How to Go to College for Free

How to Go to College for Free





One of the unsung benefits of our wired world is that for years, the
most prestigious universities have been posting complete courses on the
Web, tuition free. We have access to
lectures, syllabuses, exams, charts, diagrams, whole textbooks even—all
in the name of the OpenCourseWare movement that took off in the United
States when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began uploading
classroom materials without charge in 2002. Now you practically need a
full-time course adviser to navigate all the choices. That’s where we
come in. Our writer, David Hochman, spent thirty days learning all he
could through on-line lectures. Here are a few of his favorite teachers
and his picks from the courses they teach.

Marian C. Diamond, UC Berkeley, General Human Anatomy: The Human Brain and Muscular
System. Says Hochman, “I stayed up past midnight riveted by
Diamond’s simple yet wondrous descriptions of what body parts do.
‘This
mass weighs only three pounds,’ she says, holding a human brain, ‘yet it
has the capacity to conceive of a universe a billion light-years
across. Now isn’t that phenomenal?’ My brain certainly thought so.”

Paul Bloom, Yale University, Introduction to Psychology: Evolution, Emotion, and
Reason: Emotions, Part I. What do your dreams mean? Do men and women
differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes
learn sign language? Why can’t we tickle ourselves? According to Open
Yale Courses, this course tries to answer these questions and many
others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of
thought and behavior. Hochman’s take? “Phenomenal.”

Michael Sandel, Harvard University, The Morality of Murder: (Part 1) The Moral Side of
Murder, (Part 2) The Case For Cannibalism. A thousand students
regularly pack themselves into a lecture Hall at Harvard to hear
Sandel’s course on justice, one of the most popular in the school’s
history. In this lecture, Sandel looks at difficult moral dilemmas
involving choices we might one day make about life and death.

Richard Feynman, Cornell University, Law of Gravitation. Says Hochman,“Maybe its his
buoyant New York accent, but the physicist makes the great principles of
motion, energy, and, indeed, quantum mechanics seem down-to-earth.
‘Even the artists appreciate the sunsets and the ocean waves and the
march of the stars across the heavens,’ he says before explaining the
law of gravitation.”

Salman Khan, Khan Academy, The Kidney and Nephron. Once a highly paid hedge
fund analyst with multiple degrees from Harvard and MIT, Khan, 34,
started teaching math for free on the Internet in 2006 and three years
later quit his job to teach full-time. With an electric blackboard and a
soothing, stress-free voice, Khan makes short videos on everything from
basic addition to polynomial approximation in advanced calculus.