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No Student Visa Required: Where to Take Courses Online for Free


How do you get a taste of American education without actually becoming a student in the U.S.? We've shared one way, but here's another: take advantage of the ever-growing number of online courses available.

Here's a list of some websites where top American universities give away course materials, or even teach real courses, for free:

Edx
Participating schools: MIT and Harvard (Update: UC Berkeley now participates as well)
Courses in: “Our goal is to offer a wide variety of courses across disciplines.”
Can earn: certificate
http://www.edxonline.org

Udacity
Participating schools: Stanford
Courses in: Computer science
Can earn: grade for course
http://www.udacity.com

Coursera
Participating schools: Princeton, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania
Courses in: Humanities, computer science, math and statistics, healthcare and medicine, economics and business, information and networks
Can earn: n/a
http://coursera.org

Open Courseware Consortium
Participating U.S. schools: Arizona State University, College of the Canyons, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, MIT, Michigan State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Tufts University, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, University of Massachusetts, University of Michigan, Notre Dame, University of Wisconsin
Courses in: varied
Can earn: n/a
http://www.ocwconsortium.org

There are also a number of courses available on YouTube or iTunes. Here’s a fairly extensive list:
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

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