Is it Worth Taking Free Online College Classes?

Over the last few years a lot of online colleges have started to offer free courses and many people have started taking them. Before you get too excited it is important to keep in mind that these courses do not carry any credit. This means that you can't use them towards a degree and they are not likely going to be much use for getting a new job or a promotion. The main reason for this is that there is no evaluation on the courses, they teach the subject but they don't have any exams so there is no way of establishing whether you actually learned the material.

If you can't get credit for the free online college classes that you take why would anybody take them? The answer in most cases is that there are a lot of people who just like learning new things and this is a great way to do it. If you are one of these people than the courses are clearly worth taking.

Another reason that they may well be worth taking is that if you are enrolled at a college, whether a regular one or an online one they may be a way to help you with a course you are struggling with. If you just aren't understanding what you are being taught by your professor it is very possible that having it taught by a different professor might be useful, in these cases the free classes may be very useful.

In some cases it may also be able to use the free online classes to obtain actually college credit although you will have to do it in a round about way. The most common way to do it is to take a free online course and then go write the CLEP that covers that subject. Most colleges will accept CLEP's for credit. If there is no CLEP for course you want credit for you can also look into DANTES, ECE or Ohio University exam programs.

It may also be possible to use a challenge for credit option to get credit. Many schools will allow this and normally it involves writing an exam to be granted credit, although in some cases you may also be required to submit some assignments, how you will be assessed will depend on the professor of the class.