Physics for Future Presidents

Richard Muller is a professor of physics at UC Berkeley. He teaches a physics class designed specifically for non-physics majors called Physics for Future Presidents. In the style of Carl Sagan his goal for the lectures is "for everyone to come away with the feeling that what was just covered is important for every world leader to know." (via metafilter)

Now you can take his entire class online... for free-ninty-nine! (that means free) Complete with quizzes, exams, and google video of his actual lectures. You can even email Muller himself if you're having problems!

I have always kicked myself for not taking my math classes more seriously in school. Although I did take a shine to Catholic High School level Biology, but I believe this to be the result of having to hand draw hundreds of models of single celled, and micro organisms. Once I've drawn something I can pretty much remember it forever. I even tried to teach myself calculus with available online text books, however, I've found that without a good lecturer, it's difficult to self-teach.

Now that Muller's lectures are all available online, that's not such a problem anymore. Well, Berkeley has taken this even further. You can now view courses and lectures from UC Berkeley directly through iTunes! Also for free! It's really a refreshing thing to see knowledge being given away freely like this. Sadly, it's also very rare.

Why does it have to be so rare? Why shouldn't everyone have access to this knowledge? OK, the people who attend Berkeley have worked very hard to do so, and are paying a lot of money. I totally respect that, their reward for this is a Berkeley diploma. The knowledge itself, the actual teachings, should be free to everyone. But if you want to say you've gone to Berkeley, well that's a different story, you need to get the grades to be accepted, you must pay the University to sit in their classes. This is essentially what Steve Jobs did. He dropped out, and started attending the classes that interested him. Learning what he wanted to learn. Look where that got him.