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190 Universities Launch 600 Free Online Courses

Posted by BeauHD on from the knowledge-is-power dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you haven't heard, universities around the world are offering their courses online for free (or at least partially free). These courses are collectively called MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses. In the past six years or so, over 800 universities have created more than 10,000 of these MOOCs. And I've been keeping track of these MOOCs the entire time over at Class Central, ever since they rose to prominence.

In the past four months alone, 190 universities have announced 600 such free online courses. I've compiled a list of them and categorized them according to the following subjects: Computer Science, Mathematics, Programming, Data Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education & Teaching, Health & Medicine, Business, Personal Development, Engineering, Art & Design, and finally Science. The full list is available in the report. If you need help signing up, there's a report for that too.

29 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Republicans are against this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Education must not be free, it must result in debts so that students can be controlled and funneled into class warfare to promote more Republican nazism.

    1. Re: Republicans are against this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Education debt is a hallmark of democrat solutions.

    2. Re:Republicans are against this by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Education must not be free,

      Education is free. You can learn anything online.

      You pay for the diploma.

    3. Re:Republicans are against this by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Trump Derangement Syndrome, modded up to +5 on Slashdot. So disgraceful.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    4. Re:Republicans are against this by Can'tNot · · Score: 1

      What has led you to believe that Republicans are against this?

    5. Re:Republicans are against this by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

      Education is free. You can learn anything online.

      You pay for the diploma.

      Actually that's a problem when people learn "anything" online. People tend to go overboard on this idea, and thus believe everything whatever the online said whether or not it is true. I just hope that more people know how to verify information and understand it instead of take everything as a fact or truth due to bias and belief.

    6. Re:Republicans are against this by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      Education is free. You can learn anything online.

      You pay for the diploma.

      This. No one goes to university and spends a small fortune to *learn*. You can already learn for free. You pay the university for a piece of paper that will get you past the HR screeners.
       

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  2. Never any mod points when I want them :-( by clay_buster · · Score: 2

    How about commenting on the utility effectiveness of the classes instead?

  3. Free ad for university by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Look at the quality lecture hall.
    Enjoy our most fun, charming and photogenic academics.
    Take out a loan and enrol.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  4. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What is the value of the certificate they provide at the end? Does it hold any weight?

    1. Re:But... by fredrated · · Score: 2

      3 grams?

  5. not just Universities, here is an example by Chalex · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are also many non-university courses available online.

    One example is this excellent free introductory data science course which can be done entirely in your browser. "Chromebook Data Science": https://leanpub.com/universities/set/jhu/chromebook-data-science

  6. pay their own way at 25-40K+ year to get piece of by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    pay their own way at 25-40K+ year to get piece of paper.

    vocational schools have to be 2-4 year with the piece of paper to get past HR.

  7. A deep thanks for MOOCs by voicofsf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm enormously thankful for the expansion of the MOOCs. I've completed 12 to date this year and am currently enrolled in 7. I've already tagged interest in 6 more. I'm auditing only and all have been free of cost. They are generally extremely polished and equal to in-room courses currently taught in universities. Princeton, Harvard, Penn Law, Illinois Law, U Cal Davis Law have all contributed to extending my knowledge. Professors I've only read about have taken their time to teach online. If these had been available before I started college I could have made better choices in my curriculum. When Professor Charles Fried or Professor Erwin Chemerinsky sign up for these classes, I'm greatly appreciative. Hats off and a deep bow.

    1. Re:A deep thanks for MOOCs by bangular · · Score: 1

      I do a few each year as well and have found them to be very helpful.

      That being said, the quality varies considerably. Coursera has constant issues with auto graders and the programming assignments often consist of inserting a few lines of code into a 200 line program. I've taken courses where the assignments have almost nothing to do with the lecture. Most new courses I've taken have mostly abandoned peer review because it has its own laundry list of issues.

  8. Business model? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Despite popular beliefs, MOOC are not free to run. The University must appoint teachers to support them. Indeed less teachers per student are required than on a regular course, but it is still a cost. How is it funded here?

    1. Re:Business model? by eclectro · · Score: 1

      It's funded because they know the game is up. The days of unconditional loans for kids to rack up untold tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt will draw to a close one way or another. Because in all truth it probably is less sustainable than fossil fuels even. They will be forced to change their models or go out of business. Just on the fact that many prospective students will increasingly just give up on college all together without even trying because of the worrisome debt problem it will incur.

      It will be just like immigration, where it was completely ignored for decades until that one candidate makes it a cornerstone of their campaign (I know Bernie did but Hillary sure seemed to forgot about it fast) and they will make a compelling argument for their election to office.

      It is an attempt to justify and keep their dying brick and mortar business (because let's face it that's exactly what it is) with countless layers of costly middle management and extravagant sports programs alive somehow by offering a loss-leader to prospective future wannabe graduates.

      If it was an attempt at real reform, the courses would actually count for credit towards a bonafide accredited degree and not "just for fun." Like all things, there's probably a couple exceptions to this last statement, but they will be few and far, far in-between. If any at all.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  9. Re:English Only? by Bobrick · · Score: 1

    Might want to go over the full list again, I remember seeing at least French.

  10. Re:English Only? by Bobrick · · Score: 1

    Actually, looking on the main repository at Class Central, there's something for everyone. This is just a recent sample.

  11. This could be a good thing by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some 3 years ago I decided to learn Java, after being an embedded guy for 30 years or so. I learn best by being given problems to solve (I was a math major, learned C/C++ on my own, long story deleted). I could not find a single book, nor course, that would help me. Lots of disjointed tutorials on how to do this, or that. But absolutely nothing to take me from installing java/javac, to learning the libraries (yeah, libraries. They're all C++ like, you'll learn the syntax in a day, but it's the libraries and philosophy of the language that counts.)

    Seems we could put off gassing up an F-35 to fail the latest test to pay for a free course on how to learn Java. Hell, for the price of gassing up an F-35, then paying to maintain that aircraft after a 1 hour flight, they could come up with free courses on 3-4 languages, plus another for OO design.

    Why do I still have to add markup paragraph breaks between paragraphs? I remember when it was normal, but now the "leading" tech site, /., is the only one that requires them. Stuck on stupid.

    1. Re:This could be a good thing by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      If you already know one programming language, why do you need a course or a book to learn another? Just take any program you would have done in C++ and try doing it in Java if you need a problem to solve. Or just pick something that might be interesting to build as a toy project, like a proxy server. You'll probably learn best by doing something and running into problems. Then you can start asking specific questions that are well covered by the disjointed tutorials.

      Almost any book or course on Java is going to be targeted at novices who have little or no programming experience. If you've got multiple decades of experience, these resources are not for you. I'm not even sure if there are any books or courses that would be targeted at someone like you, simply because there aren't a lot of people like you to consume such a resource or who would be interested in paying for it.

    2. Re:This could be a good thing by Snotnose · · Score: 2

      I spent a year writing C programs in Java, that's why.

    3. Re:This could be a good thing by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      I spent a year writing C programs in Java, that's why.

      I've been doing that for 20 years. I always start with a singleton called "main".

  12. Re: The effectiveness of your education is in ques by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Why don't you try not paying your taxes and see who boots in your door and points a gun at you?

    The IRS may garnish your wages and put a lien on your house, but they rarely kick down doors.

  13. Re:It's time to stop funding universities by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People who are worthy of pursuing intellectual self-improvement can and will gladly pay their own way.

    Public universities are not funded for the benefit of the students. They are funded for the broad benefit of the public. A thriving research university can bring enormous benefits to a region.

    If you think education is too expensive, you should do a cost-benefit analysis on ignorance.

  14. Re:It's time to stop funding universities by epine · · Score: 1

    If you think education is too expensive, you should do a cost-benefit analysis on ignorance.

    Wait until you see what hides under the rug way down the pecking order as "expressed preference".

    Whoever first said "ignorance is bliss" was a gifted census taker.
     

  15. Class Central is useful by TJHook3r · · Score: 2

    Keeping track of thousands of MOOCs is tricky, and even trickier is finding the good ones. There are some half-assed courses on Udemy for example that are significantly worse than equivalent (but unstructured) offerings on YouTube.

  16. This is Spam by sqorbit · · Score: 1

    Here's almost an indentical article, from the same site, dated Nov 8 2017. Numbers are different. https://qz.com/1120344/200-uni...

    --
    Sent from my TARDIS
  17. Re:It's time to stop funding universities by rea1l1 · · Score: 1

    College level hard-science education should be fully supported by any high-tech based society as having an electorate that understands the problems and potential solutions is fundamental to any democratically-elected society.

    If we as a society are to remain a free society, everyone should have a decent understanding of the fundamentals of 1) how computers work 2) how chemistry works 3) how biology works 4) how logic 5) how theoretical and applied maths work.

    We are a species with a long vegetative state. The common human brain has been shown to continue cognitive-control development late into the twenties. This is what we as a society should cite for true adulthood, and should encourage educational maturation of the individual up to this point, if we are to maintain our principles of freedom, liberty and independence as a society.

    This is expensive, but we as a society can and must afford it if we are to maintain competency into the future.

    Of course, early level education is failing/underfunded in many parts of the country today, which is the foundation that latter education is built upon.