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This is for you dedicated students and other fans of continued learning!

A degree from a top university often comes with a hefty price tag. But these days you can nearly get an online education from these institutions for free! Though the business world indeed puts a high premium on the actual credentials you can put on your resume, and the peer network you will form at one of these colleges can help you go a long way too, the teachings and knowledge just overflowing from these institutions is nothing to sneeze at!

“Open courseware” has been a hot trend on the web for the last couple of years, as the evolution of web 2.0 encourages sharing, collaborating, and open sourcing of knowledge as well as software. Many of the top research institutions are sharing their lectures and presentations via online videos, audio podcasts, and articles. I’ve personally followed (and highly recommend) series such as Stanford’s Social Innovation Conversations, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program’s Ed Corner, featuring awesome resources on entrepreneurship and presentations by many of Silicon Valley’s tech elite, as well as Google’s TechTalks.

If you’re inclined to learn from some of the incredible educators at MIT or Stanford, Education Portal has put together an invaluable list of the ten best universities with primo online open courseware offerings. The list includes:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)
2. Open University in the UK (open.ac.uk)
3. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)
4. Tufts University (tufts.edu)
5. Stanford (stanford.edu)
6. University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu)
7. Utah State University (usu.edu)
8. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (kutztownsbdc.org)
9. University of Southern Queensland (usq.edu.au)
10. University of California, Irvine (uci.edu)

YES, all these universities serve up free education resources! So go learn! To see the full details and get links to each institution’s online courseware, check out Education Portal’s list “Universities With the Best Free Online Courses.” Lifehacker also recommends Wendy Boswell’s guide to the “.edu underground”.