You can get a free education online if you have a good computer and a good internet connection, and if you have the self-discipline to study as much as you can, - plus some means of paying for your meals and accommodations at home. You can learn whatever you want to learn! You don't have to go over the ocean to North America, you can get a free education online, even if you live in Tanzania! You don't need the expenses of travel and the living in a foreign country, to get your education.
Many young people from African and Asian countries have this underlying idea that they will not get a worth while career education unless they go far away to America to study at a big name university. But if you are desperate, or hungry enough, and know how to do some simple internet searches, you will discover that you have many options.
Most of the universities are now offering some, if not all their courses as free education online. In some cases, they will not give you a degree or diploma, others do, and if the institution's website that you choose does not, there are other places that will allow you to write general knowledge exams (after you have studied the subject carefully) and they will grant you recognition based on how you perform on the exams.
If you study biographies, you'll notice that all the famous smart people of the world history have been people who knew how to teach themselves what they wanted to know. You follow in their footsteps if you can do this.
Exactly because there is so very much offered out there, you will have to narrow down your fields of research. Ask yourself these questions;
1. Is it the knowledge or the degree I need most?
2. What courses are required for the career or purposes for my future? (That may be hard if you are too vague about the work you will do later).
3. What learning style suits me best? Video lectures, reading and studying books, hands-on -projects to apply what I learn right away?
4. If I'm expected to pay tuition fees, can I quailfy for student scholarships, grants, or loans?
If it is the knowledge you need, so you can use it for a career where you willl be your own boss, then a paper degree can be incidental. If you are planning to get a job where a degree is a basic requirement, then of course, you need to fulfill all the requirements for the degree.
Should you be planning your own business career, free education online is perfect for you. Take the courses, watch the videos so you know how to do the work you hope to be doing, and then find ways to practice those skills until you excel at them. You might even feel you can skip the exams.
Learning styles vary from person to person. If you just need to see it done once, and then you can go use the information, videos will be your preferred learning method. So much of the free education online uses videos. It appeals to all. But that does require a good modern computer with high speed and lots of RAM. Some people prefer to read a thorough book on a subject and to study the details until they understand them well. Still others need that hands-on lab experience to fully grasp the facts and the how-tos. That's called kenetic learning. Then there are yet other students who love to discuss and talk over the topic of learning. By expressing verbally through the give and take of discussions and conversations, they managed to store the information away in their very being, so that it is part of them. If you know your best learning style you ought to find the kind of learning venue online that offers that style.
Thinking about the costs is the least pleasurable part of any education, online or not. But look at that honestly. Some free education online sites, are not totally free. They do expect you to pay some fees. When you weigh your options, you might find the same university where you are expected to pay $10,000 to attend in person, will let you take the courses online, for $150. If money is the only hurdle to cross, the answer is simple. But if your learning style insists that you ought to be in a class, interacting with your teacher and fellow students, then you should try to find the $10,000. Or more!
To make this work well for you, seek to set up this situation first, and determine if you can work within these boundaries;
1. Can you get a computer with at least a 56K modem and 2 GB of RAM? Do you have a reliable internet connection?
Here's a suggestion. Several students who want to study online might choose to live together, sharing the household and cooking responsibilities, so no one has to do it all, and perhaps this would allow each student to also have a part-time job on the side for financial support. By sharing the cost of living, it becomes affordable for the whole group.
If these are quite young women or young men, they might be smart to recruit a good mother-figure to be the head of their group home, to provide the meals and to help keep them all motivated at their studies.
For sure, keeping motivated when the studies get boring or the student wants a change of pace, will be a key factor in the success of obtaining your free education online from home, or near your home base. Having like-minded friends or a parent-figure to keep you disciplined is a good idea!
There are an amazing number of sites and blogs that provide lists of sites/institutions where you can find a free education online. I can provide some links so you can check those out as part of your research:
education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html - shows a list of universities which offer their courses online, and where you can earn college credits for free.
www.yorkvilleu.ca/programs/ - Yorkville U, in Canada, describes its online programs.
MarcandAngel.com/2010/11/15/12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-yourself-online/ - this is a very long webpage with a long list (and brief descriptions) of sites online where you can get a free self-education
lifehacker.com/201979/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education-online - has a lot of links to high class colleges that offer free courses. You just may not get official certification that you got the training. So... you need to decide whether the diploma is crucial to your future.
For home schooling children in Canada, using Alberta's curriculum;
northstaracademycanada.org/index.html - this site helps families who are homeschyooling children from grade 5 - 12 (lower fees for Alberta residents).
You need a good powerful computer for this, but you can get an education from science videos; www.freesciencelectures.com
www.free-ed.net/free%2Ded/ - this site offers a number of free courses that you can start immediately.
www.academicearth.org/ - offers university courses by video from esteemed colleges like, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Berkley, and Dartmouth.
ocw.mit.edu/index.htm - here M.I.T. offers some of their deepest science courses online. They are really excited about free education online as the NEW BIG milestone - similar to the invention of the printing press. They call it Ed-X. Watch for it - this is going to be a new common name for free education online!
education-portal.com/directory/degree_type/High_School_Diploma.html - if you still need to finish your high school diploma first, this might be a place to start... however, they seem to want only USA students.
www.planetebook.com/ - this site offers a large number of classic books, now in the public domain, as free e-books you can download at no charge.
www.bookyards.com/ - is yet another place for free ebooks
bookboon.com - also has lots of free e-books to download
www.uopeople.org/groups/tuition-free-education - This site is quite impressive for it's thoroughness! Tutition is free, but applicants are asked to cover is an application processing fee of $10-$50, depending on the applicants country of residence. UoPeople asks students to cover the cost of processing exams at $100 per end-of course exam.
PROGRAMS - Currently, University of the People offers the following four undergraduate degrees: Associate (A.S.-B.A.) and Bachelor (B.S.-B.A.) degrees in Business Administration and Associate (A.S.-C.S.) and Bachelor (B.S.-C.S.) degrees in Computer Science.