# 1,000s of video lectures from top universities around the world...free **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 25, 2009, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695 "2009-03-25T02:38:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![newcrasher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b3f665/32.png) [@newcrasher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcrasher)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/1 "2009-03-25T02:38:18Z")
> **[AcademicEarth.org - Free Online Courses From Top Colleges](https://academicearth.org/)** > > Find free online courses, lectures, and videos from the best colleges in the country. Take online classes from schools like Yale, MIT and Stanford. Incredible. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/2 "2009-03-25T02:42:14Z")
Thank you, I needed a new historically-based podcast! Off to sub to [Online College Courses & Accredited Degree Programs - Academic Earth](http://academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history) . ---
**Author:** ![dgrdfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/3 "2009-03-25T02:53:58Z")
Wow, that’s great. I can’t wait until this becomes even more popular and there are more videos and classes. Just imagine how powerful it is that everyone can get a world class education for free. Obviously you don’t get the degree, but that’s really irrelevant unless you plan to be employed in that field. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/4 "2009-03-25T02:56:43Z")
> [@dgrdfd](#): > > Wow, that’s great. I can’t wait until this becomes even more popular and there are more videos and classes. Just imagine how powerful it is that everyone can get a world class education for free. Obviously you don’t get the degree, but that’s really irrelevant unless you plan to be employed in that field. You know, you keep hearing that, but has anyone actually taken all that free information and made a name for themselves (Cecil notwithstanding)? The Wikipedia, I’d argue, contains more knowledge than your average college education (at least in breadth if not depth), MIT has been offering its course materials for free for years, etc. Where are the self-taught superscientists? ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/5 "2009-03-25T04:02:36Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > You know, you keep hearing that, but has anyone actually taken all that free information and made a name for themselves (Cecil notwithstanding)? The Wikipedia, I’d argue, contains more knowledge than your average college education (at least in breadth if not depth), MIT has been offering its course materials for free for years, etc. Where are the self-taught superscientists? I was actually wondering that the other night. What if someone just has an affinity for medical knowledge and they take the MCATs without ever taking a medical class ever just because they liked to read all the books and absorb the knowledge? ---
**Author:** ![Caveat\_lector\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@Caveat\_lector\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caveat_lector_1)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/6 "2009-03-25T04:18:52Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > You know, you keep hearing that, but has anyone actually taken all that free information and made a name for themselves (Cecil notwithstanding)? The Wikipedia, I’d argue, contains more knowledge than your average college education (at least in breadth if not depth), MIT has been offering its course materials for free for years, etc. Where are the self-taught superscientists? I never hard about the MIT thing so I went and looked. Unless I’m doing it wrong it looks like many of the courses just include selections of material. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/7 "2009-03-25T04:24:57Z")
That is way cool. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/8 "2009-03-25T05:12:27Z")
Oh…my…Og… This is awesome. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/9 "2009-03-25T05:21:20Z")
> [@Caveat\_lector\_1](#): > > I never hard about the MIT thing so I went and looked. Unless I’m doing it wrong it looks like many of the courses just include selections of material. I was talking about MIT’s [OpenCourseWare](http://ocw.mit.edu/), which is probably what you found. No, it doesn’t have everything, but it lets you follow a rough lesson plan. A lot of the stuff is in textbooks, anyway. As a university student, honestly, some of the classes I’ve taken might as well have been textbooks + automatic online quizzes. IMO, the only worthwhile part of university is the access to faculty and the classroom discussions/interactions, some of which can be (and is) duplicated online already. Heck, I dare say I’ve learned, inquired, and grown more because of the Dope than because of higher education. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Batman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@The\_Batman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Batman)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/10 "2009-03-25T06:06:24Z")
I love you. ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/11 "2009-03-25T18:07:32Z")
This is the greatest internet find I’ve heard of in a while! Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/12 "2009-03-25T18:50:20Z")
Excellent find! Thank you very much for sharing! ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/13 "2009-03-25T19:47:59Z")
Whoa… Thankitty-thank-thank!!! ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/14 "2009-03-26T04:16:08Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Heck, I dare say I’ve learned, inquired, and grown more because of the Dope than because of higher education. Well. I hate to denigrate the Dope, because I HAVE learned an awful lot here, but you can’t actually compare it to a higher education. I’m a student right now and I learn just a _tad_ more from my professors than I do from alla y’all. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/15 "2009-03-26T10:29:39Z")
This is great. My favorite lectures from college were the Classic Civ courses I took as free electives. University of Illinois had a really famous guy who’d been teaching the introductory courses to Roman and Greek mythology for years and years and he was easily the most entertaining professor I ever watched. Naturally, my first instinct was to see if his courses were available here and of course it’s limited to a handful of Universities only. My next move was to check out the similar class at Yale available there and…wow, that guy is painfully dry. He’s the stereotype of every terrible lecturer ever imagined. It’s killing me that I can’t recall the name of my old professor. According to the UIUC website it looks like he’s moved on (maybe died) in the past 10 years. ---
**Author:** ![gladtobeblazed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@gladtobeblazed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gladtobeblazed)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/16 "2009-03-26T13:17:07Z")
This is excellent! ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/17 "2009-03-28T02:39:51Z")
> [@Caveat\_lector\_1](#): > > I never hard about the MIT thing so I went and looked. Unless I’m doing it wrong it looks like many of the courses just include selections of material. I checked MIT out, and it is very hard to navigate. There is not anything coherent, in a systematic sense, for the wannabe learner. I think that it was a collage of half-finished web-pages of Academic Assistants. ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/18 "2009-03-28T19:52:18Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Where are the self-taught superscientists? Not getting hired because they don’t have degrees. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/19 "2009-03-28T20:43:02Z")
Stanford and Harvard have all their course materials on iTunesU (Requires iTunes). You actually can see any Harvard course online through it. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695/20 "2009-03-28T21:01:33Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > You know, you keep hearing that, but has anyone actually taken all that free information and made a name for themselves (Cecil notwithstanding)? The Wikipedia, I’d argue, contains more knowledge than your average college education (at least in breadth if not depth), MIT has been offering its course materials for free for years, etc. Where are the self-taught superscientists? On Jeopardy! Think Ken Jennings. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-000s-of-video-lectures-from-top-universities-around-the-world-free/490695.md?page=2)