A Master List of 1,500 Free Courses From Top Universities
For the past 14 years, Open Culture has been busy rummaging around the internet and adding courses to an ever-growing list of Free Online Courses, which now features 1,500 courses from top universities.
Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you download audio & video lectures from schools like Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Harvard and many other institutions. Generally, the courses can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or university web sites, and you can listen to the lectures anytime, anywhere, on your computer or smart phone.
We haven’t done a precise calculation, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lectures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s useful during these socially distant times.
Right now you’ll find 200 free philosophy courses, 105 free history courses, 170 free computer science courses, 85 free physics courses and 55 Free Literature Courses in the collection, and that’s just beginning to scratch the surface.
You can peruse sections covering Astronomy, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Math, Political Science, Psychology and Religion.
Here are some highlights from the complete list of Free Online Courses. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage courses in the mix just to keep things interesting.
- A History of Philosophy in 81 Video Lectures: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times – Free Online Video – Arthur Holmes, Wheaton College
- A Romp Through Ethics for Complete Beginners – Various Formats – Marianne Talbot, Oxford University
- Ancient Greek History – Various Formats – Donald Kagan, Yale
- Creative Reading and Writing by William S. Burroughs – Free Online Audio – Naropa University
- Critical Reasoning for Beginners – Various Formats – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
- Deep Learning – Free Online Video – Vincent Vanhoucke, Google
- Edible Education 101 – Free Online Video – Michael Pollan, UC Berkeley
- Financial Markets – Various Formats – Robert Shiller, Yale
- Growing Up in the Universe – Free Online Video – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
- Harvard’s Introductory Computer Science Course – Free Online Course – David Malan, Harvard
- Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner – Various Formats – Wai Chee Dimock, Yale
- Heidegger’s Being & Time – Free Online Audio – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- How to Listen to Music – Various Formats – Craig Wright, Yale
- Human Behavioral Biology – Various Formats – Robert Sapolsky, Stanford
- Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) – Free Online Video – Christine Hayes, Yale.
- Lectures on Digital Photography – Free Online Video – Marc Levoy, Stanford/Google
- Physics for Future Presidents – Free Online Video – Richard Muller, UC Berkeley
- Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter – Various Formats – Team taught, Harvard
- Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full – Various Formats – MIT, Dr. Paola Rebusco
- The American Novel Since 1945 – Various Formats – Amy Hungerford, Yale
- The Central Philosophy of Tibet – Free Online Audio – Robert Thurman, Columbia University
- The Character of Physical Law (1964) – Free Online Video – Richard Feynman, Cornell
- The Hobbit – Free iTunes Video – More – Corey Olsen, Washington College
- The Tempest – Free Online Audio – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa
- Walter Kaufmann Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre – Free Online Audio
The complete list of courses can be accessed here: 1,500 Free Online Courses from Top Universities. For more enriching material, see our other collections below