Over the past few years there has been a shift in the way people approach education. Abundant education is now easy to access and offers motivated individuals a chance to learn. Stanford, MIT, Yale and other venerable institutions offer free online courses. As a masters student in real estate, this gives me the opportunity to supplement my course work with additional problem sets, tests, and lectures.
MIT has over 1900 courses available on their OpenCourseWare website. Courses are broken down by audio/video, translated, and new courses. By navigating to the Sloan School of Management section I see they offer the course material from a number of their real estate classes including; 2008 Real Estate Economics, 2006 Real Estate Finance and Investments, 2007 Real Estate Capital Markets, and the 2007 Advanced Topics in Real Estate Finance course. Each link allows you to download the course materials, including power point lectures, problem sets, and exams.
Click here to view all the Universities that offer free online courses, the list includes my alma mater Tufts University.
Although MIT and a few other schools have their own website for online courses, many programs make their courses and lectures available through iTunes U. Open the iTunes Store and search iTunes U. Click on power search to search within iTunes U. Searching “Real Estate” results in 108 different audio and video clips. These clips include a number of talks by Robert Shiller, a lecture by Larry Silverstein at NYU Law School, and lectures from the Haas School of Business.
The fact that many top Universities now offer free online courses has spurred a discussion as to whether or not the cost of education is worth it. I personally believe that there is no substitute to the college experience. The on-campus activities, the student groups, the parties, study abroad, and the friendships you develop over 4 years are irreplaceable. Much of my development over 4 years of college came outside the classroom.
Do you think free online courses will change the way students approach education?
If you want to read more about this topic I highly recommend Seth Godin’s post, Education at the Crossroads.
Similar Posts:
- Columbia University Real Estate Finance on iTunes
- Josh Kahr’s Columbia University Real Estate Finance Course Now Available on Vimeo
- The University of Wisconsin Graaskamp Center For Real Estate Undergraduate Review
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