10 Free Online Courses From Ivy League Universities

Ivy League is the title commonly referring to the group of the eight most prestigious universities in the US: Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. Today, "Ivy League" represents a real life style, as its popularity has grown up thanks to the many references made by some pop culture: just think of the cult movie Legally Blonde or series like Gossip Girl, and most of all Gilmore Girls, whose protagonist Rory craves fir her admission to Harvard as her only relevant life-goal (except that in the ends she goes to Yale).

Undoubtedly, they are the most important colleges in the world - and as a fact of that, entering in their programs is not that easy. Although, in this global crisis situation, all the 8 universities from the group are offering the opportunity to follow almost 500 online classes for free. What a better time to go deep into the knowledge of your favorite subject or to open up to new directions?

nss magazine selected the 10 most interesting online courses from Ivy League, that you can stream online from your couch.

 

PredictionX: John Snow and the Cholera Outbreak of 1854 - HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Forget about Game of Thrones, we're talking about another John Snow: the doctor who was the first in getting to comprehend of the causes of the 1854 cholera spread in Soho, London. While we're talking about pandemic all the time, Harvard offers an important lesson for our present, too.

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Fighting for Equality: 1950–2018
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

In these days we're talking about the giorni COVID-19 emergency, but that doesn't mean that all the problems of our time have been solved. Columbia University offers a class about the history of female work, focusing on the revolutionary movements born in the Sixties and climbing to the contemporary until the 2016 American Presidential elections and the rise of #MeToo.

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Prescription Drug Regulation, Cost, and Access
Current Controversies in Context
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Speaking of contemporary problems, here's a class about the pros and cons of the laws that regulate the use of prescription drugs, focusing both on the economical and political point of views.

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Hollywood: History, Industry, Art
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

"There's no business, like show business!", as sang in the homonymous musical by Walter Lang (1954). This course by University of Pennsylvania retraces the history of the biggest entertainment machine in the world, going deep into its industrial mechanisms and the politics behind the production of films, TV and new media.

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Gamification
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

What exactly do we mean when we talk about "gamification"? The University of Pennsylvania is here to tell you, along with some advices on how to use it responsibly.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

In this atmosphere of global lockdown, many have the impression that they're living inside of a dystopian movie. In this genre of films, there are self-driving cars and high technologies of face recognition... oh, that's the world we're living in. Columbia University offers a class about history, technics and the controversies around Artificial Intelligence (AI) that makes the homonymous film by Steven Spielberg look already old.

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American Capitalism: A History
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

In the light of this crisis that is afflicting industries all over the world and international markets, it's the right time to understand once for all what exactly is capitalism: when was born, how it works and most of all why when we say "capitalist" we mainly mean "American".

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Improving Communication Skills
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

In these days we're not having much of a chance of talking (except for the happy hours with friends on Zoom), but communication is - and will always be - the key of the modern world. It's the perfect time to become masters of rhetoric.

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Question Reality! Science, philosophy, and the search for meaning - DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

Who are we? Where are we from? Why a lethal virus has bent the world that we thought was invincible? These are only some of the questions that we will never answer. Dartmouth is giving you the opportunity to follow a philosophy class that explores the limits of human knowledge, as well as the history of philosophy over the centuries.

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Moralities of Everyday Life
YALE UNIVERSITY

 

Yale was missing, but it enters this list with the most important lesson of all: the exploration of all the moral principles and dilemmas that rule over our societies and - unconsciously - our own psychology.

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