Quezi

You won't get the pretty campus, but you can learn in your PJs (NKCR)

Interested in taking a few college courses for free?  You can do it online at some of the most prestigious universities in the world, all at no charge.

At the Massachusetts Institution of Technology…good old MIT…you can take advantage of their MITOpenCourseWare offerings.  There are more than 1,900 free online classes here, graduate and undergraduate, all holding to rigorous MIT standards.  There’s a ton of science, math, engineering and technology of course, but also classes in anthropology, economics, foreign languages, and even gender issues (Feminist Political Thought, anyone?)

Another Ivy League school, Stanford University in California, has teamed up with iTunes of all folks to offer their own sizable batch of free courses (playable on your iPod, of course, as well any more pedestrian PC or Mac computer).  Check out Open Stanford to get started.

The internet being the global phenomenon it is, you’re not limited to free courses from US colleges and universities.  Take a look at the offerings from The Open University in the UK.  Or how about classes down under, with a study program from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, with a heavy emphasis on computer technology and programming.

By the way, it’s often possible to arrange for credit for these courses, and can be done most readily if you’re attending a school already, and can have them issue credit for your online work as well.  There are other options, though.

So…enjoy your world class online education.  No charge!