Just because student loan interest rates have doubled in recent weeks doesn’t mean the future of higher education for some students has to be as dismal as the economy.
Rather than taking out abhorrent student loans, students – or really anyone wishing to brush up on a certain skill – can turn to sites like OnlineCourses.com, a free site providing a place for students to learn without jeopardizing their credit standings or their wallets.
“OnlineCourses.com was created as part of our project’s [Online Courseware] larger mission to build the most comprehensive and free open courses resource that can be found anywhere on the web,” Jasmine Parker, the project head of OnlineCourses.com, told Red Alert Politics. “With the rising cost and competitive nature of higher education, we identified the need to compile and sort through all the available open courses so that anyone interested in furthering their education can do it for fee.”
Just because the lectures are free, however, doesn’t mean that students aren’t getting “handpicked” courses “carefully designed by experienced instructors throughout the world who are dedicated to helping you take the next step toward meeting your career goals,” Parker said.
OnlineCourses.com offers more than 500 classes and lectures in a variety of areas, ranging from beginning robotics to reinventing the fairytale. The courses are taken from prestigious universities including Harvard, the University of Michigan, Notre Dame and Stanford, essentially giving students the opportunity to receive a “Yale education” without ever actually having to step foot on the New Haven, Conn., campus.
Students are able to browse through the courses, create a schedule of desired classes, set goals and then track their progress throughout the courses with the program. They even receive the same learning materials as other students actually enrolled in the classes.
Because students aren’t technically enrolled in the courses, however, no credit is offered for students taking the classes through OnlineCourses.com.
