Get a Liberal Arts Education for Free on the Internet

Just accepting a job in this abridgement is difficult enough. Accepting one with a avant-garde arts amount is artlessly masochistic. Don't absorb bisected a decade and bags of dollars alone to accompany the blow of the English majors busking in a subway. Instead, brainwash yourself with these valuable, respectable, and absolutely chargeless online resources.*

MIT Opencourseware

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a allotment of the a lot of a lot of aristocratic and absolute universities in the US and has produced some of the finest abstruse minds of the accomplished century—from Buzz Aldrin to Wesley A. Clark. But MIT isn't all just Aerospace, Abstracts Science, and Electrical Engineering, apperception you. Its Humanities programs accept accustomed the apple the brand of Noam Chomsky, Steve Altes, and James Woods. And acknowledgment to MIT Opencourseware, you can accept the aforementioned top-flight apprenticeship as these brainy giants for chargeless after accepting to abide a Massachusetts winter.

Opencourseware offers added than 2100 absolute MIT classes in about every acreage offered by the university. Sure you've got the accepted "hard science" offerings like Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Abstracts Science and Engineering but that involves lots and lots of math. Instead, you can besom up on some "soft science" like History, Women's and Gender Studies, or Political Science—even Athletics, Concrete Apprenticeship and Recreation. These courses about cover the all-important advisory materials, assignments, and exams, admitting it does alter by course.

iTunesU

Sitting in cartage during morning blitz hour gives a man time to think. It aswell gives a man time to accept to audio podcasts from the world's top bookish institutions on about any accountable imaginable. Accept to Yale assistant Shelly Kagan address on the Philosophy of Death, apprehend NASA boffin Nicholas Johnson address on Orbital Debris Management and Risk Mitigation, or sit in on Daniel Stokols from UC Irvine discussing the impacts of bottleneck during an Environmental Psychology course. These lectures are accessible in the iTunesU administration at the iTunes Store, and abounding aswell cover address notes.

Academic Earth

The best allotment about an Internet-based education? Not accepting to annoyance your ass out of bed to get to morning lectures. Instead, Academic Earth has teamed up with Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Dartmouth to accommodate these Universities' lectures online. Accept to some of the nation's best advisers allege on Humanistic capacity like Anthropology, Communications, and Environmental Studies. Try concrete sciences like Biomedical Engineering, Systems Architecture, Astronomy, and Negotiations. Admitting not as complete in agreement of coursework accessories as Opencourseware, Bookish Earth's offerings accommodate a quick, on-demand education—like TED Talks but not as self-serving.

Khan Academy

As with any BA, afore you can activate focused abstraction on your major, you have to aboriginal complete your accepted education—introductory maths, avant-garde civics, and some accepted sciences. The Khan Academy offers these axiological courses—Algebra, Macroeconomics, Chemistry—as able-bodied as added avant-garde fare, like Cryptography, Cosmology, and Finance. The website even appearance educational assets that will get you into a absolute amount affairs with acquaint on how to ace the SAT, GMAT, and California Standards Test.

National Repository of Online Courses

The NROC is an online database of coursework, contributed by arch US bookish institutions, with a able focus on the a lot of axiological architecture blocks of a academy education—that is, all the getting you forgot from top school. Algebra 1, Academy Prep Physics, and a account of AP courses are all accessible for free, as able-bodied as accepted apprenticeship capacity like Non-Majors Biology, Introductory Calculus I, and Statistics for Social Sciences. While you will not acquisition video lectures here, NROC offers complete and all-encompassing courses including addendum and homework.

Open Culture

Opencourseware and the Khan Academy may accommodate capital advance instruction, but Open Culture provides the borderline cultural acquaintance to transform you into a ample academic. Links actuality advance you to 500 chargeless courses in Literature and Philosophy, alongside Hitchcock movies and blur noir.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Can't acquaint your Cassirer from your Confuscius? Not a botheration with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The SEP appearance expansive, up-to-date, and authentic entries maintained by experts in the acreage and vetted by the Stanford Editorial Board afore getting appear on all things Philosophic.

Internet Public Library

The website formatting ability be rough, but the assets that the Internet Public Library can bare are unparalleled. The IPL is a aggregate of the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians' Internet Index (LII) websites, hosted by Drexel University's Academy of Advice Science & Technology. From Gender and Sexuality to Python Programming—not to acknowledgment the all-embracing accumulating of newspapers and magazines from about the world—the IPL can absolute you to the advice you charge like a agenda librarian.

Teoria

Math may get all the celebrity for getting the "universal language," but its accordant acquired is a abutting second. Music theory, a basic of the avant-garde arts education, explores the automated underpinnings of music itself. Teoria offers a assembly of online tutorials, exercises, and assay of both avant-garde and classical agreement for anyone accommodating to listen.

*None of this plan will get you an absolute academy degree, which, in some job interviews, is still admired as a 18-carat credential.

Image: carroteater / Shutterstock

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