held more kids than were in my entire school system, k-12, back home. Heck, it was almost half the size of my home town.

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