Monday, August 29, 2011

Great Courses. Great Product.

Writing in City Journal, Heather Mac Donald on the marvelous public service provided by Great Courses:

And the company offers a treasure trove of traditional academic content that undergraduates paying $50,000 a year may find nowhere on their Club Med–like campuses. This past academic year, for example, a Bowdoin College student interested in American history courses could have taken “Black Women in Atlantic New Orleans,” “Women in American History, 1600–1900,” or “Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender and the Suburbs,” but if he wanted a course in American political history, the colonial and revolutionary periods, or the Civil War, he would have been out of luck. A Great Courses customer, by contrast, can choose from a cornucopia of American history not yet divvied up into the fiefdoms of race, gender, and sexual orientation, with multiple offerings in the American Revolution, the constitutional period, the Civil War, the Bill of Rights, and the intellectual influences on the country’s founding. There are lessons here for the academy, if it will only pay them heed.

3 comments:

Kurt Harden said...

I don't know if you have ever purchased any of the Great Courses, but they are worth every cent. Fabulous stuff. Thanks for posting.

Michael Wade said...

Kurt,

My wife has purchased some of them. I plan on getting a couple over the next few months. They are very good.

Michael

Dan in Philly said...

You can take 400 online classes taught be ivy leaguers for free here: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

Of course, the Great Courses are free at most libraries, which is what I've been doing for quite a while now..