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- Like many universities, Princeton offers free online classes.
- Popular courses run the gamut from Buddhism, computer science, Bitcoin, and global history.
- You can find the full list of all the free virtual Princeton classes on edX and Coursera here.
- Read more: 54 free online courses from the best colleges in the US — including Princeton, Harvard, and Yale
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Like many Ivy League universities, Princeton offers massive open online courses (MOOCs) through online education providers such as Coursera and edX. Students from all over the world can access top-notch courses without some of the most prohibitive barriers (location, cost), while educators get to expand the scope of their impact on students.
Through Princeton’s online offerings, students can learn about everything from the basics of Bitcoin to the psychology behind Buddhism.
But, unlike many other prestigious schools, Princeton does not offer an optional certificate of completion, such as Yale’s science of happiness course or Harvard’s CS50 computer science series. All Princeton courses are entirely free — there’s no paywall for certain features, but you also can’t pay for certification to add to your resume or LinkedIn.
You can access Princeton MOOCs on edX, Coursera, and Kadenze. For edX specifically, many of the courses are now archived, which means that students can view most of the course materials, such as lectures and readings, but can’t complete assignments for a grade or interact with course staff on forums.
16 Princeton classes you can take for free online:
Mint Images/Getty Images
Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 10 Hours
This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the One Health concept — the idea that human, animal, and environmental/ecosystem health are linked — and emphasizes holistic approaches to health and disease. Students learn more about outbreaks such as Influenza, Q fever, and Ebola through the lens of epidemiology, public policy, food safety, and environmental health, among other subjects.
Buddhism and Modern Psychology
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 16 Hours
This course covers how Buddhism fares under modern Western scholarly examination, and if it can teach us to be better, happier people. For instance, one of the discussions explores whether neuroscientists are starting to understand how meditation “works,” or if their findings downplay its spiritual benefits.
Students will pay special attention to counterintuitive doctrines, like the idea that the self doesn’t exist or that much of perceived reality is illusory.
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 23 hours
This course addresses how Bitcoin works on a technical level — what it is, how secure it is, what determines the price of a Bitcoin, and whether it can be regulated. In the end, students should have a good working knowledge of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and have the conceptual foundations needed to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network.
Effective Altruism
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 12 hours
Peter Singer, author of “The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically” teaches this class, delving into the idea that living a fully ethical life means doing the most good one can. Students examine the philosophical underpinnings of effective altruism, learn from people who have restructured their lives around it, and think about how they can practice it in their own lives.
Computer Science: Programming with a Purpose
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 88 Hours
This course is for students who want to learn programming in a scientific context. While proficiency in Java is one of the goals, the class focuses more broadly on fundamental programming concepts.
This first course focuses on the first half of the instructors’ book “Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach.” Students are introduced to basic programming elements such as variables, conditionals, loops, arrays, and I/O. Then, they delve in functions with key concepts such as recursion, modular programming, and code reuse. Finally, students receive a “modern introduction” to object-oriented programming.
The second half of the book is covered in the Coursera course Computer Science: Algorithms, Theory, and Machines.
Paradoxes of War
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 13 hours
This social science course is centered around the idea that “war is paradoxically an expression of our basest animal nature and the exemplar of our most vaunted and valued civilized virtues.”
Students learn basic military history and sociology so it can be applied to broader social themes and issues related to war. For example, one discussion examines how gender roles in war translate to expectations of masculinity, or how “us-them” dichotomies can be used to fuel nationalism.
HOPE: Human Odyssey to Political Existentialism
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 10 Weeks
In collaboration between Princeton and Tel Aviv University, HOPE is an interdisciplinary course that explores central philosophical themes — including happiness, love, hope, religion, and freedom — through existentialism. It primarily relies upon political science and philosophy, but also incorporates history, sociology, psychology, and economics.
Making Government Work in Hard Places
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 8 Weeks
This course is “about the ‘hows'” of making positive institutional change in difficult environments — how to go beyond the desire to create a better future and actually form new institutions, practices, and policies to transform society in a sustainable way.
Each week, students focus on a different kind of challenge drawn from real-world experience. They read a case study, examine a problem in detail, help create a “solutions” toolkit, and then apply the insights to a second case.
Algorithms, Part I
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 53 Hours
Algorithms Part 1 covers essential information about algorithms and data structures for programmers, with an emphasis on the applications and scientific performance analysis of Java implementations.
While Part 1 covers elementary data structures, sorting, and searching algorithms, Part II focuses on graph- and string-processing algorithms.
The Art of Structural Engineering: Bridges
Oli Kellett/I
Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 8 Weeks
In this course, students analyze bridges from three perspectives: efficiency, economy, and elegance. By focusing on noteworthy post-Industrial Revolution bridges, students learn how engineering can be an art form, and discuss the economic and social context in bridge design.
This is the first “Art of Structural Engineering” course — there’s another on vaults taught by the same Princeton University professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Maria Garlock.
Writing Case Studies: Science of Delivery
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 6 Weeks
This course focuses on the main elements of a good “science of delivery” case study and teaches students how to plan research, conduct interviews, and organize their writing in order to be effective in influencing policy and reform.
According to edX, this class would be best for practitioners who aim to implement a program or build a new institution, researchers who want to trace how programs achieved results, and graduate students looking for an introduction to one type of case study method.
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review course content but it is no longer active.
Civil Liberties
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 7 Weeks
In “Civil Liberties” students examine civil rights against a backdrop of famous thinkers’ and Supreme Court opinions. Led by Professor Robert P. George, students discuss the historical foundations of civil rights and liberties, how influential philosophers thought about them at the time, the arguments presented in Supreme Court opinions, and how to critically analyze controversial claims. Issues covered include slavery, segregation, abortion, campaign finance, free speech, religion, affirmative action, and marriage.
According to its course description, the goal of the course is “not to persuade you to think as anyone else does; rather, it is to encourage and empower you to think about disputed questions of civil rights and liberties more deeply, more critically, and for yourself.”
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review course content but it is no longer active.
Global History Lab
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 12 Weeks
This global history course aims to address world history from 1300 to the present, using readings, lectures, and document analysis. In weekly lab assignments, students work in teams to use knowledge from the course to solve problems and develop a deeper understanding of primary historical materials. Students focus on themes such as migration and statelessness, economic integration, warfare and conflict, ecology, and innovations.
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review course content but it is no longer active.
The Art of Structural Engineering: Vaults
JGITom Grill/Getty Images
Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 6 Weeks
In this course, students learn how to analyze vaults from the same three perspectives applied to the above Art of Structure course on bridges: efficiency, economy, and elegance. The course includes iconic vaults such as the Pantheon, but students will primarily focus on post-Industrial Revolution examples in a variety of materials.
This course is made for a general audience, so you don’t need advanced math or engineering prerequisites to be able to fully participate.
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review the course content but it is no longer active.
Constitutional Interpretation
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 7 Weeks
Despite the Constitution’s lasting influence on American democracy, its actual meaning remains the subject of many debates. For instance, should the Constitution be read with the intent of its framers and ratifiers in mind? If so, what counts as their intent? And how can an interpreter avoid reading their own moral beliefs or political ideology into the Constitution?
In this class, students examine competing theories of, and approaches to, constitutional interpretation through lectures, Supreme Court cases, and related readings.
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review course content but it is no longer active.
Global History of Capitalism
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Free to enroll
Estimated time commitment: 6 Weeks
There’s been a boom of interest in learning about capitalism after the 2008 recession, and this course explains its history with nuance and complexity rather than “neat narratives.” Students look at capitalism through a global lens and examine its impact on local, national, regional, and international levels — as well as deeply related topics such as labor relations, migration, finance, war, and the environment.
Note: This course is archived, which means you can review course content but it is no longer active.
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