Lectures at Oxford from your sofa

Many of the English-speaking world’s most prestigious universities offer videos and podcasts of their lectures free online

by Kenneth Praefke

Have you always dreamed of studying at a big university in England or the US? Now from your home sofa you can immerse yourself in the knowledge of some of the world’s top university professors.

On the list are Oxford’s top-speaking names like Nicholas Stern and the previous chief economist at the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’ lecture – 'Credit Crunch' – is interesting because Stiglitz discusses the early times of the financial crisis and its future consequences.

Also Oxford’s philosophy professor Marianne Tabot’s lecture has been heard many times and her chatty philosophical foundation course 'A Romp through the History of Philosophy'
reached the top of the iTunes global download chart of university podcasts. You can almost hear her teaspoon beat against the rim of her teacup during the lecture.

Cambridge and Berkeley

While Oxford bubbles with names like Stern and Stiglitz, Cambridge offers the likes of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Ian Wilmut, the creator of the cloned sheep Dolly.

Miliband can obviously not on his own quench the intellectual thirst of University of Copenhagen students, who this autumn were visited by both David and Ed Miliband (UK climate minister), but
A Future Beyond Oil in turn offers another interesting talk.

If you prefer a trip across the Atlantic, Berkeley has a very good archive with video lectures in everything from ‘Human Happiness’ to ‘Nuclear Engineering.’ Here you can also find an entire archive with over 30 home lectures from your laptop.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have an iTunes site where you can hear their podcast. After only 10 months, Oxford had over a million downloads from their site.

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