Thanks to a bunch of forward thinking institutions with their ultimate demonstration of The Right to Education you don’t have to be rich to have access to a good education. You just need to have the drive and motivation!

A formal university education is in fact one sure fire way of giving you years of debt.

The outcome of a formal education? You’re employable in your specific field.

Whether as a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or engineer… You may make six figures after 15-20yrs of service. The finance industry might offer more for selling your soul.

In any case, you’re in the rat race.

That is not to say that a university education isn’t important. It is paramount for professions in medicine, engineering, or similar where technical understanding is crucial to being able to perform.

Whatever your point of view on further education, we have researched all the ways you can learn without having to pay a fortune. You can become an expert in any field if you spend enough time reading on the subject matter of interest.

It is never too late to learn!

There are resources available to anyone with a willingness to learn. Below is a comprehensive list of websites that offer free education, some with a small fee to provide a certificate of that education.

1. MIT Online Courses  This is one of my favourite FREE online course libraries with tons of university standard courses. MIT stands for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the top technology universities in the United States.

2. Coursera A vast collection of courses from the likes of highly regarded institutions Stanford, Penn and University of Michigan in the USA, and universities from around the world including Zurich, Melbourne, and Hong Kong.

3. TED Talks A fantastic website full of richly inspiring talks from some of the world’s most inspiring people. Start your education into the wealth of this website with The Most Popular TED Talks of All Time. You’ll be hooked!

4. EdX With partners including Imperial College, Oxford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, TUDelft, Kyoto, IIT Bombay (the list goes on), this website can give you certificates on completion of a course.

5. Udemy Another source of various topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle and more.

6. WikiHow Provider of a pictorial overview in answer to most of your questions.

7. DuoLingo Bite-sized daily language lessons that you can tailor to your starting proficiency.

8. Tutorials Point A large database of computational skill development covering web developments, scripts, programming, java technologies and much more! It has also diversified it’s scope with the random inclusion of sport and history.

9. Project Gutenburg A website full of free e-book downloads with a vast collection of all time classic books like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Can you recommend any good online resources / courses you’ve recently taken?

Please share in the comments section below! #Education #Learning #Engineering

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