Bharat SainiLast Updated on March 23, 2018 by Bharat Saini
Education does not have to cost a bomb. If you have harboured the dream of studying at a world-famous university, the internet has now made it convenient. Thanks to the online outreach of Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, it is now possible to take up a course of your choice and pursue it from the convenience of wherever you are. The course topics cover a range of subjects and areas of interest.
The most common reasons why people pursue MOOCs are:
- They can be pursued as a subject of interest that you always wanted to study.
- To advance your career.
- To make a career switch.
- They are open to people of all ages and backgrounds.
- To earn college credit.
- These courses are offered by top universities free of cost.
We have compiled a list of top world universities that offer online courses for free. Students can opt for a free online course or go for a verified certificate at the end of the course for a small fee:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers free online courses called MITx. MIT is dedicated to advancing knowledge and educating students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that best serve the nation and the world. Through MITx, the Institute furthers its commitment to improving education worldwide. MITx courses embody the inventiveness, openness, rigor and quality that are hallmarks of MIT, and many use materials developed for MIT residential courses in the Institute’s five schools and 33 academic disciplines.
2. Harvard University
Harvard has always been a hallmark of excellence in education and research in the United States. Their principles aim to develop leaders across disciplines make a positive global impact. Harvard encourages education and research that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge and capacity. HarvardX are free online courses from Harvard University offering a host of options across science and arts, some of the trending Harvardx courses are Super-Earths & Life, Reading in Global Health, and First Nights: Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Program Music in the 19th Century to name a few.
3. University of Oxford
Oxford, an internationally renowned university with a centuries-old reputation for innovation and outstanding academic achievement is the oldest university in the English-speaking world that has been at the forefront of understanding the world and shaping it for centuries. OxfordX are free online courses from University of Oxford that offer, a unique assortment of courses with materials taken from the residential courses taught at Oxford.
4. University of California, Berkeley
UC BerkeleyX are online courses from University of California. The Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE), a resource hub and an operational catalyst for all internal campus-wide and external resources to advise, coordinate, and facilitate the University’s online education initiatives, ranging from credit and non-credit courses, to online degree programs and MOOC projects, including the MOOCLab initiative, was formed in September 2012 to actively support Berkeley’s commitment towards learning and education. BRCOE’s new MOOCLab is a three-year research initiative to fund and develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as vehicles for pedagogical research in online education. Their course database has a wide range of credited and non-credited STEM, literature, and arts courses that you can pursue under the umbrella of what is popularly known as the ‘City of Learning’.
5. Imperial College London
ImperialX are free online courses from Imperial College London. A science-based university with an international reputation for excellence in learning and research, Imperial College, a community of problem-solvers dedicated to finding innovative solutions to the world’s biggest challenges furthers its commitment to improving education worldwide through its learning and teaching strategy. Imperial is a multidisciplinary space for education, research, translation and commercialisation, harnessing science and innovation to tackle global challenges.
Apart from these top world universities, you can also opt for courses from the Australian National University, Boston University, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Caltech, Dartmouth, IIT Bombay, Princeton University, Peking University, and the University of Pennsylvania among many others.
Where Can I Avail These Courses?
As a very noble effort to advance the cause and outreach of education to the masses, all these universities have come together to form an organization called EdX. You can log on to www.edx.org to avail these courses for free, or pay a small fee to obtain a verified certificate upon successful completion of your course.
It is the age of innovative learning, and online education has just opened the door to a million opportunities for you!
