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A number of well-known colleges and universities offer free online courses that could save students hundreds to thousands of dollars. While free online courses might not provide credits toward degrees, they can contribute toward lifelong learning needs that educators have said are becoming increasingly important. Colleges, universities and technical schools such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), UC Berkeley, Yale and Columbia offer free online business courses, technology courses, humanities courses and more.

Men and women who want to enroll in free online courses might turn to the OpenCourseWare Consortium to research the subject areas they want to study. Free courses on the website include those provided by worldwide institutions, and they include podcasts, exams, text-oriented assignments and YouTube video lectures. As early as 2007, colleges, universities and technical schools have been establishing YouTube presences, according to OpenCulture.com. If your are looking for more information about online courses check on the web.

President Barack Obama has reportedly been a proponent of free online courses. The Obama administration is now drafting a program that would help pay community colleges to establish free online courses, according to a June Inside Higher Education report. The idea is in part to make college studies more accessible, and initial preference would go toward career-oriented courses, the Inside Higher Education article noted.

Students aren’t alone in benefiting from free online courses, some say. Colleges, universities and technical schools might garner publicity by providing free online course lectures and conferences on offerings such YouTube, OpenCulture.com suggests. A July report in artstechnica.com noted that MIT’s free online course website itself receives 1.5 million-plus page views a month. The site, known as MIT OpenCourseWare, has been awarded a Science Magazine Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE), a July MIT news announcement noted.

The MIT site, with course materials for more than 2,000 courses, emphasizes studies in the sciences – engineering & computer science courses and media arts & science courses among them – it includes programming in areas such as writing and humanistic studies as well. UC Berkeley’s free online courses for the spring 2010 semester come in the form of podcasts and webcasts, its website shows. They include subject areas such as anthropology, psychology, demography, public health, economics and intro to environmental economics. Students also are able to participate in archived course studies. Michigan and Penn State universities and Carnegie-Mellon also are among the institutions providing free online courses.

In some instances, employers pay for workers to attend job-related conferences and workshops, and offerings toward this end also are available online at no cost. They’re provided in some instances by private companies that specialize in certain areas. Professionals and small business owners, for example, might benefit from webinars in internet technology, marketing, effective decision making and more. Anytime you need more information about distance learning program look on the internet.

A few colleges and universities also offer tuition-free degrees to those who qualify. A January Bloomberg Businessweek article highlighted the online University of the People that it noted includes students from developing nations. The provost and computer science department chair at this particular university are from Columbia and New York universities, according to a November 2009 news item on the University of the People website.

Cooper Union and Alice Lloyd colleges also are among the tuition-free institutions mentioned in the Bloomberg Businessweek article on the web. Some tuition-free colleges and universities have different requirements with regard to applicant acceptance, the Bloomberg article shows. Free online courses, on the other hand, are available to anyone with the technology to access them and time to commit to them.

Serving the purpose of informing, educating and advancing those with the curiosity to start, these courses might just lead one onto an online degree that will make a true difference in their lives. A free online degree course is just waiting for those who make that one mouse click change everything.