A Harvard degree from home

Quality education has never come cheap. But thankfully, learning is no longer confined to four walls and a roof.

As a result, an increasing number of top-notch colleges and universities from around the world are offering online courses, for the academically inclined, in many cases, free.

Expand your mind For example, the IITs and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) offer a National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) that provide online courses and certification in programming, data structures and algorithms.

The student is assumed to have no prior experience with programming, but is expected to be at the level of a second-year undergraduate college student in science and engineering.

The course will run over ten weeks with about two-three hours of lecture every week.

At the end of each week, the student is expected to write some programmes, classified as easy, moderate or difficult, and submit them for grading.

In addition, students have to answer a set of objective assessment questions at the end of each week.

While the course is free, if you want certification for your efforts, you will have to pay a fee Since the programme is sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, the programme prospectus stresses that this fee is “nominal” and you will have to appear for a proctored examination in person.

But maybe computer science is not your thing. So how about solid state chemistry or statistics? Universities across the globe, such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, IIT Bombay and Kyoto University have joined hands to offer over 200 courses online at >EdX to enthusiastic students, completely free of cost.

The course is conducted at your convenience, with lectures and assignments available 24 hours a day, which means you can watch videos and complete work at leisure.

All reading and other course materials will be available on your computer.

Simply log into your course and work through the course material. While assignments and exams often have due dates, these are designed to give you enough lead time to schedule your work easily.

The courses have a stipulated completion timeframe and may have prerequisites to join.

Interaction with faculty and students is limited to discussion forums or social networking spaces.

Once you complete a course, EdX offers three certificate types — honour code certificates of achievement, verified certificates of achievement, and XSeries certificates of achievement.

Honour code certificates state that you have completed a course, but don’t verify your identity; verified certificates do that.

Course certificates This could be advantageous if you want to show off your credentials to a prospective employer. The cost of a verified certificate varies from course to course.

XSeries certificates are earned by successfully completing a series of courses that make up an XSeries, such as the aerodynamics Xseries offered by MIT or the astrophysics Xseries from Australian National University. An Xseries course entails a fee ranging from $275 to $375.

Then there is Coursera, a website which has 706 free courses on offer from 80 top universities and colleges that it partners. Coursera even offers “specialisations” or focus programmes created by universities that are tailored to help you master applied skills.

Degree desire If you’re more desirous of a degree than a diploma, an increasing number of global universities now give you the option to earn one online.

This could save you money, too, in comparison to living in a foreign country while you study. But costs can be still high. For example, let’s say you take up a six-credit graduate study programme at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

That would cost you $8,533 per semester, and that’s besides various academic and infrastructure fees. Living expenses would add substantially to your bills. If you took up the course online, it would cost you $7,449 for that semester and at the end of the course, you would also be conferred the same degree.

There is also the possibility of taking up a few semesters online and completing the remainder at the university if you crave that campus lifestyle.

Online tuition But before college comes up on the horizon, there are school exams and other entrance exams to clear. E-learning is an option here as well.

Websites like > etuitions.org , >onlinegurukul.in and 2tion.com offer online tuition to students in various classes — from nursery to Class XII — as well as candidates vying for engineering or medical seats. They even offer music and art tuitions.

The fees vary from site to site, but don’t base your decision on who’s offering the lowest or highest fees.

Ask for a free trial of the services to help you decide whether the quality is up to your standards and suitable.

If your passion is to join civil services, look at resources such as > Indiancivils.com , which offer a comprehensive 900-hour coaching package for ₹70,000 and a 600-hour general package for ₹50,000.

Though similar to the costs charged by reputed institutes such as >Shankar IAS Academy , time and cost of travelling to and from the coaching centre is done away with.

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