Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more colleges are offering courses for credit online for free through MOOC (massive open online course) providers. Many of these courses are part of larger degree programs at online and physical universities, designed to give students a taste of what it’s like to be involved with their full programs. These courses are a perfect way to see if you enjoy the learning style or subject offered as a full degree program at your university of choice.
Featured Programs
- MIT Supply Chain Fundamentals
- Coventry University Business Model Thinking
- University of Colorado Intro to Power Electronics
Disclaimer: Some courses may include an affiliate link. Courses were chosen first based on the methodology with affiliate links only added after the ranking was complete.
All of the courses on the list below are completely free for you to access as long as you have an internet connection, and are offered by some of the world’s preeminent universities. Upon completing these courses, you will receive college credit only if you enroll in some form of university or degree program. If you were planning on enrolling in a full program anyway, these courses could save you a significant amount of money. However, if you aren’t planning on enrolling, it’s still significant that you can take the same courses that other, paid students are taking for free on your own.
We’ve chosen these options using an exclusive methodology we use to find the top free online learning opportunities. If you want to see the wide variety of free courses you can take for college credit, keep reading the list below.
Featured Programs
Ranking 10 Free Online Courses for College Credit
1. Supply Chain Fundamentals
Hosted by edX, offered by MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the most prestigious universities in the USA. They only accept seven percent of applicants, so most people will never have the opportunity to attend the highly-regarded college. With edX, however, you have the opportunity to take courses at MIT without ever applying or attending. edX is one of the most well-known and accessible MOOC providers, connecting users to both free and paid courses that are partnered with prestigious institutions like MIT.
This best free course for college credit is part of the site’s business and management sphere, tackling fundamental concepts for logistics and supply chain management. This course is part of the larger degree program called “MITx MicroMasters Credential in Supply Chain Management,” which you can pursue if you find yourself deeply engaged in the course’s subject matter. During this 13-week course, you will learn the basics of the skills needed for supply chain management and logistics. The main topic areas covered during the course are demand forecasting, management, inventory planning, control, transportation planning, and execution. By the end of the course, you will feel confident in incorporating and managing uncertainty in supply chain management.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $299 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 13 weeks
Curriculum: Intermediate
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Partnered with MIT, one of the USA’s most prestigious universities
- Learn the fundamentals of supply chain management
Cons:
- Verified certificate costs $299
2. Business Model Thinking
Hosted by Future Learn, offered by Coventry University
If you want to turn your big ideas into real business plans, look no further than this free course from Future Learn. This course will teach you how to transform your ideas into something that can make a difference, and you’ll learn it all for free! Future Learn, like some of the other MOOC providers on this list, offers their course catalog on a rotating basis depending on the universities and institutions they are partnered with at the time. Future Learn is free to join, and most of their classes are free to enroll in and complete. This course will take you about two weeks to complete if you work at a pace of approximately three hours a week, and extra benefits like a certificate of achievement come at a $74 fee.
This top free course for college credit is taught by Muhammad Mustafa Kamal, an associate professor of supply chain management at Coventry University. The course is designed for those who want to move more into the business management sphere, especially those who want to have senior roles or work specifically with business ideas. By the end of the course, demonstrating business model thinking and justifying a business’s value will come easily to you, and you will feel confident working in business management.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $74 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 weeks
Curriculum: Intermediate
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn about higher-level business model thinking
- Great for those wanting to move into senior roles
Cons:
- Verified certificate costs $74
3. Advanced Operating Systems
Hosted by Udacity, Offered by Georgia Tech
Udacity is a MOOC platform that typically offers mostly paid courses, but this gem of a course from Georgia Tech is currently being offered for free. Udacity aims to connect students and professionals with the learning tools they need to further their careers, and the site primarily focuses on courses relating to professional skills, like coding, web development, and security. The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, cementing itself as one of the top technologically-focused universities in the USA. This Advanced Operating Systems course is part of Georgia Tech’s computer science program, and you should have some experience in either an OS course or within the OS field to take this course.
This five-week course features ten lessons that cover vital OS topics like OS structure, virtualization, distributed systems, internet-scale computing, and system recovery. The course is led by instructors Kishore Ramachandran and Charles Brubaker, who both teach at Georgia Tech. During this free course for college credit, you will explore all of the technological advancements that have led to the advanced operating systems we know today, and the course covers a variety of operating platforms including cell phones and cloud computing.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes
Time to Complete: Approximately 5 weeks
Curriculum: Advanced
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn about the operating systems advancements made through time
- Teaches you about cell phones as well as computers
Cons:
- Advanced material, requires some prerequisite learning
4. Introduction To Power Electronics
Hosted by Coursera, offered by University of Colorado Boulder
This electrical engineering course is offered by UC Boulder, a preeminent public research university in Colorado. Over 85,000 students have already enrolled in the course, and nearly 40% of the students who completed the course started a new career after finishing it. Additionally, about a quarter of the students who completed this course received some sort of tangible career benefit from completing it. Coursera is often noted as the most expansive and trusted MOOC platform, as they offer both individual courses and major degree programs through universities on a paid and free basis. They have thousands of courses to push your career or interests forward, and you will certainly walk away from a Coursera class with some tangible gain.
This engineering course takes about 12 hours to complete, and users will earn a shareable certificate upon completion that can easily be shared with employers or on a resume. This top free college credit course can be taken for academic credit for the CU Boulder course called ECEA 5700, which is part of the university’s masters degree in electrical engineering. By the time you’ve finished the course, you will have learned about the basic concepts of circuits and how to convert electrical power with high efficiency.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes
Time to Complete: Approximately 12 hours
Curriculum: Intermediate
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Part of CU Boulder’s electrical engineering program
- Learn about converting energy, circuits, etc.
Cons:
- The course is part of a masters program, requires some prerequisite knowledge
5. Programming For Data Science
Hosted by edX, offered by The University of Adelaide
Programming knowledge is absolutely essential for any kind of career in data science or data analysis, and this course from The University of Adelaide can help you get there. The course is part of what edX calls a MicroMasters program in Big Data, which means completing this class will bring you one step closer to getting a legitimate credential in a highly competitive field. As mentioned previously, edX is completely free to join, and courses on the site vary as to how much they cost and what institutions they are partnered with. Even if you find that the course is too difficult for you, it’s a great way to start on a path of success.
This online free course for college credit takes about ten weeks to complete if you work at a pace of between eight to ten hours a week. The course is instructed by three professors who work in the department of computer science at The University of Adelaide, and they are all more than qualified to teach you about big data. While a verified certificate does come at an additional cost of $199, you always have the option of purchasing one at the completion of your course.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $199 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 10 weeks
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Taught by three computer science professors
- Offers credentials in a field that’s extremely competitive
Cons:
- Certificate of achievement costs an additional $199
Featured Programs
6. What Makes An Effective Presentation?
Hosted by Future Learn, offered by Coventry University
This free online course from Future Learn and Coventry University is great for those who might already have a successful career in the business world and need a refresher on their public speaking and presentation skills. This course for college credit specifically focuses on how to give presentations in a business environment, so it’s perfect for those who have to do this in their everyday lives. Since Future Learn’s courses are on a rotating basis, now is the perfect time to start this class before you can’t! It only takes two weeks to complete if you work at a pace of about three hours a week, so you won’t need to dedicate too much time to it.
The course is taught by Andrew Preshous, who is an assistant professor in academic English at Coventry University. He is more than qualified to teach you how to improve your speaking and presentation skills, and by the end of the course, you will feel confident doing both of these things with ease. During your class, you will discover what elements make up a great presentation, develop strategies to improve your own presentations, assess the presentations of your coworkers and peers, and give your own mini-presentation to showcase what you have learned during the class.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $74 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 weeks
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Taught by a seasoned English professor
- Showcase your new skills with a mini-presentation
Cons:
- Certificate of achievement costs an additional $74
7. Measuring Disease in Epidemiology
Hosted by Coursera, offered by Imperial College London
This top free course for college credit, created by Imperial College London, is part of their Global Master of Public Health degree. Over 12,000 students have already enrolled in the course, with 10% getting some kind of tangible career benefit and 12% of students got some form of pay increase or promotion at work after completing the course. When you finish the course, you will receive a free shareable certificate that can be shared with potential employers or on professional networking sites like LinkedIn. This course is the first of three in a Coursera specialization on Epidemiology for Public Health, and takes about ten hours to complete.
This course offers flexible deadlines, so students are able to choose when they complete projects and major assignments to do the work on their own time. By the end of the class, you will be able to interpret the appropriate measures to describe disease symptoms, frequency, and risk for given scenarios and learn how to interpret positive and negative values in the context of a health screening. Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people working in epidemiological research is incredibly important.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes
Time to Complete: Approximately 10 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn about epidemiology, a skill that’s incredibly valuable right now
- Imperial College London is an advanced and prestigious institution
Cons:
- Background in health sciences would be useful to take the course, but not required
8. Designing and Leading Learning Systems
Hosted by edX, offered by the University of Michigan
This course is part of another one of edX’s MicroMasters programs, called Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement, and it was a finalist for the edX course prize in 2020. This course takes about eight weeks to complete if you work at a pace of between two and four hours a week, and you can add a verified certificate of achievement upon completion of the course for $199.
This free online course on education implores teachers to work with their students in new and exciting ways to create effective learning systems. If you are an educator who has been working in the field for some time and are looking for new ways to work with students, this course is for you. During the course, you will learn how to improve your educational practice and outcomes on a large scale spanning across many different classrooms, schools, and systems. The unique logics you will learn about include Shell enterprises, incubation enterprises, and evolutionary enterprises.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $199 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 8 weeks
Curriculum: Advanced
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn how to engage your students in new and exciting ways
- Offered by the University of Michigan, a prestigious research university
Cons:
- Certificate of achievement costs additional $199
9. What Does It Mean to Be Human? An Introduction to the Humanities
Hosted by Future Learn, offered by The University of Newcastle
If you’re interested in pursuing a degree in the humanities but aren’t quite sure of where to start or what to focus on, this course is perfect for you. “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” is an introduction to the humanities as a whole, imploring you to answer some of the big questions about being human. This course may not be around forever due to Future Learn’s rotating catalog, so make sure you take advantage of it now! The course is completely free to take and you can add extra benefits like a certificate of achievement for a $59 fee.
This free online course takes about three weeks to complete if you work at a pace of about three hours a week, so the workload is not incredibly intensive. During the class, you will learn about how humans acquire knowledge and how we learn to interpret the world around us. You’ll learn about how to think critically and ethically, helping you to tackle some of the world’s biggest moral debates.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $59 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 3 weeks
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn about some of humanity’s biggest questions and debates
- Prepares you to tackle the humanities using your own set of skills
Cons:
- Certificate of achievement costs additional $59
10. An Introduction to Physical Health Assessment
Hosted by Future Learn, offered by Coventry University
This free online course from Future Learn is part of one of their larger programs called Principles of Physical Health Assessment, which provides students with some of the building blocks that can lead to a successful career in nursing. Over 3,000 students are enrolled in this course so far, which was graciously provided by Coventry University in England.
During the course, you will discover physical health-related topics like doing consultations and taking patients’ history, critical analysis, decision making, and how to properly document a health assessment. You will also be introduced to how to conduct a consultation and how to perform a head-to-toe analysis. By the end of the class, you will be able to properly justify the process of a physical examination and feel comfortable performing one.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes (With $74 fee)
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 weeks
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Learn about why physical examinations are necessary
- Gain the first building blocks needed for a nursing career
Cons:
- Certificate of achievement costs additional $74
Frequently Asked Questions About Free Online Courses for College Credit
Many students might wonder: how can I possibly do a free online course and receive college credit for it? This is certainly a fair question, it seems crazy! However, it is very possible and very doable. As stated earlier, in order to actually get tangible credit for the online courses you take, you must enroll in some type or degree program at a university, whether that be an associate, bachelor’s, or master’s degree. If you weren’t planning on enrolling in a university, you still have the opportunity to take courses for free that other students pay hundreds to take. This is an amazing opportunity that you should jump on!
Even so, taking an online college-level course can be scary, and you probably have questions. This is why we’ve outlined the following section, which is designed to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about free online courses for college credit.
Who Should Take A Free Online Course for College Credit?
Ideally, if you want to take a free online course for college credit, you are a student already enrolled in some two or four-year degree program, whether that’s at a university in-person or online. This way, you can seamlessly transfer the credit from your online course to your college without having to worry about enrolling in a new degree program.
Additionally, though, free online courses for college credit can be applicable to anyone, not just college students. One of the great things about these courses is that you will be learning something for free that other people pay a lot of money to learn at their university. This could be a great opportunity to learn a new skill or side hustle, even if it isn’t what you want to pursue in your primary career path.
How Long Do Free Online Courses for College Credit Take?
Since these courses are designed to count for college credit as part of a major degree program, many of them are created with the typical college semester in mind. This being said, these courses could take a few weeks or a few months depending on the skill level needed to complete them and the prerequisites you need to enroll. Most courses that are designed to fulfill a college-level requirement will take you a few months to complete, provided you work at a pace of a few hours every week.
Are Free Online Courses for College Credit Difficult?
Since the courses on this list are designed to be taken at the college level, most of them are relatively difficult to complete. Many of these courses are higher-level requirements, some of them even in the 5000 level. They are designed to be taken while in the pursuit of masters degrees, so you certainly won’t find them easy to complete. While these courses might be difficult, you will reap a valuable reward for your hard week. Completing college credits for free online can save you thousands of dollars as opposed to a traditional degree, so think about that while you might struggle to complete work.
Some other courses, like public speaking courses, however, you might find to be incredibly relaxing to take and they act as a nice reprieve from your day.
Are Free Online Courses for College Credit Worth It?
If there are any free online courses that are worth your time, it’s those that can count for college credit. These courses not only save you money by being free themselves, but they also save you money on your degree by allowing you to obtain credits without enrolling in expensive traditional college courses. Truly, the only thing you stand to lose when taking a free online course for college credit is your time. Even if you don’t fully complete the course, you will surely take some tangible learning benefit away from even attempting to complete it. We assure you, however, that with any of the courses on the list above, you will not be throwing away your precious time.
Disclaimer: Some courses may include an affiliate link. Courses were chosen first based on the methodology with affiliate links only added after the ranking was complete.
You may also enjoy: