Sharpen Your Business Skills for Free @ MIT

While putting off one of my last econ assignments tonight, I ran across "23 surprising things you can get for free" on CNN.com. (I'm a total sucker for both lists and free things, so I couldn't pass this one up.)

I was surprised to see the first section of the article was about free education, and the first listing was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- not too shabby! I first read about MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative in my local newspaper a couple of weeks ago, but the article focused more on the respected university's science and math courses, so I didn't give it much thought.

After reading the CNN article, I clicked over to MIT's Web site and was pleasantly surprised at the breadth and depth of its offering. Even better was the discovery that the MIT Sloan School of Management offers a slew of undergraduate and graduate courses to choose from -- from Managerial Psychology to Game Theory for Managers to International Management.

The courses are free, and they include lecture notes, reading lists, assignments, and/or exams. Some even offer the material translated in other languages, such as Spanish or Chinese. Of course, taking these courses won't earn you an actual degree, but it's a fantastic resource nonetheless.

Whether you need a quick introduction to an area of business that you're not familiar with or you need some extra help on a class you're taking, this site is definitely worth checking out. (It was with more than a little regret that I stumbled upon several courses on innovation, having just e-mailed an analysis paper on the same subject to my professor.) And if you're currently trying to figure out if going back to business school is right for you, these courses offer the opportunity to test-drive the concept without spending a penny.