what is happening so that the best universities in the world offer free courses?
what is happening in countries like the United States? In this country specifically, there are circumstances at the population level and general changes that are causing a very high demand for professionals in different areas such as health and medicine. While in countries like Spain this type of professionals are “left aside”, in the USA they help them to study the necessary subjects, support them in the financing of their studies and look for a job for them, which is usually quite well paid
In addition, the universities want to attract talent in abundance and want students who start training with them with a few simple free courses to become students who, in addition to studying with them in a more active way, can also offer their services to the different countries where these universities belong
The free online courses are the gateway to a great worldwide evolution of the Universities and there will be very few left.
But there are also predictions fifty years ahead that indicate that there could be a worldwide adjustment of Universities and that hundreds of them could disappear, and that there could also be a maximum of 10 Universities left, and that everything that has to do with higher education would be covered by these 10 Universities
And there must be some reason for this prediction, as it has caused universities around the world to launch a fierce struggle to get users and students at any cost
where do I get free courses?
There are several sites where free courses are concentrated in several websites, and there is something new for the Spanish-speaking market since a website similar to the American ones has been launched, but to study in universities located in Spain or in the countries of the Region
Free online courses with Universities
Free courses Coursera.org, is one of the best known, with high quality free courses, with more than 2 million people who have registered to take courses worldwide and with more than 250 free courses in which in most cases the student receives an official title or from the University where the course has been studied or from Coursera with the signature of the professors who have taught the course. They have more than 30 top universities in the world as they are
More than 30 universities with Free Online Courses
Berklee College of Music, Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Duke University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rice University, Stanford University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The University of British Columbia, University of California, Irvine, University of California, San Francisco, University of Edinburgh, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of London International Programmes, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Melbourne, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Toronto, University of Virginia, University of Washington, Vanderbilt University, Wesleyan University.
Personally I liked Coursera, every year I usually do some kind of training, in fact this year, instead of signing up for courses I tried to make myself a kind of tailored courses depending on what I felt like studying on Coursera, one of the most rewarding and interesting has been one of Gamification by the University of Pennsylvania, which focuses on how to apply the solutions that are defined in the games to the business world, it is very fun and rewarding, and in terms of professional or personal level, I will have my degree signed by Kevin Werbach, Professor of this University of Pennsylvania. I still have 7 more courses to do I think I remember
where can I access free online courses?
Udacity.com, Catalog of free courses, mainly technical courses divided into Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels and also from the most recognized Universities. Very interesting also with a different format to Coursera
Edx.org, is a non-profit platform of free courses created initially by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with interesting courses also in which there are Universities like Harvard, Berkey, etc, very directed mainly these courses to technology and artificial intelligence to a great extent
Khanacademy.org, is a platform of very interesting free courses in different areas, with a lot of orientation to the world of the Coach and to enhance skills and so on
es.wikibooks.org, This project aims to make available to anyone free courses, textbooks, manuals, tutorials or other educational texts with free content and 100% free access
Ocwconsortium.org, A worldwide consortium of universities that publish courses in many languages, from Chinese or German to English or Spanish
Ted, The truth is that this one does not have to do directly with Universities but if I do not put it in the compendium of options I can’t like it. Just say what is the mission of TED: Spreading great ideas to the world. Precious mission
Wikiversity, is the free learning community, lots of documentation, free courses and information
Tech companies are jumping into this market
Open Yale Courses, Yale’s system of free courses, free courses very directed to Yale’s own training in the fields of economics, politics, psychology, history, etc
Knollop, a portal that centralizes many of the free course systems mentioned above
Udemy.com, Training center where experts share their knowledge through this training platform, in this case the courses usually have a small cost and there are some free courses
Stanford Venture Lab, Stanford’s free courses training center (here companies like Google came out) and allows to attend free training courses. Many of the teachers who teach the free courses are investors in venture capital companies, strategists of major technology companies, etc.. Very interesting
Academic Earth, also very interesting with free courses, similar to Coursera but with a slightly different philosophy, also have in addition to universities with centers that are training partners
Study in Spanish Universities or Spanish Free Courses:
Miriada X, is a kind of Coursera, but with Ibero-American Universities, it is a relatively recent project, and aimed at Spanish-speaking students from anywhere in the world. There is still little offer of free courses and there are still not too many Universities, although the free courses that there are are interesting
Update April 5, 2013:
Uned Coma: It is the Mooc version of Uned, which allows to study free courses as well, being something critical with what I see from Spanish Universities compared to Coursera, for example, is that the professors with whom I have studied courses from Pennsylvania and Stanford, are professors of free courses that have an important proximity to the business world, in Uned Coma the professors of technical areas I do not doubt that they are first figures, however, the professors of entrepreneurial areas, although I am sure they are great teachers, are profiles that have a real business experience quite little validated or visible at least in their profiles.
Update as of September 27, 2013:
UniMooc: It is an experimental concept of free courses in Spanish aimed at entrepreneurs, among the speakers there is an interesting mix of well recognized professionals, success stories, researchers and teachers
Idesweb.es: Concept of free courses in Spanish for programmers, designers, etc, who are interested in everything related to PHP, HTML, CCS, etc
OPen Learning Initiative: Just as other universities have already taken this type of free courses as a reference, now it is Carnegie Mellon University who takes a step forward to present its Moocs system
FIU (Florida International University): Florida also attacks with its training system with free courses offering an interesting range of them
Coursesites: A catalog of free courses from universities that is still not very wide but if you have it well selected. An interesting catalog.