15 Best Websites To Take Free College Courses Online
Why take free college courses online?
With the rise of online learning, the opportunities for learning a skill or subject are virtually endless.
I’m a full-time freelance writer and blogger and everything I’ve learned for my job and business has been from free and paid courses online. Although traditional college courses are great, the ability to take online courses gave me the ability to work a job while learning the skills I needed to pursue my career.
Whether you’re looking to transition from your current career or you’re just interested in learning a particular subject, taking free college courses online is a risk-free way to try out a new path. I’ve gathered the 10 best websites to take college courses online for free. Explore each of them below and see what works best for your current goals.
1. EdX
EdX is one of the best resource to take any college course online. There are nearly 4,000 free college courses you can take that are hosted by some of the best universities in the world.
EdX is great because it has a reputation for excellent coursework. The majority of the courses are self-paced and they are mostly free. Here’s a link to the course catalog that EdX has, you can check it out and see if your desired courses are available.
There are over 25 million people who learn on EdX for free along with 140 institutions that offer courses. It’s a great first resource to check out when deciding what college courses you want to take.
2. Khan Academy
You have likely learned several lessons on Khan Academy in the past. Khan Academy is one of the best education platforms in the world. Since it was founded, it was always going to be free.
What most people don’t know is that Khan Academy actually offers free college courses online. If you go to a specific topic like Science in Khan Academy, it will guide you on every lesson from the basics to college level work.
This is a great way to learn because general college courses will not take the time to teach you the fundamentals if you don’t already know them. For example, you can check out the entire science catalog here. It shows you every single science discipline from high school level to college level.
Browsing through the beginner lessons quickly can help you greatly before enrolling in a college course. There’s no accreditation for Khan Academy yet for college courses, but if you are just focused on self-learning, it’s one of the best places to learn any subject.
3. SkillShare
SkillShare is one of my favorite resources. Why? Because you can learn skills that make you money.
My actual day to day life skills that pay my bills (writing, understanding SEO, etc.) were not taught to me in school. I had to go and do it for free and learn by trial and error. One thing that helped me accelerate my progress is taking courses from people who were succeeding at my particular skillset.
For example, I’m in a blogging course with hundreds of other bloggers. This helps me avoid the common mistake most bloggers make.
Skillshare has a ton of free resources and classes you can take right now. I’ve linked their free courses here.
Take a look at these two free courses: SEO and Ecommerce. Mastering just one of these skills can help you generate 6 figures per year. The instructors pictured above are multi-millionaires in their specific domain.
If I had to pick one resource out of this blog that’s most beneficial, I’d choose SkillShare. This is because SkillShare only focuses on learning the actual skill that you will use on a day to day basis.
4. Coursera
Coursera is an online education platform that offers degrees, courses, professional development and more. Although Coursera is known for a lot of their paid programs, they offer a ton of free courses for students.
Coursera offers a ton of courses from some of the best universities like Yale, Stanford and more. They currently offer over 1,700 free courses that you can choose from. You can choose a subject based on language, length of course, difficulty, institution and more.
Trying out one of their free courses is a good way to get your feet wet and see what programs they offer that you can find a job with. I’ve linked their entire free course catalog here.
5. MIT
MIT is one of the best academic institutions in the world. They were early pioneers in online education and now they have some of the best free college courses online. For nearly 20 years, MIT has released some of the best courses for free.
Most of the courses that are free, online and available to the public by MIT can be found in MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT OpenCourseWare has catalogs of different lessons and college courses free for everyone. You can start any course and finish it at your own pace.
There are over 2,500 courses available on MIT OpenCourseWare. Don’t let the old looking site fool you, it’s one of the best resources for college courses on the internet. If you can do well in these courses, you can succeed in any college.
6. Udemy
Udemy is a unique resource for free courses. The majority of sites on this list provide the standard college coursework and nothing else. Udemy teaches a lot of skilled courses where you can apply what you learn in the real world.
For example, I’m a writer by profession. I write for companies and for my blog. This is a skill I had to learn on my own by trial and error. Udemy has courses on topics that can get you paid for free. The resources are there, you just have to bring the desire.
Sample courses on Udemy include How to Design & Prototype in Adobe, Programming 101, Photography Fundamental for Beginners and more. These are all highly-sought after and paid skills. Mastering one of these can help you start your side hustle or career today.
7. Udacity
Udacity is a great resource to learn paid skills that you can utilize immediately in the workforce. Instead of offering generic courses and programs, Udacity focuses on teaching in-demand skills that pay well in today’s market.
Some of the courses available include cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and more. The courses in Udacity are not generic courses like what is cybersecurity, they are in-depth trainings on things you will do as a specialist in cybersecurity on a day to day basis.
Many of the courses available on Udacity are paid because they offer certifications you can work with. You can try out Udacity’s free courses linked here. The courses include app-specific training like Microsoft, WeChat, etc, along with skill training like tensor flow, Google boot camps and more.
Mastering one of these skills alone can help you land a well-paying job.
8. Open Learn
Open Learn is one of the best free education resources in the world. With over 160,000 students enrolled, there are endless amounts of courses available ranging from criminology to ancient Greek history. The course difficulties range from beginner to advanced, so you can learn at your own pace.
There are hundreds of free courses available.What’s great about Open Learn is that you can get certificates and statements to show your enrollment. This can help you continue your online learning and gain access into further education programs.
Open Learn is open to all international students. Sampling one free course is a good idea before committing to a specific program. You can explore the 900 free courses on Open Learn here.
9. Alison
There are over 13 million students and 2 million graduates from Alison. Alison is a free education platform where you can learn subjects and skills in many different industries. Some of the industries they offer coursework include:
- sales and marketing
- healthcare
- IT
- engineering
- construction and more
Alison offers certificate and diplomas for students who finish their programs.
10. University of the People
University of the People is the first non-profit, accredited and tuition-free university in the U.S. When people think of taking free courses online, graduating and getting a job, University of the People is one of the few institutions that allows you to do that.
With over 65,000 students, they offer degree programs in computer science, business administration, education and more.
It’s a completely risk-free and tuition-free education option for you, so it’s worth it to give it a look.
11. University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world. With hundreds of years of teaching and education experience, they offer a ton of free courses for students online.
Some programs also offer you certificates and this can be extremely beneficial. Getting any certification from the University of Cambridge will help you in any professional goal.
You can check out a dozen of the free courses they offer here. They include self-paced, fall semester and spring semester courses.
12. Stanford Online
Stanford University has a remote learning branch called Stanford Online. Stanford Online has hundreds of undergraduate and graduate free online courses to choose from. This is a great opportunity for remote learners because you will be able to take a curriculum directly from a great university like Stanford.
The different subjects that Stanford Online provides free courses in include humanities, health & medicine, education, engineering and more. Many of the courses are self-paced and students can enroll in the fall, summer and spring semesters.
13. Code Academy
Code Academy is one of my favorite remote learning options from this list. Instead of giving you a course to take, Code Academy personalizes the learning process to you as a student.
With Code Academy, you can choose to learn what interests you and you learn by doing. This is huge because most skills in the real world are attained by action, not just by reading. Code Academy gives you rapid feedback on exactly what you are learning.
Additionally, they also provide you with real life projects and they help you market yourself and attain a job after developing your skills. You can check out the catalog of Code Academy here.
14. Open Culture
Open Culture is not a school or educational institution like many of the options in this blog. It’s basically a site that has huge lists of free courses that people can take online. What makes Open Culture great is that every single resource on the site is free and it’s high quality.
There’s more resources on Open Culture for you to find a free college course than you can imagine. Here are just some of the lists available on Open Culture:
- 1,700 Free Online Courses
- 200 Online Certificate Programs
- 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
You can explore the lists here. It’s a great option to look through if you can’t find the course you’re looking for on other sites.
15. ClassCentral
ClassCentral has one of the most extensive course catalogs on the internet. With over 30,000 courses available, ClassCentral is basically the Google for free college courses online.
What makes ClassCentral unique is that it compiles all the free online courses and it gives you a review and rating. This will help you prevent wasting time on a courses that are not legitimate and have bad instruction.
On ClassCentral, you can browse by institution, subject and more. Before registering for any course, make sure it’s accredited and has good reviews on ClassCentral. Here’s a link to ClassCentral, so you can start reviewing courses by the subjects you are interested in.
Final thoughts
These are just some of the resources available for you to take free college courses online. With all of the free resources available at your disposal, the only thing you need to really succeed is desire.
I’d recommend focusing and learning about one skill or discipline for a semester. Once you’ve taken a few courses, learn which avenues you can take to pursue a career with your new skill. You can also just learn for fun if you’re just really interested in a particular subject.