10 Free University Courses on iTunes

We haven’t talked about the uni­verse of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts in some time. So let’s get back to it.Below, we have high­light­ed ten full-fledged cours­es from top flight uni­ver­si­ties. All of these cours­es can be down­loaded to your iPod for free. That’s a price that you can’t beat. (You can see our com­plete col­lec­tion of free online cours­es here.)

1. Euro­pean His­to­ry from the Renais­sance to the Present (UC Berke­ley)

“This course is an intro­duc­tion to Euro­pean his­to­ry from around 1500 to the present. The cen­tral ques­tions that it address­es are how and why Europe–a small, rel­a­tive­ly poor, and polit­i­cal­ly frag­ment­ed place–became the motor of glob­al­iza­tion and a world civ­i­liza­tion in its own right.”

–Thomas Laque­ur, Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry

2. Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

Even in a glob­al­ized world, peo­ple con­tin­ue to be joined togeth­er and divid­ed asun­der by the lan­guages they speak, the reli­gions they fol­low, and the eth­nic iden­ti­ties to which they belong. This map-inten­sive course exam­ines every world region, seek­ing to under­stand how places vary from each oth­er with regard to the cul­tur­al attrib­ut­es of their inhab­i­tants. (Note: This course is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments.)

–Mar­tin Lewis, Lec­tur­er in His­to­ry, Inter­im Direc­tor, Pro­gram in Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions

3. Old Eng­lish in Con­text (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty)

A four lec­ture mini-course on how Eng­lish became Eng­lish dur­ing the medieval peri­od.

–Dr Stu­art Lee, OUCS

4. Physics for Future Pres­i­dents (UC Berke­ley)

This course gives you the physics you need to know to be a pres­i­dent, Supreme Court jus­tice, diplo­mat, busi­ness­man, lawyer, foot­ball coach, or oth­er world leader.

–Richard Muller, Pro­fes­sor of Physics.

NOTE: Tthe same course hap­pens also to appear on Google Video. Sim­ply go to Google Video and per­form a search with the fol­low­ing key­words: physics 10 berke­ley.

5. Quan­tum Mechan­ics (UC Davis)

If Physics for Future Pres­i­dents is too basic for you, you can get into some more heavy duty sci­ence right here.

–John Tern­ing, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Physics

6. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and sim­i­lar­i­ties — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

–Thomas Shee­han, Pro­fes­sor of Reli­gious Stud­ies and Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Phi­los­o­phy

7. Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty)

This course demys­ti­fies com­put­ers and the Inter­net (along with their jar­gon) so that stu­dents under­stand not only what they can do with each, but also how each works and why.

–David Malan, Instruc­tor

8. Entre­pre­neur­ship and Busi­ness Plan­ning (Carnegie Mel­lon)

This class par­al­lels a course being offered at Carnegie Mel­lon. It cov­ers the ins-and-outs of start­ing a new ven­ture, look­ing at how to devel­op ideas for new com­pa­nies, write busi­ness plans, cre­ate teams. It also looks at typ­i­cal b‑school top­ics: mar­ket­ing, com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy, sales, pric­ing, fund­ing and finance.

–Mark Juliano, Adjunct Pro­fes­sor

9. The Lit­er­a­ture of Cri­sis (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

In look­ing at great works by Pla­to, Sopho­cles, Shake­speare, Vergil, and Voltaire, this course explores crises that change the course of indi­vid­u­als and larg­er cul­tures.

–Marsh McCall, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics

–Mar­tin Evans, Pro­fes­sor in Eng­lish

10. Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film (UC Berke­ley)

The course looks at efforts “to rein­ter­pret the Judeo/Christian God, and to deter­mine in what sense God is still a liv­ing God.” Along the way it looks at “Dostoyevsky’s and Kierkegaard’s attempts to pre­serve a non-the­o­log­i­cal ver­sion of the God of Chris­tian­i­ty, as well as Nietzsche’s attempt to save us from belief in any ver­sion of God offered by our tra­di­tion.” Films also get dis­cussed here.

–Hubert Drey­fus, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy

If you know of oth­er good cours­es avail­able via pod­cast, please email us and let us know.