19 Stanford courses you can take for free online, including a flexible class on designing your dream career

Length: 5 weeks

Put together by the Stanford Life Design Lab, this self-paced, non-linear course is perfect for those who are completely stuck as far as what they want to do in their careers. Learners go over how to break into a completely new field, network efficiently, and keep up professional contacts that can genuinely pay off later. 

Enroll on edX here

Length: 9 weeks

This is a crash course on the income inequality and poverty issues that face America today, exploring how they correlate with race and gender. One key feature of this course is that, while it brings in top scholars to discuss the issue, it breaks down the lectures into short, comprehensive videos. Each video is paired with readings and offers the most up-to-date findings and statistics.

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Length: 4 weeks

For anyone and everyone interested in philanthropy, this course helps learners assess and beef up their non-profit strategy, use technology to their benefit, and volunteer more effectively. It also provides opportunities to meet up and discuss ideas with small virtual groups. 

Enroll on Coursera here

Length: 10 weeks

No matter your line of work, this course can help deepen your understanding of the obstacles women face all over the world — including poverty, food insecurity, gender discrimination, unequal access to education, and violence, among others. Students cover topics such as HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, sex trafficking, war, refugee crises, and education while participating in engaging discussions about these issues.

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Length: 6 weeks

This class is designed to emphasize the importance of love not just in our personal lives, but as a force for good. In six weeks of classes, love is explored through multiple lenses, including biology, religion, and ethical beliefs. The course also discusses the importance of non-violent communication and ways to strengthen a community, so you can leave with a greater idea of how to utilize love in fighting for different social justice causes.

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Length: 8 weeks

This course was developed through SEMPER, the Stanford Emergency Medicine Program for Emergency Response, and provides a foundation of knowledge for all healthcare professionals involved in disaster medicine. It provides guidance for teams to be self-sufficient for the first 72 hours of a disaster, follow a consistent training curriculum, and pursue new research to strengthen their expertise in this area.

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Length: 11 weeks

While there have been countless books and movies made about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, few explore the deeper feelings of Dr. King himself. Using primary sources — including his unpublished manuscripts and sermons — and on-location videos of places King often visited, the course will provide students with a richer understanding of both MLK and his ideas. 

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Length: 9 weeks

This course is for students with a prerequisite college-level understanding of physical science or engineering. It covers the core concepts and measurements of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle, the hydrogen atom, and how to apply these ideas to solve problems in fields such as nanotechnology and photonics.

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*This course is currently archived, but some course materials are still available.

Length: 15 weeks

Critical thinking skills are incredibly important, especially when combatting misinformation. This class breaks down the core of all reasoning — that one statement has to be the logical consequence of another. Beyond simply helping you debunk false claims or win arguments, these lessons can also help you navigate your life more efficiently by making more sound decisions.

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Length: One week

This course covers potentially life-altering ground in a very short amount of time. Healthcare providers learn how to assess the risks and benefits of putting a patient on opioid therapy as well as methods for safely tapering them on or off the medication. They're also provided with a guide on when to refer patients to addiction treatment. 

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Length: 18 hours

Game theory is the "mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents," and beyond applying to literal games, it's used in fields such as economics and politics to make crucial (yet risky) decisions. This course covers the basics of game theory and strategies, applying them to real-life situations such as auctions or computer science problems.

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Length: 6 weeks

Learners with even a little bit of programming or computer science experience can benefit from this crash-course in algorithms. Students learn about "Big-oh" notation, sorting and searching, divide and conquer, randomized algorithms, data structures, and graph primitives. They can also test their knowledge as they go along with programming assessments and quizzes.

Enroll on edX here

Length: 6 weeks

If you're someone who's always struggled with math, this course is for you. It covers easy strategies for learning math more effectively and helps learners challenge their own negative misconceptions about math and their math-learning abilities, so they can exit the course more empowered to use math in their daily lives and professions.

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Length: 81 hours

This course helps learners understand the famous theory of relativity by focusing on Albert Einstein himself. Students explore how he came up with his ideas as well as the core elements of the theory, including answering some of the most commonly asked questions about it. 

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Length: 1 week

This quick class goes over the possibilities of biases in clinical trials, and how to reduce them with techniques like randomization. Students watch videos and read samples of clinical research papers to learn how to more critically evaluate them.

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Length: 10 weeks

Composer Joseph Haydn is considered the father of the string quartet, and this course aims to explore both the history and technique behind some of the earliest string quartets. Students also complete an in-depth study of the form, language, and gesture behind Haydn's String Quartet in F minor, opus 20, no. 5 from 1772, and are supplied with musical notations so they can follow along.

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Length: 10 weeks

All you need prior to starting this course is some general knowledge of Excel. You go over concepts like the Flaw of Averages and the Arithmetic of Uncertainty and learn how to create interactive simulation models in Excel.

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Length: 11 weeks

Perfect for beginners, this popular course covers the basics of machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition, providing examples on how they're applied to creating smart robots, text understanding, computer vision, and more.

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Length: 5 weeks

For anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of nutrition, this documentary-style course covers the basics of healthy eating as well as common food trends. It also features an optional cooking workshop at the end. You can read a full review of the course here.

Enroll on Coursera here