Hacking Your Education - How you can learn useful things for free

I don't know about you, but I love spending these hot days reading, writing and studying in general. If I'm not working or reading a book or a blog, I spend my time on various online learning platforms.

As an anarchist I believe in people. I believe that anyone is and should be able to take his or her education in their own hands. And it's never been easier.

Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.
- Peter Thiel

Nowadays, you can get education in much more effective and cheaper ways than before. And we're just starting to realize that. (Democratic) Socialists don't really want free education, they want free indoctrination. That's why I've chosen my own path years ago, the one where I'll actually be able to learn things on my own. The things that are truly useful.

1. Coursera

When Coursera was just getting started a few years ago, it raised many eyebrows. Project that was started by two Stanford professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, got a lot of attention from the very beginning.

Koller noted that around 70 percent of students with a Coursera credential list it on their LinkedIn profiles.

Why would anyone start something like that? Why would they make the top quality education available on the Internet? For free? What? The thing that makes Coursera different than most of other similar projects is that the courses are made by the professors from the prestigious universities. 

Also, those classes contain many additional things like exams, homeworks and discussions. Right now, there are 1981 free classes from 145 universities. Topics vary from economics, medicine, IT to law.

So where's the catch? Is it really free? Yes. Only if you want to get the official university certificates you need to pay something. Same goes for various packages of courses, specializations. Otherwise, you'll get a Coursera certificate for most of the classes if you have successfully finished them.

2. Khan academy

The story of Khan academy is really interesting and inspirational. The founder of this organization, Salman Khan, started the whole project on YouTube, years ago. He wanted to be able to tutor his cousin over the Internet, so he started recording videos, but in a very specific way.

“YouTube? YouTube was for cats playing the piano, not serious mathematics,” Khan recalls thinking.

What people have always liked about his approach was that they felt like he was right next to them, they could easily relate to the content. They liked it so much, Sal decided to quit as hedge fond analyst and give everything he's got to this project.

The interesting thing about Khan academy is that it starts from the very basics. You can find material for every generation, even the preschool children. Also, Sal takes part in almost every video which makes them even more personal.

3. MIT OpenCourseWare

At MIT OCW, you can get a ton of materials from MIT classes for free. It's very useful for engineers of any kind but also it's awesome for anyone who loves math and physics.

Why wouldn't you learn math from the legendary professors like Gilbert Strang? I personally went through Calculus One before getting to college, it was extremely helpful. There are many inspirational stories related to this site.

The story that stands out is definitely this one. Scott Young was able to finish 4-year MIT Bachelors degree in a year, and he spent only $2000 for all the materials (which helped him to save almost 99% of the price). He spent money only on the books, everything else was completely free.

In 2012, I decided to try to learn MIT’s 4-year undergraduate computer science curriculum in 12 months, without taking any classes. I was successful in passing the final exams for 33 classes and completing the required programming projects.
- Scott Young

4. Quora

Here is something for those who are not able to spend a lot of time on studying, but want to learn a bunch of interesting things. Quora is a Q&A platform and what makes it different from other similar platform is the quality of content.

For example, I found this answer from Elon Musk's ex wife extremely inspirational:

 “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson?”

… Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things. Extreme success is different from what I suppose you could just consider ‘success’, so know that you don’t have to be Richard or Elon to be affluent and accomplished and maintain a great lifestyle. Your odds of happiness are better that way. But if you’re extreme, you must be what you are, which means that happiness is more or less beside the point. These people tend to be freaks and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way. They developed strategies to survive, and as they grow older they find ways to apply these strategies to other things, and create for themselves a distinct and powerful advantage. They don’t think the way other people think. They see things from angles that unlock new ideas and insights. Other people consider them to be somewhat insane.  …

To see more click here.

5. BONUS: Mises.org library for everyone who's interested in economics

If Einstein had access to this library, maybe he would understand economics better. :)