Google, Amazon, IBM, and more, Offer Free or Cheap Online Courses
- Major companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and IBM offer instructional online courses for cheap or free. They help students prepare for industry exams, build skills companies are hiring for, or serve a public good.
- Some companies even use online courses to provide growth and career advancement to their current employees, and many are taught by longtime employees with decades of experience.
- Below, you’ll find 25 programs in topics that range from data science to cloud technology.
- Read more: 54 free online courses from the best colleges in the US — including Princeton, Harvard, and Yale
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Along with cheap or free courses from Ivy League universities, e-learning platforms like edX and Coursera offer programs taught by major companies such as Google, Amazon, IBM, and Facebook — and often by longtime employees, such as IBM’s Chief Data Scientist Romeo Kienzler or David A. Wheeler, The Linux Foundation’s Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security. Some companies even collaborate with top universities such as MIT or Harvard to produce skill-building programs like IT support from Google and data science from IBM. Some programs are even used to train their current employees.
The courses span across many different topics and purposes. Some offer learners an efficient way to stand out as job applicants — especially for rapidly growing, tech-heavy roles that are short on qualified candidates. Other courses explicitly prep students for certification assessments such as the Unity Certified 3D Artist exam or the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer certification.
Some classes are simply a public good, where a company focuses its philanthropic efforts. For example, Grow with Google was launched to democratize economic opportunities through free training, tools, and resources for growing a career or business. During the pandemic, Google also issued a course teaching users how to find fast, accurate medical information. And Goldman Sachs Foundation’s “10,000 Women” is a 10-course business and management program designed to support female entrepreneurs all over the world.
Below, you’ll find a few of the programs offered by Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and more below. Most classes are either free or under $100 to enroll in, though multi-course programs may cost a few hundred dollars.
P.S.: If you plan to take many online classes this year, and they’re included in the membership Coursera Plus, you may want to look into that annual membership ($399/year) to save yourself money in the long term. (Its members get access to 90% of the site for $399. You can learn more here).
25 courses offered by companies such as Google, IBM, Amazon, Facebook, and more.
Find all Google classes on edX and Coursera here
As one of the world’s most recognizable companies whose raison d’etre is to organize and increase the accessibility of information, Google pairs wonderfully with MOOCs (massive open online courses).
Most Google courses are free to audit, and students can pay a small fee to receive a certificate upon completion. Skill levels required vary from introductory to intermediate.
Courses range from Coronavirus Powersearching to a Google IT professional certificate program, and instructors include Google employees, like Daniel Russell, a senior research scientist in search quality and user happiness. You can also find Google courses taught in Portuguese and Spanish.
Once students complete in-depth programs like its Automation with Python Certificate program, they can also opt to share their information with potential employers.
Power Searching with Google
Here, beginners learn how to create an effective query on Google — from the basics to advanced operators like intext: filetype: and site: that narrow results. Students will also learn how to determine if information is credible. It’s taught by Daniel Russell, a member of the Google Search engineering team since 2005, and will take approximately three weeks to complete.
Free, cheap online courses from IBM, Facebook, Amazon, Google – Business Insider