Is it Really Possible to Take College Courses Online for Free?

Whether or not you can take college courses online for free is going to depend on your definition of taking a college course. Many schools have started to make their course materials available for free online. The best known of these is MIT who have made the materials for all of their courses available online. What they do not do however is offer credit for the courses, for that you will have to sign up and pay the tuition. Basically the free courses are the online version of being able to audit a course, you can take them for your own interest but you won’t be able to get a free degree.

Just because you can’ t get credit for the free college courses however does not mean that they have no value. Obviously there is the benefit of personal enrichment that you can get from taking them, but you may also be able to turn them into college credit for a fraction of the cost of actually taking the courses.

There are a number of programs that will allow you to earn credit by taking tests to demonstrate what you know. The most widely known of these are the CLEP exams but there are quite a few others as well. The  open courseware that is available from many online colleges can be a great way to prepare for these exams.  Most colleges put a limit on how much credit you can earn through testing but a few like Thomas Edison State College and Excelsior College will allow you to complete a full degree in this way.

Another way that you can use free online courses to earn college credit is through challenge for credit. Most schools will allow you to challenge a course for credit without requiring that you take it. Just how they will do this depends on the school and the course, in most cases you will have to make arrangements with the professor to come up with a plan for demonstrating that you have mastered the course material. This may involve an exam or a project, or a combination of both.

While we have not yet reached the point of their being truly free online college courses the opportunity to learn for free is there. If you have an interest in a particular subject this can be a great way to learn. It is often possible to turn what you learn from these courses into credit but doing so will definitely not be free.