Free Self-Education Resources Online: A Subject-by-Subject Guide

If you want to teach yourself a subject online for free, start with a handful of proven sources: MIT OpenCourseWare and Open Yale Courses for university lectures, Khan Academy for maths and science foundations, the Open University's OpenLearn for short structured courses, Purdue OWL for writing, Project Gutenberg and The Online Books Page for free books, and the Internet Archive for almost everything else.

This guide grew from a famous 2010 list by Marc Chernoff of Marc and Angel Hack Life, which gathered "12 dozen" places to learn online and was widely shared in 2014. We have kept its subject-by-subject structure but rewritten every entry: what the resource is, who runs it, what it is good for and, where it matters, whether it still exists. More than a decade is a long time online. Some of the original sites have closed, merged or moved behind paywalls, and a few have been replaced by something better.

One idea from the original list holds up well: nobody can learn for you. Classrooms help, but the people who keep learning after school are the ones who choose what to study, plan time for it and practise. The resources below are the raw material. The last section explains how to turn them into a plan you will actually follow.

University courses and lecture archives

Open courseware is the closest thing to sitting in on a real university class. Most of it comes without grades or certificates, which is exactly what makes it free and open to everyone.

MIT OpenCourseWare – MIT began publishing course materials in 2002 and now shares more than 2,500 courses, including engineering and computer science, history, writing and the business courses of the Sloan School of Management. Many include full video lectures, problem sets and exams with solutions. No sign-up is needed.

Open Yale Courses – Complete introductory Yale courses, filmed in real classrooms, covering English literature, philosophy, psychology, history, economics and the sciences. Every lecture has video, audio and a transcript. The catalogue is no longer expanding, but its lectures are among the best free teaching online.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare – Lecture slides and notes from courses in epidemiology, biostatistics, global health and health policy. It is particularly useful for anyone curious about how disease is studied at population level.

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative – Self-paced courses designed with learning scientists, with built-in practice and instant feedback. Some courses are free for independent learners, while others are licensed to institutions. The design research behind OLI is a good example of how online courses can be built to teach, not just to present.

Notre Dame OpenCourseWare – A smaller collection of open materials from the University of Notre Dame, strong in theology, philosophy and the humanities.

UCI Open (UC Irvine) – UC Irvine's open courseware site, with lecture videos and materials in business, social science, physics, chemistry and more. It is now branded UCI Open.

OpenLearn – The free platform of the UK's Open University, launched in 2006. It offers hundreds of short courses across arts and humanities, science, money and health, many with a free statement of participation. Its courses are written by distance-learning specialists, so they work well for independent study.

Wikiversity – A Wikimedia Foundation project where volunteers build learning materials and study projects, organised into schools such as mathematics, social sciences and computer science. Quality varies from page to page, as with any open wiki, so check sources.

VideoLectures.NET – An archive of talks from academic conferences and summer schools, run from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia. Its computer science and machine-learning sections are the deepest; it also has mathematics and business talks.

United Nations University – UNU's research institutes publish lectures, policy briefs and course materials on sustainability, peace, governance and development, the areas that matter to the UN's own work.

BYU Independent Study – Brigham Young University offers a number of free short courses alongside its paid ones, especially in family history, family life, personal development and religious study.

Oxford Mathematics – The University of Oxford's maths department replaced its old open courseware pages with public video, published through its website and YouTube channel, that includes full undergraduate lecture courses and public lectures.

OpenStax (successor to Connexions) – Connexions, Rice University's platform for sharing small learning modules, evolved into OpenStax, which publishes peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks. The textbooks are free to read online or download.

University lecture sites that have closed or changed

• webcast.berkeley – UC Berkeley removed public access to its lecture videos in 2017. Many were preserved by volunteers on the Internet Archive.
• UC San Diego podcast lectures – these were always meant for enrolled students and are no longer open to the public.
• Tufts, Utah State, University of Utah, UMass Boston, Capilano and Southern Queensland open courseware – most of these early sites have been retired or archived; search each university's current website for open materials.
• Harvard Medical School Open Courseware – replaced in practice by free-to-audit HarvardX courses on edX.
• Boston College Front Row – BC's archive of filmed events; many recordings now sit on the college's YouTube channels.
• Academic Earth and Free-Ed – early lecture directories; Academic Earth now mainly promotes paid online degrees.

Science, health and mathematics

Khan Academy – The non-profit started by Sal Khan now has many thousands of videos and practice exercises, from basic arithmetic to differential equations, plus physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. Its mastery system shows exactly which skills you have practised. Everything is free, without adverts.

HowStuffWorks – Founded in 1998 by Marshall Brain, HowStuffWorks explains science and technology in a friendly, readable style. It is ideal for curiosity-driven reading; follow up with a textbook when you want rigour.

Wolfram Demonstrations Project – Thousands of small interactive models, contributed by teachers and researchers, that show mathematical and scientific ideas in motion. Many run in a browser; others need Wolfram's free player.

Science.gov – A single search engine for research and reports from more than a dozen U.S. federal science agencies. It is useful when you want to see what government scientists have actually published on a topic.

Scitable – A free library from Nature Education covering genetics, cell biology, evolution and ecology, written by scientists at roughly first-year university level.

Geology.com – Articles, maps and images about rocks, minerals, volcanoes, earthquakes and earth science. It is clear and well illustrated, though it does carry advertising.

EnviroLink Network – One of the oldest environmental websites, run by a non-profit since 1991. It is best used as a directory of environmental organisations and news.

The Science Forum – A discussion forum where members debate scientific questions. Forums are good for testing your understanding, but treat answers as opinions to check rather than settled facts.

Math.com – Basic lessons, formulas and practice from arithmetic through algebra and geometry. The design is dated, but the explanations are still sound for refreshing school maths.

Science and maths portals that have closed or gone quiet

• AMSER (Applied Math and Science Education Repository) and the National Science Digital Library – both were funded U.S. portals that are no longer maintained. Use OER Commons for similar teaching resources.
• Intute – the UK's university-reviewed web directory, including its mathematics and law sections, closed in 2011 when its funding ended.
• Whatcom Online Math Center, LearningScience.org and the Free Science and Video Lectures Online blog – small collections that have not been kept up to date.

Computer science and programming

W3Schools – Short, example-based tutorials for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Python and more, with an in-browser editor to try code immediately. It is excellent for quick reference; pair it with official documentation for depth.

FreeComputerBooks.com and FreeTechBooks.com – Two directories of legally free textbooks and lecture notes on programming, algorithms, mathematics and engineering. They are a good way to find a complete textbook for a self-study course.

Home and Learn – Free beginner courses in programming languages and office software, written in a patient step-by-step style for people with no experience.

dblp computer science bibliography – The old Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies from Karlsruhe has largely been overtaken by dblp, a free index of millions of computer science publications maintained by Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany. Use it to find the papers behind a topic you are studying.

University library subject guides – The original list included computer science guides from the University at Albany and the University of Maine's Fogler Library. Most university libraries publish guides like these; they are reliable starting points because librarians maintain them.

Lifehacker's "Programmer 101" – A 2009 article collecting beginner programming resources. Many of its links have aged; today a free curriculum such as freeCodeCamp or Harvard's CS50 on edX does the same job better.

Two programming resources from the original list have closed: Google Code University, which Google retired in favour of its Google for Education pages, and the tutorials forum of Dream.In.Code, a once-busy programming community.

Business, money and law

Business and personal finance

Investopedia – A large free dictionary and set of tutorials on investing, markets and personal finance. Its plain definitions of financial terms are especially useful for beginners.

U.S. Small Business Administration learning platform – Free self-paced courses on planning, launching, financing and managing a small business. Most modules are short enough to finish in a lunch break.

My Own Business Institute – A free online course on starting and running a business, covering business plans, accounting, marketing, insurance and e-commerce. It is now hosted by Santa Clara University.

Free Management Library – Carter McNamara's huge library of articles on leadership, planning, nonprofit management and organisational development. The free "Micro-eMBA" programme from the original list grew out of this site.

Bookboon – Once known for free, advert-supported student textbooks in PDF form. It has since shifted towards paid workplace learning, so check what is still free before you register.

Small Business Development Centers – The Kutztown University centre in the original list belongs to a nationwide U.S. network. Your nearest SBDC offers free advice and low-cost workshops, which often teach more than any online course.

The Financial Management Training Center and TheStreet University appeared in the original list too; both have faded or moved, and Investopedia covers the same ground more reliably.

Law

Duke Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain – Founded by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, the centre publishes free books and comics on copyright and the public domain, including the textbook Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society. It is a rare chance to read a current law textbook at no cost.

Harvard Law School – Public lectures, panels and conference talks are posted on the school's video channels. They are good for seeing how leading lawyers think about current events.

Law school podcasts – American University, Lewis & Clark and Case Western Reserve once published lecture podcasts. Many law schools now share talks on YouTube instead, and the format is a gentle introduction to legal thinking.

MoneyInstructor – Lessons and worksheets on money skills and business basics, mainly for teachers and younger learners.

Stanford Law's courses on iTunes U and a North Carolina Wesleyan constitutional-law course page have both disappeared. For U.S. constitutional law today, the National Constitution Center's free Interactive Constitution is a strong replacement.

History, writing and languages

History and culture

A Biography of America – A 26-part video course from Annenberg Learner that presents U.S. history as a story told by historians, not a list of dates. It is free to stream.

Digital History – A free online American history textbook from the University of Houston, with primary sources, timelines and teaching guides.

The USGenWeb Project – A volunteer network, running since 1996, that organises free genealogy records and guides by U.S. state and county.

MacroHistory and World Report – Frank E. Smitha's long-running survey of world history from prehistory onwards. It is readable and broad; check its claims against academic sources when it matters.

Biography.com – Short profiles of historical and contemporary figures. Good for a first overview of a person before you read a full biography.

HyperHistory and Have Fun with History – Older timeline and American-history sites from the original list. They are now rarely updated; Digital History and Khan Academy's history courses are better maintained.

The University of Washington's OpenUW history courses have been discontinued.

Writing and communication

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) – The best-known free writing resource on the web, covering grammar, research and citation styles such as APA and MLA. Students all over the world rely on it.

Merriam-Webster – America's oldest dictionary publisher offers its dictionary and thesaurus free online, along with short articles on word usage.

The Craft of Scientific Writing – Michael Alley, author of the Penn State writing guidelines for engineering and science students, continues to share his advice on clear technical writing and presentations.

Guide to Grammar and Writing – A classic grammar site from Capital Community College in Connecticut, with lessons and quizzes. Parts survive in archived form.

Two writing resources have ended. National Novel Writing Month, the non-profit behind the November challenge to write 50,000 words, closed in 2025, although writers still run the challenge informally. The Lifewriting class pages are also no longer online.

Languages

American Sign Language Browser – Michigan State University's video dictionary of individual signs. Use it alongside a structured class, ideally one taught by Deaf instructors.

Radio Lingua – The publisher of One Minute Languages and the Coffee Break series of podcasts, which teach Spanish, French, Italian, German and other languages in short episodes.

Mango Languages – A paid language course that many public libraries offer free to card holders. Ask at your library before paying.

BBC Languages was archived in 2011, Livemocha shut down in 2016, and Learn10 has disappeared. Duolingo is the most popular free alternative.

Free books and reading lists

Project Gutenberg – Founded by Michael Hart in 1971, it is the oldest digital library and now offers more than 70,000 free e-books, mostly public-domain classics. Availability depends on copyright law in your country.

The Online Books Page – A University of Pennsylvania index, edited by John Mark Ockerbloom, of millions of free books and serials available elsewhere online. It is the best place to check whether a particular older book can be read legally for free.

ManyBooks, Planet eBook and E-Books Directory – Friendlier storefronts for free classics and openly licensed books, in formats for e-readers and phones.

Bartleby.com – Classic reference works, poetry and fiction anthologies, including Bartlett's quotations and the Harvard Classics.

Loyal Books – The new name of Books Should Be Free, offering public-domain audiobooks, many recorded by LibriVox volunteers.

Goodreads and LibraryThing – Social catalogues for tracking what you read and finding your next book through other readers' shelves.

The Personal MBA reading list – Josh Kaufman's curated list of business books for people who want to learn management without a business-school degree.

Book TV – C-SPAN2's weekend programme of non-fiction author interviews and talks, with a large free video archive.

Scribd – A document-sharing site that now operates mainly as a subscription library; some uploaded documents remain free to read.

Smaller book sites in the original list, such as Textbook Revolution, BookYards, Read Print, Public Literature, Full Books, Get Free Ebooks, Bibliomania and Classic Reader, have closed, stalled or become hard to use. Project Gutenberg and The Online Books Page cover nearly all of their content.

Archives, broadcasters and directories

Internet Archive – A non-profit digital library of books, films, audio, software and archived web pages, including copies of many of the defunct sites mentioned in this guide.

Library of Congress digital collections – The successor to the American Memory project, with millions of photographs, maps, manuscripts and recordings, including the Built in America collection of historic building surveys.

U.S. National Archives and DocsTeach – The National Archives preserves federal records, from military service files to founding documents. Its DocsTeach site turns primary sources into ready-made lessons.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information – The National Climatic Data Center from the original list merged into NCEI in 2015. It holds the U.S. archive of weather and climate records.

September 11 Digital Archive – Collected by George Mason University's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and the American Social History Project, it preserves first-hand stories, emails and images from the 2001 attacks.

The Rosetta Project – A Long Now Foundation effort to document all of the world's languages, famous for a nickel disk micro-etched with more than 1,000 languages.

U.S. Census Bureau – Beyond statistics, it publishes data visualisations, historical photos and teaching materials through its Statistics in Schools programme.

NOVA – PBS's science series, on air since 1974, with many episodes and articles free online.

BBC Bitesize – The BBC's learning output, once branded BBC Learning, is now concentrated in Bitesize, which covers the UK school curriculum and adult basics.

CBC Archives – Thousands of radio and television clips covering Canadian history and culture.

Discovery, History and The Weather Channel – Their websites mostly promote programmes today, but Discovery Education, History's classroom resources and weather.com's explainers still contain free material.

Google Scholar – A search engine for academic papers, theses and books. Many results link to free versions; look for "PDF" or "All versions".

Open Education Global – The OpenCourseWare Consortium from the original list became the Open Education Consortium and is now Open Education Global, a network of institutions that publish open materials.

YouTube – The old YouTube EDU portal is gone, but universities, museums and scientists publish huge amounts of lecture and explainer content on their own channels.

TED – Short talks by researchers, artists and practitioners, best used to discover topics that you then study properly elsewhere.

Several directories and archives from the original list no longer exist: Fathom, Columbia University's e-learning venture, closed in 2003; the ResearchChannel stopped broadcasting around 2010; iTunes U ended in 2022; and About U, LearnHub, iBerry and the Self Made Scholar directory have all gone offline.

How to build your own free curriculum

Lists are inspiring, but they can also become a trap: collecting links feels like learning. Research on large online courses shows how common that trap is. A 2019 study in Science by Justin Reich and José Ruipérez-Valiente found that only a small share of people who enrolled in MIT and Harvard courses on edX completed them. Here is a simple structure that helps.

1. Choose one question. "How does the immune system work?" or "Can I build a simple website?" is easier to pursue than "learn biology".
2. Pick a spine. Use one main course or textbook, such as an MIT or Yale course, an OpenLearn course or an OpenStax book, and finish it.
3. Add practice. Do the problem sets, write summaries, build small projects. Retrieval practice, testing yourself instead of rereading, is one of the best-supported study techniques in learning research.
4. Space it out. Short sessions spread over weeks beat cramming.
5. Get feedback. Forums, study groups or a knowledgeable friend can tell you what you are missing.
6. Check dates. In fast-moving fields such as medicine, law, finance and programming, older free material can be out of date. Look for when it was written.

Free resources will not give you a licence to practise medicine or law, and some employers do want formal credentials. But for curiosity, career change, catching up on school subjects or simply understanding the news better, everything you need is here and costs nothing but time.

Sources: original list by Marc Chernoff, Marc and Angel Hack Life, republished by The Mind Unleashed; MIT OpenCourseWare: About; Project Gutenberg: About; The Online Books Page; Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente, "The MOOC pivot", Science (2019).

Related:

• List of 40 FREE Educational Websites
• Free books: 100 legal sites to download literature
• 135 Self-Education Resources For Lifelong Learners
• 300+ Mind Expanding Documentaries
• How I Learned to Read 300 Percent Faster in 20 Minutes
• Work Less and Do More by Applying the Pareto Principle to Your Task List
• MOTIVATION: 15 Best Socrates Picture Quotes
• The Three Filters: A Story Attributed to Socrates
• Top 10 Inspirational Quotes Worthy of Your Refrigerator
• A Quote Gallery for Reflection and Conversation
• 25 Life Changing Lessons to Learn from Buddha
• 25 Life Lessons from Albert Einstein
• Albert Einstein - How I See the World
• Leonardo da Vinci's Letter Offering His Skills to a Patron
• 10 Unbelievable Facts You Didn't Know About Nikola Tesla
• Artists’ and Writers’ Workspaces in Thirty-Eight Photographs
• The Quantum Activist: Amit Goswami’s View of Consciousness
• It will take just 1 minute to read this and change your thinking.