An education for free
Obtaining an education is a highly sought after quest that a large number of parents desire for their offspring. However with life, short as it is, intertwined and forever progressing with the meandering path of time, an education can easily be missed.
Learning in the traditional sense of primary, secondary and tertiary education; some certificates and a degree by the time you're 22 can be unhelpful to a surprising number of students.
Whether they're pressured into the wrong field by external factors (read: parents); study something they end up having nothing to do with after graduating (see me), or perhaps deciding later on in life that they wish they had stayed in school rather than leaving early. There seem to always be people whose education did not sufficiently prepare them for the path in life they ended up travelling.
Is there no recourse?
Actually there is. Some people decide to become mature students; indeed there were a couple of students partaking in my degree who had decided to do such a thing.
I however, have stumbled upon something almost entirely different, with one of the most appealing offers in the world; it's all for free.
Enter edX, a collaborative effort between some of the most well known and respected universities in North America to offer free education in a number of subjects to prospective students. Presently offering nine courses I have opted to take two of them; to fill in some of the gaps in the self taught nature of my prior education and to offer me knowledge I may use in future.
- CS50x offered by Harvard
- 6.00x offered by MIT
It is my hope that I'll learn python to a reasonable and practical level as well as boost my web development skills to higher levels. Since they are free courses there is no financial incentive to study requiring me to motivate myself. However the passion I have for all things tech seems to be enough to get me through them in conjunction with work and other responsibilities for the time being.
Give their free education a go and learn something new! You never know where it might take you.
