How To: Take Free Online Courses for Real College Credit

The internet is a great place to find information for pretty much anything you can think of. So why shouldn't it be a place for official higher learning? I'm not talking about a course in Wikipedia or SparkNotes, but real colleges offering real college courses completely online. And guess what—it's FREE.

40 public universities, including Arizona State and the University of Arkansas, are planning to offer free online courses that carry with them full academic credit. Online classes and schools have had a huge upswing as of late, but many traditional schools are wary of how online degrees are perceived. Someone who graduated from ITT Tech is not going to get the same professional bump as someone who went to a traditional college or university.

So, in an effort to remove the stigma of online courses and get more people interested in online degrees, these schools will offer free courses. Of course, there will be a limit to the amount of courses one can take for free, as well as a much smaller offering of classes. Most of the universities will offer one free course in a popular discipline, like nursing, in hopes that an interested student will then invest in more classes.

The program is called MOOC2Degree, with "MOOC" standing for Massive Open Online Course (explained in the video above). It's basically a partnership between the organization and the participating universities to offer the classes to anyone, regardless of whether or not they're enrolled in college. If you are interested or simply want to learn more about the programs, you can go to the organization's website to sign up and get more information.

The internet really does have a wealth of information out there for the taking, you just have to know where to find it. For more free courses (although not for college credit), check out this article on some legit online classrooms for some intense brain workouts.