Students intending to expand their learning opportunities this fall might want to look outside GW for a discounted course.
Whether you’ve decided to take a semester off or are looking for options past the allowed 18 credits, you can enroll in hundreds of courses offered for free or at reduced rates this fall. Hundreds of colleges are making their courses publicly available online through Coursera and edX, giving outside students the chance to pick up a class like “Medical Neuroscience” and “Leading in the Digital Age.”
Depending on the course, edX charges $40 to $160 to receive a certification of completion you can include on your resume or your LinkedIn profile. You can pay anywhere from $29 to $99 per class on Coursera, which gives you assignments, tests and a final grade.
Here’s a rundown of some classes you can take at other top universities this fall:
Duke offers 70 classes through Coursera, from “Behavioral Finance,” to “Advertising and Society” to “Medical Neuroscience.” You can also enroll in the Blockchain Applications MasterTrack Certificate, which allows you to work through a partial master’s program online and earn a certificate of completion and a 10 percent tuition scholarship toward a full master’s program. Tuition to enroll in classes is $3,000 with the next session beginning in January 2021.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT offers nearly 200 courses through edX. For those interested in physics, check out the mechanics series of classes with offerings like “Mechanics: Momentum and Energy” or “Mechanics: Kinematics and Dynamics.” And on the business side, you can take “Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?” which covers market and customer analysis. MIT courses on edX are free or charge a fee if students choose to receive a verified certificate.
In addition to more than 100 classes like “Python for Everybody Specialization” and “Data Science Ethics”, which charges anywhere from $29 to $99 per course, the clear focus of the University of Michigan’s offerings is its degrees and certificates. Shorter MasterTrack Certificate courses are available for $2,000 to $2,100, as well as fully online master programs in “Public Health, Applied Data Science” and “Population and Health Science.”
Business and Marketing is the clear focus of BU’s edX offerings. Its offerings include “Leading in the Digital Age,” “Strategic Social Media Marketing” and “Digital Leadership.” A select few faith-based classes covering how religion affects the material society like “Religion and Conflict Transformation” “Faith and Finance” are also being offered through edX. BU courses on edX are free or have a small fee if students choose to receive a verified certificate.
With more than 150 courses offered for free on edX, this prestigious institution is one of the best places to look for free online education. You can find everything from “Ancient Masterpieces of World Literature,” to “Backyard Meteorology: The Science of Weather” to the concisely titled class, “Justice.”
