No sooner do I post my review of some of the shortcomings of MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, and today I see an article that Yale is providing full video courses online! No, I’m not nearly as powerful as I sound. They are starting out with 7 of their most popular classes and expanding to 30 over the next couple years. From the article:

“Diana E. E. Kleiner, Dunham Professor of the History of Art and Classics and the director of the project, noted that the full content of all the courses is now readily available online and may be accessed at the users\’ convenience. ‘We wanted everyone to be able to see and hear each lecture as if they were sitting in the classroom … We hope this ongoing project will benefit countless people around the world.'”

The 7 courses they will start with are:

• Astronomy 160: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics, with Professor Charles Bailyn
• English 310: Modern Poetry, with Professor Langdon Hammer
• Philosophy 176: Death, with Professor Shelly Kagan
• Physics 200: Fundamentals of Physics, with Professor Ramamurti Shankar
• Political Science 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy, with Professor Steven Smith
• Psychology 110: Introduction to Psychology, with Professor Paul Bloom
• Religious Studies 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), with Professor Christine Hayes

You can debate whether these schools are doing this ot of educational philanthropy or to increase brand awareness among the international and the socially conscious, but either way, it’s a great resource for everyone!