Harvard Offers These Free Courses to Anyone, No Acceptance Letter Required

For many students and lifelong learners, the idea of attending Harvard University is an impossibility, especially when annual costs are nearly $83,000 in 2025. However, that elite Harvard education is actually more accessible than ever, thanks to a wide array of free online courses. In fact, Harvard's free learning platform opens its virtual gates to anyone, so long as you're eager to learn.

The course catalog of 2024/2025 offers something for every age and background. Most classes are self-paced or run for a few weeks at a time, making them flexible for those working full-time. While they don't offer credit or degrees, they provide Ivy League insight at no cost. What free resources should you be taking advantage of this year? We've got Harvard's class list ready to go.

247 Tempo compiled this research based on current and archived offerings listed on HarvardX and edX.org, along with supplementary information from the Harvard Gazette, The EdSurge Guide to Online Learning, and verified course portals. Course length, topics, and availability may vary slightly based on enrollment windows or instructor updates, so always confirm before signing up.

This post was updated on July 28th, 2025, to reflect additional information.

Master the use of five core skills to better manage anxiety, emotional stress, and personal fears to keep them from overwhelming you. Through the free course, you'll learn about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CTB) to build your own "Charge Up Plan."

• Length: 6 weeks
• Time Commitment: 1 to 2 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Take a closer look at the legalities of a contract and the mistakes that are often made while creating a contract. The free Harvard course covers how to form and enforce a contract. Plus, dive into the different ways to remedy a breach of contract.

• Length: 8 weeks
• Time Commitment: 3 to 6 hours per week
• Level: Intermediate

Law and technology meet in this Harvard computer science program. Learn about cybersecurity and cryptography. Explore some of the more common programming languages (Python and SQL) and computational thinking. You also learn how technology can impact your clients.

• Length: 10 weeks
• Time Commitment: 3o 6 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

In this free Harvard class that's ideal for new teachers, learn how social status and its factors impact educational outcomes. The course covers historical and current statistics regarding race and gender and how that impacts upward mobility.

• Length: 4 weeks
• Time Commitment: 1 to 2 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Have you ever considered running your own business? Discover some of the different opportunities in emerging markets. Learn how you can take a common problem existing in the world and use that to become an entrepreneur.

• Length: 6 weeks
• Time Commitment: 3 to 5 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Gain a basic understanding of probability and statistics to learn how to use basic counting skills to solve problems where exact values are unclear. If you have a handful of dice, what are the odds you'll get the same number when you roll them across a table? You'll learn about binomial coefficients, and multinomials and then use your insights to explore situations like The Monty Hall Problem and The Gambler's Ruin.

• Length: 7 weeks
• Time Commitment: 3 to 5 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Over 14 weeks, this course explores the history and cultural importance of fermented foods. You'll learn how to safely ferment and preserve the foods you buy and use fermented items like sourdough starters to make safe, delicious food items like beer or mead, bread, and tempeh.

• Length: 14 weeks
• Time Commitment: 2 to 3 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

By now, most people have been introduced to AI in some form, whether it's through services like an AI customer service chatbot. In this course, you learn about AI and the design of intelligent systems, machine learning, and the use of AI in Python. You also explore graph search algorithms and optimization.

• Length: 7 weeks
• Time Commitment: 10 to 30 hours per week
• Level: Intermediate

Explore the basics of different programming languages including C, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Python, and SQL. And, delve into important topics like computer and website security, resource management, and data structures. This free online college course also covers problem-solving and developing a mindset to think in algorithms. Follow it with one of the following programming classes for greater insight.

• Length: 11 weeks
• Time Commitment: 10 to 20 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

This is one of the most important Harvard courses for free. It's meant for anyone interested in protecting their personal information, computers, and mobile devices from hackers, phishing, malware, viruses, and other threats. Learn how to protect your information through the use of passwords, multi-factor authentication, and more.

• Length: 5 weeks
• Time Commitment: 2 to 6 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

In some areas, school is treated like free daycare. It's a place where kids go during the day while parents work. For a child to gain a successful education, there needs to be a strong partnership between parents and teachers. That's what this course offers. It discusses the value of engagement in education and how to build strong teacher-parent relationships.

• Length: 6 weeks
• Time Commitment: 2 to 4 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Scratch is a unique programming language where programmers drag and drop blocks instead of typing out strings of text. Throughout this class, students learn the basics of computer programming for web development and then learn Scratch to develop simple animations.

• Length: 3 weeks
• Time Commitment: N/A
• Level: Introductory

You alone have the power to make yourself happy. In this course, you'll learn how to identify the behaviors and emotions that impact your happiness and break those bad habits. You'll learn how to set short-term and long-term goals that help lead you on a path to becoming happy.

• Length: 6 weeks
• Time Commitment: 2 to 3 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Here's a course for the avid reader. Explore the world's best writers and the impact their stories have on the world. Some of the books you'll read are Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, Homer's The Odyssey, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, and Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman.

• Length: N/A
• Time Commitment: 5 to 7 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

This free online college course doesn't have a timeframe in which you should complete it. It's one of the best options if you're short on time and have ever wanted to learn how to effectively share your opinion. By the end of it, you'll be able to write a persuasive opinion-based piece and give short speeches as you debate topics with others.

• Length: N/A
• Time Commitment: 2 to 3 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

Whether you're baking, grilling, or slow cooking, cooking involves science. Top chefs go over historic and modern cooking methods that use principles from chemistry and physics to create the finished product. You'll learn how to make mayonnaise, homemade bread, ice cream, and more.

• Length: 16 weeks
• Time Commitment: 2 to 3 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

This course takes a closer look at how life came to be on Earth and whether there is life out there on other planets or in other galaxies. Students explore what makes a planet livable and how we can find suitable planets to live on if Earth is no longer viable.

• Length: 7 weeks
• Time Commitment: 5 to 8 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

In this free Harvard course, you learn many important programming languages for web development. CSS, Django, Git, HTML, JavaScript, Python, and SQL are all covered. Over the three months, students learn how to write and use APIs and interactive UIs. Cloud services are also covered.

• Length: 12 weeks
• Time Commitment: 6 to 9 hours per week
• Level: Intermediate

Over the decades, people's understanding of the Constitution and democratic society have become skewed. Go back to the foundations of the U.S. democracy. Explore what happens when your civil liberties and rights are no longer protected as it was meant and how to find your voice in your community, state, and nation while also respecting others' opinions and insights.

• Length: 7 weeks
• Time Commitment: 1 to 5 hours per week
• Level: Introductory

With a female vice president who is running for president, this free Harvard course is timely. The course explores the importance of women in American history, the fight for women's rights, and the battle against discrimination in the workplace and daily life.

• Length: N/A
• Time Commitment: 2 to 3 hours per week
• Level: Introductory