I've been in adult education for two decades at this point, and even though I'm not a labor market economist, I do feel confident enough to answer these questions.

I met in Philadelphia with freeCodeCamp instructor Ed Pratowski to film this in the same studio where he records his mathematics courses. His high-school age daughter Stella read the questions and I answered them.

I prepared some data visualizations to drive home my key points, and I also made this meme.

Here are some of the many topics you'll learn about:

• economic considerations (ROI and Net Present Value) of college decisions
• the US higher education system and labor market dynamics
• strategies to minimize college costs and maximize ROI
• the student debt crisis and student visa system
• practical tips from decades of adult education experience
• how to make informed career decisions and maximize your options

Also, you may want to read my recent book How to Learn to Code and Get a Developer Job. It's completely free and chock-full of career advice.

If you're considering going to university or have college-age kids, I encourage you to watch this and share it with your friends. I'd welcome any feedback you have. (1 hour watch):

And here's a full transcript:

Aside from buying a house, going to university is probably the biggest investment decision you'll face in your entire life.

At the end of the day, going to college should be an economic decision, not an emotional one. In this free course, Free Code Camp founder Quincy Larson will help you decide how to plan for college. He'll explain how US higher education works, how the labor market works, and he'll provide some strategies for minimizing your costs. At the end of the day, he wants to help you maximize your return on investment.

Quincy recently published a free, full-length book about developer careers, and college is the number one thing people ask him about. By the way, people also ask him a lot about Chat GPT and whether they still need to learn to code. Spoiler alert: his answer is yes. So grab your notebook or crack open your text editor because Quincy's going to fire a lot of data at you from his decades of working in adult education.

Quincy pulls no punches and has no mercy when talking about the US university system, the student debt epidemic, and a student visa system that leaves so many bright people unable to get a US degree. But rest assured, he has tons of practical tips that your college counselor probably never told you about. At the end of the day, Quincy wants the same thing for you that your family wants: for you to earn a good living and have a ton of career options. If you learn something from this course, be sure to send it to a friend or family member who's planning for college.

Hey, I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of FreeCodeCamp.org. And today we're going to be asking the very timely question: Is college still worth it? And I'm going to be arguing that in most cases, yes, it is still worth it. You're going to hear all this hype around 'Oh, college, who needs college anymore?' I'm going to argue from numbers that college is still incredibly useful. It's still incredibly worth it. I'm also going to be talking about lots of situations where I don't think it's worth it. And I'm going to be talking about some strategies that you can use to reduce student debt, reduce the capital outlay that this giant four-year education can represent for many people who are learning. So let's dive in.

What about return on investment? The first thing you should consider about education is this is an economic decision. You may have aspirational reasons why you want to go to college. Maybe you're the first person in your family lineage to ever go and get a degree, and that can be a very proud moment. Maybe you have served in the armed forces and you essentially have this freeway to go to university in the sense that you've got the GI Bill that's going to pay for a lot of your higher education. You still should think about things in terms of economics. And you should still think about it in terms of how much money is going to cost and ultimately how much is going to affect your earning potential.

We're going to think about this in terms of return on investment, or ROI. You may have heard that acronym before. There are other ways, of course, you can think about this. For example, if you're a big finance person, you might think in terms of net present value, which will factor in the time value of money. And that's a very real consideration as well because money today is worth a lot more than money in the future. Not just because of inflation, but because of the opportunity to invest that money. So you might, instead of going to university and spending the equivalent of $40,000 on four years of in-state tuition, you might want to just take that $40,000 if you have it in cash now and just put it in some sort of investment vehicle, probably like an index fund and just let it accumulate over time. That might be a rational thing to do, depending on the ROI that you're looking at.

Now, in order to figure out what the ROI is, we want to figure out how much money you're earning right now, just with your current skills. You can probably go out and get a job as a janitor and make about $12 an hour in the United States. So if you think about $12 an hour, you multiply that times about 2,000 hours per year - the year you're going to be working - that's about 40 hours a week times approximately 50 weeks, assuming you've got two weeks off, which may or may not be paid. I'm just going to call it $24,000 a year. So let's go ahead and let's think in terms. I'm going to show a fancy chart on the screen right now.

This is approximately how much you can expect to earn with varying levels of what we'll call educational attainment. So, if you went to high school, great! Congratulations on graduating from high school. You're going to make more than somebody who didn't go to high school or didn't finish high school.

Now, getting a general equivalency diploma, GED, that's basically the same as going to high school for most economic considerations. If you go to some college, that does technically increase your earning potential a little bit. But what really helps is not going to some college, not getting an associate's necessarily, but getting the full bachelor's degree. A bachelor's degree will roughly 2x your expected annual earnings over what you would get if you just had a high school diploma.

So, that is why you definitely want to consider going to college depending on how many years of productive life you have left. Let's say you're 18 to 25, which would be the age range for a traditional student. That's what most economists and educators would consider to be a traditional university student age. That probably means that if you live to be about 80 years old, which is the life expectancy of most Americans, (with factors like women living slightly longer than men, income bracket, family history, etc., playing into it), you have many years ahead. But we'll just call the average life expectancy of an American 80 years old.

You've probably picked up that I'm focusing mostly on the United States. That's because I grew up in the United States. I'm an American citizen, I have studied abroad, specifically in China for several years. So, I have a bit of a study abroad perspective, and I have worked extensively with international students who come from other countries to study in the United States. We'll delve into that later, but there is a heavy US focus in this course.

So, if you're going to live to be 80 years old and you're going to work maybe 40 years, you could take that 2x multiplier and compare earning $24,000 a year as a janitor to earning something like $44,000 as a college graduate. By the way, your janitor income is not going to necessarily increase steadily over time. It may keep up with inflation, but don't expect to be making 2x as a janitor just because you have a lot of janitorial experience. However, if you're working as a software engineer, you might be able to make 4x, even 10x, of what you made when you first got out of college as you progress in your career, gain more experience, understand the industry, and take on more responsibility. So, think about how long you're going to be working and what the wage differential will be. That will be the best way to figure out your ROI.

How does student debt work in the United States? Most people pay for their education through a combination of working during university, parental support, scholarships, and of course, student debt. Student debt is one of the most complicated factors in determining ROI because you have to repay that debt, and uncertainties abound: whether you'll finish university, whether your post-university wage will be sufficient for repayment, etc. I know people with more than $100,000 US dollars worth of student debt to repay. Think of student debt as an additional risk. As mentioned earlier, if you finish college, you'll basically double your income. However, the real threat of student debt remains, regardless of whether you complete your degree or not. Life can throw curveballs like accidents, illnesses, or other unforeseen events that might hinder your ability to finish school. The debt remains, and repaying becomes a challenge. So, my advice? Avoid debt if possible. If you already have student debt, strive to pay it off as soon as possible.

What major should you study? Some people joke about liberal arts degrees, implying they aren't financially rewarding. However, I've known many liberal arts graduates in powerful positions. My own degree is in liberal arts, and I now run an NGO with 35 people reporting to me. Liberal arts degrees provide skills like language proficiency, argumentation, debate, analysis, writing, and presentation. That said, fields like computer science undoubtedly offer better immediate financial returns. I'll show a chart highlighting the earning potential of computer science majors compared to others. Interestingly, while petroleum engineering might seem more lucrative based on some data, the job market for them is narrower compared to computer science.

Considering life quality, the difference between earning $80,000 and $100,000 is less significant than going from $25,000 to $45,000 or $50,000. Once you reach a certain income threshold, every additional dollar, while pleasant, becomes less critical. Computer science offers numerous job opportunities, a well-defined skill set, and a promising trajectory. While other degrees like computer engineering, IT, and software engineering exist, hiring managers often prioritize computer science degrees.

Finally, if you're contemplating STEM fields, remember that many graduates from physics, chemistry, or life science often shift towards software due to its lucrative job market. So, if you're leaning towards STEM, consider integrating more programming and mathematics into your curriculum. Computer science majors, especially software engineers, often out-earn even those who study finance or business administration. This speaks volumes about the value of computer science in the current job market.

Here's the text with added punctuation and paragraphing for better readability:

It may make it slightly harder for you to find that job. When in doubt, just go with a computer science degree.

What if I'm older?
If you are older, again, it comes back into the question of ROI. How many years do you think you're going to be working? I would say that don't underestimate yourself. I'm 42, I feel high energy. Granted, I don't have any genetic issues, I'm not on insulin, and I don't have a lot of things that may be plaguing people as they get into their 40s. But I do believe that I can probably work another 20 or 30 years productively. Retirement age in the United States, I believe, is 67. Just subtract your age from 67, and that's a rough rubric for how many years you're going to have left.

Now, if you take that multiplier, double your income, and then you subtract out the cost of a college education, again, if you go to in-state tuition at a four-year institution, it's going to be about $10,000 a year in tuition. That doesn't include fees. When you go to a big state university, you're kind of also paying for them to maintain the lawn on the stadium and to maintain the random buildings that provide air conditioning and water to all the other, the physical plant. There are lots of fees - student activity fees, library fees, things like that, so factor those in.

Then, of course, the big thing is the cost of living, and the thing you need to factor in is, okay, I'm going to be spending approximately 28 hours per week. If I'm a full-time student, that's about how much time a full-time student spends studying in the United States, according to studies that I've read. You might think, oh, I thought students would probably be, it'd be more like 40 hours. Now, it turns out that school is not nearly as hard as everybody pretends it is, and 28 hours is about how much people spend studying and going to class, taking exams, all those different things.

Now, that may vary from major to major. Like if you're studying medicine, for example, it may be way more intense than that. But if you're working, let's say, 28 hours a week on your studies, that's 28 hours of time and energy that you don't have to devote to a job that can help you earn income. Let's say that you're working at a grocery store as a manager, and you're working there, you're making $30,000 a year, and that job takes 40 hours out of your week. You could basically have to bolt on an extra 28 hours per week worth of work if you're full-time or if you're doing part-time school. It might only be like half that, 14 hours additional study. It would take you twice as many years to finish the program, but it may be much more sustainable.

To answer the question of should you go back to school if you're older, it ultimately comes down to ROI. It comes down to your own personal feelings about how much longer you think you're going to be able to work and whether you think you could balance going to school with your current obligations, both familial and work.

What if I'm outside the US?
So, of course, I'm very blessed to have been born in the United States. I'm a native English speaker, I've got a US passport, and there are only about 4% of the world population also shares that privilege. If you were born in China, India, Nigeria, one of many other countries that receive many of the 1 million international students that are studying in the United States, these are people that have generally finished high school in their country and then gotten into a university here in the US. They cleared the very lengthy visa process, maybe their family has saved up for a generation to be able to afford for them to be able to go to the United States and study. If you're one of those people, it can be very tricky. I'm not going to give super granular advice for that, but I will say that there may be some alternatives that don't involve going through the visa process where you can still graduate from a US university without having to spend a huge amount of money.

Now, we're talking about $40,000 US per year to attend a state school without state tuition. So, by virtue of being outside of the country, you are out of state. And in fact, some schools may charge even higher tuition for international students than they would charge for another US resident who is just from a different state. Let's say I grew up in Oklahoma, if I had studied in Texas, even though it's very close geographically, I would have to pay out of state tuition, which is three times as much, which really incentivizes you to go to school in your state. As an international student, you face a whole lot of additional considerations around cost. Later, I'm going to talk about some alternatives that can allow you to get an American education without spending American international student prices.

Does it matter which type of university I go to?
So, it does matter quite a bit which type of university you go to, and I'll tell you which one you should go to in a minute, but let me first lay out the three big categories.

So, first, there's public, and that could be both community college and universities. That could be like a state university system. It could be just like the research university systems. For example, in California, you have California State University, and you also have the University of California system.

Then there's private, and that's nonprofit. Private nonprofit. This is usually private schools, small liberal arts colleges. It can also be like all the Ivy League schools are private. Most private universities in the United States are owned by churches, for example, so they may have some required theology-related credits for the undergrad.

Then there's what's called private for-profit. This would be the kinds of universities you see on late-night TV, basically, running commercials. There have been so many of these that have been shut down recently because, frankly, you should just assume that these are scams until proven otherwise, in my opinion. I know there are probably lots of people out there who are watching this who work at a private for-profit, and if you're one of the good ones, fantastic. I really believe that these are the only considerations you should make, and it may be harder to get into these institutions. There may be more paperwork, there may be less guidance from a counselor-slash-salesperson to try to get you in, but it is absolutely best to go to one of these.

Now, you generally want to go to a community college first. The reason is twofold. One, community colleges are a lot cheaper. They are a lot cheaper. They're designed for people who don't necessarily have a whole lot like a giant scholarship for playing sports or for academic reasons. They're also designed with people who don't want to commute really far. They want to continue living with their parents or living with a roommate in the area where they have their job or if they already have kids not having to uproot or spend a huge amount of time on the road.

A lot of times, the instruction you get at a community college is actually better than what you'll get at a four-year research institution. The reason is that everyone at community colleges is focused on teaching. They prioritize helping students learn, and they're less concerned about academic citations.

Another point to consider about community colleges is that they are more affordable and often have better teaching methods. Successfully completing a community college course can help you transfer to more selective schools that might otherwise be challenging to get into. For instance, the University of Texas has stringent admission criteria. However, if you attend a community college in Texas, your chances of transitioning to the University of Texas are significantly higher. This isn't the case for all community colleges, so research is vital. If your goal is to attend a selective state university, then starting at a community college can be an excellent strategy. After two years, you can transfer to a four-year university and earn your bachelor's degree. Many community colleges also offer associate's and bachelor's degrees.

The second type of institution is private nonprofit universities, which include Ivy Leagues, MIT, and Caltech. These institutions often have higher tuitions, enabling them to offer better facilities and pay their faculty more. These universities tend to be older and are sometimes affiliated with religious organizations. Their prestige often correlates with their age; for instance, Harvard, the oldest U.S. university, is also considered one of the best. Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, other Ivy League schools, are also ancient institutions.

While these private nonprofit universities offer exceptional education, they come with a hefty price tag. Your return on investment (ROI) may not always match the cost, especially when compared to public universities. However, the major you choose plays a more significant role in your future success than the institution you attend.

If you're considering the best path through university, there are several options to reduce costs. High school students can earn AP credits, which can be converted to college credits. Another option is the CLEP program, allowing students to test out of certain courses, saving both time and money.

There are also ultra-low-cost universities, such as the University of the People and Western Governors University. While they don't have affiliate relationships, their ROI is impressive. Both universities offer different payment and study structures but provide affordable accredited degrees. Accreditation is a way universities maintain standards, but it shouldn't be the sole criteria for choosing an institution. It's essential to do thorough research, connect with alumni, and ensure that the university aligns with your goals.

When considering your education, think of it as a significant investment, second only to buying a home in the U.S. Transferring credits between institutions can be challenging, so it's crucial to pick the right school from the start. Always consider the ROI and avoid making decisions based solely on proximity or prestige.

Lastly, be wary of common traps. For instance, while pursuing your passion is commendable, it's essential to ensure that the educational institution you choose offers a good ROI. If you're passionate about photography, it might not be the best decision to attend an expensive private school for it.

For example, or even at a private nonprofit photography school, I wouldn't necessarily encourage you to pursue photography as a major. In fact, I would encourage you to continue studying, looking at professional photographers, analyzing their work, and exploring other disciplines. If you major in photography, it doesn't really matter for most gigs. When you're looking for work as a photographer, employers aren't going to ask, "Where did you study?" Instead, they'll say, "Show me your portfolio," or "Who recommended you?" There are fields where a college degree isn't crucial unless you're aiming to become a professor.

Speaking of academia, it's quite dysfunctional. We often refer to it as the "academic pyramid scheme." For every Ph.D. or tenure track position in the U.S., there are 50 Ph.D. candidates trying to climb the pyramid. Securing a tenure track position at a university is a challenging feat. Unless you're genuinely passionate about a field where a Ph.D. is standard, like physics, I'd advise caution. Many people spend years pursuing their Ph.D. before realizing it's not for them. While this isn't solely about Ph.D. programs, understand that academia can be likened to a pyramid scheme. Some might liken it to playing the lottery. For those who secure tenure and can delve deep into research and teaching, it seems worth the effort. However, for every successful individual, there are numerous others who didn't make it.

Now, let's discuss some common traps. The first trap is micromanaging. You might look at resources like the U.S. News World Report and see a plethora of data. While it might seem like you're making an informed decision, this data might not be as helpful as you think. Factors like the socio-economic backgrounds of students aren't always considered. Ivy League schools might show better outcomes, but that's often because their students come from affluent backgrounds. I'm not criticizing specific universities, but it's essential to look beyond the surface. In countries like India and China, there's an obsession with getting into top-tier universities. However, attending a good state school, working hard, and progressing in your field can lead to success comparable to Ivy League graduates. This obsession with micromanaging and relying solely on data can be a trap.

The second trap is disregarding the importance of money. I've worked various jobs in the past, from Taco Bell to construction, and enjoyed simple pleasures that didn't require much money. Living frugally might work in your 20s or even 30s. But unforeseen circumstances, like health issues or family emergencies, can change things. The U.S. healthcare system can be unforgiving, and you need to be financially prepared. Earning a decent salary and saving can offer security. You don't need to be a millionaire, but achieving a comfortable middle-class lifestyle and saving for the future is prudent.

Lastly, let's address the myth that many successful entrepreneurs drop out of college. Yes, people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out and achieved immense success. But they are outliers. Many Fortune 500 CEOs hold degrees. Companies like Google and Apple might state that a degree isn't essential, but if you walk their campuses, you'd find that most employees are degree holders. A university degree demonstrates commitment, long-term thinking, and reduces hiring risks for companies.

To wrap up, avoid these traps: choosing passion over practicality, micromanaging your education based on limited data, and neglecting the importance of financial security. Pursue a path that offers a good return on investment, like computer science, and plan for the future. If your career takes off while in college, and you feel the need to drop out, ensure it's for the right reasons. Some institutions, like Stanford, even allow students to return and complete their studies later.

Here's the paragraphed and punctuated version:

Other institutions have a policy where if you're gone for a certain number of years, your credits expire, and you have to start at the beginning, right? So you'll want to look at those considerations. But really, unless you're getting some sort of crazy product-market fit or traction with your startup, or a very wealthy person offers you a unique job, I wouldn't leave college for that. Now, if you study at places like Stanford or a university that's more permissive about taking breaks, you could consider a gap year. That's totally fine. However, I would recommend eventually returning and completing your degree, even if it's at institutions like the University of the People or Western Governors University.

As you can tell, I firmly believe in the value of a college degree. You won't find me disparaging it or suggesting that alternatives are always better. When you hear a successful individual claim that college isn't necessary anymore, ask yourself if that person has a degree themselves. Many overlook the advantages they gained from their education, such as not being filtered out by HR or getting more job interviews because of their degree.

I'm a strong advocate for everyone pursuing a degree, and I think a degree in computer science is especially valuable due to its flexibility. It's the Swiss army knife of tech degrees. I'm encouraged by ultra low-cost universities like the University of the People and Western Governors University, which have made significant strides in reducing the cost of obtaining an accredited US university degree. However, there's still more work to be done. Education should be free and accessible to all. Consider the majority of people globally living on less than $10 a day, or those outside the US who can't afford international education. These individuals might not be able to attend a traditional university, but they could access platforms like freeCodeCamp.

We're developing a comprehensive program that includes an associate's degree in mathematics and a bachelor's degree in computer science. The curriculum is rigorous, but students can learn at their own pace for free. Our goal is to gain accreditation by the early 2030s. We're committed to teaching relevant, current skills, including topics like security, ethics, and general education subjects. We aim to provide a solid foundational degree based on the curricula of top US universities.

Job compensation is influenced by various factors: market economics, skills, working conditions, and job danger levels. Of these, skills are the most controllable and can significantly impact earnings. That's why I urge people to learn software engineering—it's a lucrative skill.

Thank you for listening to my perspectives. Continuous skill development is essential, and you don't necessarily need a formal education for that. While I value master's degrees (I have an MBA myself), the return on investment isn't always clear-cut. If you can get your employer to fund it, that's great, but it's not always necessary.

If you already have a degree, think twice before pursuing a second undergraduate degree. In most cases, it's better to self-teach. There are countless success stories of self-taught developers, many of whom have used freeCodeCamp. Also, check out the freeCodeCamp podcast, where I interview many successful professionals, some without formal degrees.

In conclusion, an undergraduate degree is valuable, especially in computer science. Choose an affordable institution and major that offers the best return on investment. Remember, you don't have to spend a fortune to learn coding. Platforms like freeCodeCamp and many YouTube educators offer invaluable resources. All you need is curiosity and dedication.

Happy coding!

These days, there are thousands of publicly available college courses on the web. You can audit those courses even if you're not enrolled in a program.

In our video course, Sam Crombie and I explore what auditing is and why you should consider trying it.

We discuss how to choose a topic and a course to learn about that topic, and then how to make the most of your experience. By the end, you’ll be ready to audit courses on the web and succeed in them.

This condensed accompanying article will highlight key information from our video.

Learning on the Internet

The internet, a recent addition to our educational arsenal, has revolutionized accessibility to content. It has led to the rise of auto-didacticism, or self-guided learning.

Whether you're using the internet to complement, substitute, or as a component of conventional education, you're in control. To be an autodidact is to determine the topic you study, the source you learn from, and when you learn it.

The ability to learn on your own using the internet is among the most valuable skills you can develop. There has never been a better time to pursue what you're interested in!

What does it Mean to Audit a Class?

Auditing a course means taking a course offered by an institution for no credit or grade. You might audit a course (instead of taking it for credit) because of time, financial constraints, or the difficulty of material.

Auditing usually gives you access to lecture videos, notes, projects, and/or assignments. But it lacks personalized interaction with professors, teaching assistants, lab instructors, or other students. Fortunately, online communities can act as a substitute for such traditional class support.

In other words, to 'audit' is to learn from a complete outline of a course without interaction or feedback.

Since the early days of the internet, people have been auditing university courses in many forms. One of the earliest institution-supported platforms for e-learning was MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW).

OCW has operated since 2002 and has posted hundreds of variations of their courses to audit. Other platforms have posted or compiled public learning materials, such as College Compendium.

“Learning on the web” also encompasses news, online encyclopedias, documentation, blogs, and forums. Choosing when/where/how to learn involves deciding between organized or personalized materials.

With a structured curriculum, you always know what you’re supposed to do next. You can be confident that someone has taken the time to arrange the order of your learning in a beneficial way.

A customizable curriculum enables you to learn from several resources in any order. Everything is according to your personal needs and preferred learning style.

Auditing courses on the web provides a cost-conscious, low-risk format for academic exploration. You keep the benefits of a structured college curriculum while retaining customizability.

Auditing a course bridges the gap between self-guided and institution-based learning.

Auditing is only one component of an ecosystem of resources on the web that exist to help people learn. Many resources complement one another, utilized by platforms and courses interchangeably. Take advantage of them!

Why Audit Courses Online?

Auditing as an educational resource has many use-cases. You may benefit academically, intellectually, or professionally while learning from computer science courses. For example:

If you're a student applying to college:

Understanding an institution’s offerings in specific departments can be very valuable. Auditing allows you to explore the type of instruction and topics offered.

With more and more college students taking advantage of e-learning, you can likely find specific course material. Auditing classes at a university you're interested in attending may inform your decision.

If you're a student enrolled in college:

Auditing courses can supplement ongoing classes. It can also cover material on niche or advanced topics your school may not offer.

This also applies to courses you're looking to take in the future at your university. We recommend consulting with your department to ensure you aren’t breaking any rules.

For students in a bootcamp/certificate program, university courses can complement your curriculum. They can give you perspective into the organization and implementation of conventional academics.

If you're a professional looking to upskill or learn something new:

Auditing is a fantastic way to pick up new skills or refresh old knowledge. Learning from online courses can differentiate and keep you competitive within your profession.

If you have a technical career, learning new languages and frameworks is a necessity. Through auditing, you'll be able to stay up-to-date with changing technologies.

Even if your situation isn’t reflected in one of these examples, auditing is for everyone. The breadth of available content means that, regardless of your background, auditing has something for you.

How to Choose the Right Course to Audit

Before diving into a new topic, consider the following:

1. What are you interested in?
2. Why are you interested in that topic?
3. What are you hoping to gain by learning about it?
4. How excited are you about spending your free time learning your chosen topic?
5. Did you choose the topic for independent study or is it a component of an ongoing curriculum?

Your answers will help you figure out what you want to learn and why.

If you can't find a topic you’re passionate about, consider actionable content. Your motivations should be reflected in the course you ultimately decide to audit:

1. Have you always wanted to learn how to build an app, a website, or a game?
2. Are you trying to practice and improve your skills for coding interviews?
3. Are you looking to expand your skills in a particular field such as data science?

After identifying your interests, acknowledging your skill level is critical. Consider how much prior exposure you have to your topic of choice. A lot of courses are inherently sorted by proficiency.

Prerequisites often contain information within the scope of your selected topic. They can help you identify your competence and where it may make sense to begin. Recognizing your goals is also essential:

1. Is there something specific you want to leave the course understanding?
2. If the course is applied, what do you to build by the end, or have the capability to build?
3. Are you aiming to build skills to pass an interview?

If you can identify what you’re working towards, you may be more focused and assign a higher value to your progress.

Assessing your interests, skill level, and goals will help you make this decision. Ultimately, choosing the right topic may mean a gut feeling of genuine excitement or strong motivation.

Selecting a course to learn from the thousands available can be overwhelming. Contemplate your preferred learning style and available timeframe to find a starting point.

When reviewing potential courses, evaluate:

1. How much time can you commit to this course?
2. What might alter your schedule, and how would that impact your goals?
3. What teaching styles have you enjoyed in the past? Do you prefer lecture-heavy or project-based courses?
4. What forms of content do you enjoy consuming? Written notes? Powerpoint slides? Audio/podcast? Video lecture with slides? Video lecture without slides? Reading documentation and experimenting?
5. Do you enjoy fast-paced “drink from a firehose” courses or deeper discussions?
6. Is there a particular source you’d prefer to learn from?

We encourage you to experiment before committing. Read the course description, syllabus, prerequisites, and other information covering course structure and delivery.

If you feel comfortable with proceeding, advance to the first lesson. Work through the lecture and relevant assignments as if you were a student taking the class.

Take note of how the content was delivered. Check your comprehension of any corresponding supplemental material.

Do you feel prepared to proceed with subsequent lessons? If you’re confident and excited, you’ve found the right course!

How to Make the Most of Your Audit

Let’s get the most out of your audit. Thinking about scheduling, accountability, and available resources will help you succeed.

The most difficult part of taking an online course often isn’t getting started. Rather, it's pushing forward when the work becomes more time-consuming or demanding.

Return to the earlier reasons that led you to choose a specific topic and course. What are you hoping to get out of this experience, and what schedule enables you to make the most of your learning?

If there is a time-sensitive nature to learning any material, think about the potential impact of going through the material more quickly. It may make sense to prioritize some parts of a course over others.

Educators and content creators often put a lot of thought into the organization of their courses. But that does not always mean that structure will be the perfect fit for you.

Everyone has different levels of dedication. Learning often and on a regular basis is generally a good method for success.

Auditing can be a long process. Breaking down your course into short-term goals can make your path feel less intimidating and more rewarding.

It’s impossible to “fail” a free online course with no grades, so if you’re struggling with something, take your time. Review the material and chat with other people learning online for help.

Engaging with other people learning online is one of the best ways to stay motivated. While you’re likely driven to be reading this article, everyone can do with some peer support from time to time.

Finding someone to hold you accountable is a great way to ensure you put in continuous effort. Enlist a friend to audit the class with you, or regularly inquire about your progress.

Common challenges of auditing a course

There are several common pitfalls that auditors often experience. They usually all lead to the same thing – not completing your course.

Throughout your audit, pay attention to see if you're mismanaging your time. Identify potential distractions and avoid speeding through material you’re unfamiliar with.

You can also enrich your learning through complementary resources. Educators often link to relevant material for you to peruse.

You can expand far beyond the resources provided in the course you’re currently auditing. There may be relevant public textbooks, YouTube series, and freeCodeCamp courses and articles. You can even dive into academic papers.

There are a lot of actions you can take to improve your auditing experience and make the most of your time. Use them!

Next Steps After Completing a Course

At this point, you’ve completed your hypothetical course. Before moving on, ensure you’ve fully reviewed the material.

There’s little point to auditing a course if you walk away without a strong understanding of the content. Now assess:

1. Have you reached your goals, or made progress on them?
2. Do you have all the skills you’ll need for that project you wanted to build? For an internship or position you’ve been aiming for?
3. Are you academically prepared to move on to another course building on this subject?

Regardless of your answers, congratulations! A successful audit demonstrates strong motivation and effort.

But there’s always more to learn. Your online education is never finished, the question is simply how to proceed in the short term.

If you’re looking to learn a specific skill-set, such as machine learning, chances are one course won’t be enough. Sequencing courses to effectively audit an unofficial “degree” can be incredibly useful.

There are many, many resources on the web where people have compiled courses. Such repositories often create pathways for becoming highly skilled through successive auditing.

In other words, you'll be following a trajectory similar to a real curriculum. Start with foundations of a topic and build on them, gradually becoming more specific.

Another aspect of auditing is the ability to mix and match courses from various sources.

You can learn one topic from MIT OCW and then the next from public Berkeley YouTube lectures. This ability to interchange your learning allows you to pick the classes that appeal the most to you.

Successive auditing from several sources can create an even more valuable learning experience.

Auditing Courses Gives You Freedom

Freedom is the central theme of online self-guided learning.

Choose your own content, based on your interests. Choose your learning format, your teacher, and the source of your class. Choose your own schedule. Choose what you learn next. It’s all up to you.

You’re now informed to make these decisions and achieve your goals through auditing.

Thank you for reading! We hope that you come away feeling prepared and excited to learn by auditing courses on the web!

If you’re unsure where to start, try searching for your interest on collegecompendium.org. We’ve curated hundreds of courses for you on all manner of popular programming areas.

For a deeper dive into everything discussed in this article and more, check out our video course here:

This article was co-authored by Samuel Crombie. Thank you to Computer Vectors by Vecteezy for the cover image.

• We provided more than 2.1 billion minutes of learning to millions of people around the world.
• We published our 300-hour Relational Database Certification teaching SQL, Linux, and Git interactively – right inside VS Code.
• We shipped a project-oriented learning overhaul to freeCodeCamp's Responsive Web Design certification.
• We published more than 130 full-length video courses on our community's YouTube channel, and more than 1,000 text-based tutorials on our nonprofit's publication.
• We made steady progress on the Data Science Curriculum Expansion and will ship parts of it in early 2022.
• We even published Learn to Code RPG, a video game simulation of the process of learning to code and getting a developer job.

So you may be wondering: what's next? How do we help even more people from here?

Our goal:

To provide a computer science bachelor's degree...

from an accredited US university...

for free.

We want this degree program to be freely available to anyone anywhere on the planet – regardless of their socioeconomic background, or their ability to obtain a US visa.

What follows is my thinking on how we will achieve this. But first: why degrees are still so important, even in 2022.

Much of social mobility is still locked up in university degrees.

Want to work abroad? Many countries require a degree in order to get a work visa.

Want to enter the US military as an officer, rather than an enlisted service member? You're going to need a 4-year degree.

And despite a movement among tech companies to do away with degree requirements, most high-paid job openings still require a degree.

US universities play a particularly important role in the global higher education system. We currently host more than a million international students from other countries.

Their parents have saved up – in some cases for decades – so they can provide their kids with the opportunity to study abroad in the US. These families understand the massive edge that a degree from an accredited US university can give their careers.

But what about everyone else? Most people worldwide live off less than $10 a day. What hope do they have of saving up to send their kids to US, when they may be struggling just to provide basic necessities for their families?

And what about the millions of busy adults here in the US who don't have a degree? Many of them are raising kids or tending to family members with disabilities – all in between working shifts, commuting, and trying to get enough sleep.

If you remove monetary cost from the equation – if you make all coursework self-paced and give people as many years as they need to finish without penalty – you can make a university education more viable for these busy adults.

We will expand freeCodeCamp's curriculum into a full blown computer science bachelor's degree – with similar breadth, depth, and rigor of top US computer science degree programs.

The infrastructure and instructional design will be hard work. But it is a challenge our nonprofit can handle. We already have thousands of hours worth of coursework, which has helped 10,000s of people to get their first developer job.

The bigger challenge will be ensuring that our coursework meets the specifications of university accreditation organizations.

I have done a lot of research on this over the years, and have come to the conclusion that we would most likely need to:

A) Partner with an existing accredited US university, or

B) Set up physical campuses where we can offer some in-person courses in addition to a mostly online learning experience. And then apply for accreditation ourselves.

Either way, we are going to need help from higher education experts.

It will take years to attain full accreditation.

And we are going to need money. A lot of money.

Which brings us to the topic of our nonprofit's finances.

Grass-roots donations alone are not enough to sustain our nonprofit.

Of the millions of people who use freeCodeCamp each month, we currently only have 7,539 monthly-recurring donors. We are extremely grateful for their support. And we're trying to figure out ways to encourage more people to donate.

With an average donation of $5 per month, that adds up to $37,695. But our costs are more than double that.

Our nonprofit currently runs more than 70 servers. We have a staff of 30 teachers and developers. (Many of these people work part-time. Some of them are also professors at universities.)

We have been able to make up the difference by seeking out grants from dozens of partners. For example, we partnered with New Relic to develop this Open Telemetry course. And we partnered with Snyk to develop this DevSecOps course.

Thanks to support from these partners, we've been able to bring on more teachers, and to teach a wider range of developer tools. But this is just the beginning. If we want to offer accredited university degrees, we'll need to think bigger. Much bigger.

If we want to build up an endowment and eventually gain accreditation, we're going to need more resources.

Here are three new approaches we're taking in 2022:

Approach #1: Seeking out large gifts from individual donors

Earlier this year, we received a large gift to fund development of freeCodeCamp's Android app. We've used these funds to bring on Flutter developers. And already we've shipped major improvements to the app.

I am actively building relationships with prominent alumni in the freeCodeCamp community. Some of these people are now independently wealthy or hold significant equity in growing startups.

A single donor with enough resources can make it possible for us to support thousands of learners across the developer community. I'm working directly with these patrons to help them maximize the impact of their gifts.

Approach #2: Showing display ads to non-signed in visitors

We now show display ads to forum visitors who aren't signed in.

We are experimenting with showing display ads alongside our publication tutorials as well. These will mainly be in the right-hand margin, and we will do our best to minimize their impact on page load times and data usage.

Last year I decided that we would not show political ads, or ads for alcohol or gambling. Even though this reduces the revenue we bring in for our nonprofit, I feel very strongly about this.

Approach #3: Grants from Web3 development-focused projects to create courses around their tools

There are thousands of job openings for Web3 developers. And large tech companies are investing heavily in these tools and ecosystems.

We can secure grants to teach developers how to use these blockchain tools, and how to write more secure smart contracts.

Note that most of the blockchains that have come online in the past 5 years are effectively carbon-neutral, and we will focus primarily on these. Whenever we do anything on a blockchain that involves carbon emissions, we will purchase carbon offsets. This is the right thing to do. And we can lead by example.

Let's help thousands of busy adults finally get their Computer Science degree.

Over the past two years, I've done my best to understand the university accreditation process. But I am still very new to the process, and I need help. ☺️

If you have worked at any of the US Department of Education or CHEA-recognized accreditation organizations, or have recently gone through accreditation / re-accreditation at your institution, I would value any advice you may have. Please DM me on Twitter.

If you are an independently wealthy freeCodeCamp alum – or someone who wants to make a gift toward helping busy adults to get their degree – Please DM me on Twitter.

And if you are a working-class idealist like me who wants to make technology education more accessible to families here in the US and around the world, we would welcome your support.

I'll continue working toward this goal of forging a reliable, sustainable path to free, accredited computer science bachelor's degrees.

This will be a multi-year, multi-million dollar endeavor. But I am undaunted.

freeCodeCamp is only 7 years into our mission of creating free learning resources. This is my life's work. And I am optimistic that others will continue this work long after I am gone.

Many people stand to benefit from a free, accredited computer science bachelor's degree program. Together – with some hard work – we can make this a reality.

Thanks, and happy coding.

It was my first competition and my first semester. I didn’t know what I was doing.

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@miguel_photo?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title="">Miguel Henriques on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="blank" title=")

This is the story of how I decided to be creative in a semester-long project, how my initial topic choice was crushed and how doing a Kaggle competition at the last minute saved my grade.

As my personal background, I studied Telecommunications Engineering, I have some experience with software development and machine learning, but I had no idea about NLP back then.

I started my Masters degree last semester and one of the first subjects I attended was called ‘Classification and clustering’ in NLP. The professor explained the basics of text processing during the first weeks and afterwards each student had to pick a classification or clustering problem in NLP, document the theory, implement a solution, and present it to the class. The implementation could be done at the end of the semester, not right away with the presentation.

I was new at the uni so I decided to wait and observe what the other students did.

Choosing the topic

Very quickly, the topics of decision trees, naïve Bayes, random forests, SVMs, logistic regression, etc were picked. I barely knew what they were so I was excited at the thought of my peers squeezing these topics into 30 min presentations, and I gave them all my attention and wrote all the notes I could.

Unfortunately, these first presentations were purely theoretical, since no one had had time to implement anything so early in the semester. I learnt later that the motivation behind presenting so early had been the urge to ‘pick an easy topic before someone else took it’ and ‘get the presentation over with’, postponing the implementation of the algorithm until later on in the semester.

As much as I tried, I didn’t understand much of the presentations. I need to visualize things, see the code, see examples. It’s not easy for me to follow a presentation full of mathematical notation and formulas.

Weeks passed, the professor started to urge us to choose a topic and set a date for the presentation, and I had nothing. I waited some presentations more before starting to panic.

The next presentations were a little more advanced: LDA, LSI, perceptrons, NNs, tensorflow, keras and word embeddings among others.

I was completely ignorant on some topics (LDA and LSI), but I did know some minimal ML. These presentations did include code, sometimes even too much. There was a lot of scrolling and very little time spent on analyzing the code, the focus was purely on the results. I learnt about the origins of tensorflow and keras, and I was left exhausted and confused at the end of each presentation. As much as I’d tried, I hadn’t learnt much.

I was one of the last students left to choose a topic, and the professor was looking at me every time he mentioned the ‘friendly reminder’. I got the message.

I tried to think rationally: there weren’t many obvious topics left, and I wanted a topic interesting for me and for the other students where I could put everything to use, not just a data structure or a ML model. The subject had 6 ECTS and I wanted to use the time to produce something I could be proud of.

I asked my friend to Google for classification problems in NLP, and after some searching I found out about sentiment analysis. It wrapped everything together beautifully, and I had my topic. I checked if someone had already picked it up, no one had, I told the professor, he said ‘Finally!’, and I started gathering my references. The wheel was in motion.

The following week, at another lecture, a guest lecturer gave a very interesting talk about his Master Thesis, on sentiment analysis. Of course. My fellow classmates and I spent 90 mins learning about it, the motivation of using it, the applications, the development, the code, the results, everything. It was a majestic Master Thesis and a very illustrative talk, and it ruined my presentation.

I could have still done my project on the same topic, but everyone had heard the experienced researcher on his thorough talk for 90 mins, there was no way I could’ve been able to do the equivalent of his Master Thesis in a couple of months, so I decided to keep looking for something unique, something I could present and people would say: “oooh”.

At this point, panic mode was on.

My presentation date was in 2 months, my awesome topic was no more, and I needed something, fast. I was scrolling through Twitter trying to ignore the pressure when I saw Kaggle announced their brand new Quora insincere questions classification competition, and I remember thinking:

• Quora? I like Quora
• Insincere questions? Sounds like fun!
• Classification? Could this be…

I went to the webpage, and it was indeed a text classification problem. It was as if Kaggle had seen me drowning and lent me a helping hand. This competition could solve all my problems.

1. Had I ever done a Kaggle competition before? I have done some small projects on ML but never a competition.
2. Was the competition for beginners? No, it was hosted by Quora with real prizes, and professional people competing hard for it.
3. Did I have the slightest clue where to begin? No I did not.

So I went for it. Doing this project would be doing something completely different from the rest of the class, and of course I was afraid. This is the mental dialogue with myself:

• What’s the worst that could happen?
• Well, the professor might reject the topic.
• Okay assuming it’s accepted, the worst thing?
• Not finishing in time, not having something complete to present.
• Fair point, what if I have something complete?
• It could be terrible, worse than random classification.
• That would indeed be bad.

So I set my goal to have something finished and ideally with a decent result in two months.

I enthusiastically pitched the idea to the professor, he listened and nodded and said: “Sure, you can change the topic”. I also heard “if you can pull it off” but I’m somewhat sure that last part came from inside my mind and he didn’t actually say it.

I was going to do the documentation and implementation of my submission at the same time, so I set to work.

The Kaggle competition

Since my ambitions were humble, I didn’t bother with the imposter syndrome. I made a list of the popular kernels in the website, went through them, understood them, combined them, tweaked them, and made my own.

1. EDA

The first thing to do was exploratory data analysis (EDA). In hindsight I spent way too much time exploring the questions, but in my defense, I didn’t know what I was doing, and some of the insincere questions were funny, I have to admit. I gathered all the questions Quora classifies as insincere and extracted some that I personally find funny. You can see them in my github. And you can see my EDA in kaggle.

2. Preprocessing

Strategies were a bit different in the preprocessing, and it took some more time to understand what people were doing. I learnt how to use word embeddings, adjust the input text so that the text coverage is the maximum and the amount of unknown words is at the minimum. I was quite proud of how much I learnt about text processing in such a short time.

I used Glove as pretrained embeddings, the text coverage at the beginning:

From all the different words that were used, 31.5% are recognized by the embeddings, and from all the text used, 88%. There are more frequent words than others, such as ‘the’. ‘a’. etc. That 31.5% of the vocabulary makes up to 88% of the total text.

After lowering the text, expanding the contractions and removing special characters and punctuations, the coverage is as follows:

Out of vocabulary words (those not recognized by the embeddings) include the following, along with their frequency:

You can see my preprocessing kernel in kaggle.

4. The model

Here my limited knowledge on ML helped me move a bit faster, the only bottleneck was deciding which architecture to use. People were using models from RNNs to LSTMs to BERT even, adding KFold, cyclical learning rates, bidirectional models, what?

My stress level went up, the presentation date was in two weeks and I didn’t understand any of the architectures. I picked the simplest one that could give me a decent score, I started with a LSTM architecture.

I connected everything together, and I got a result. A terrible one, but a result nonetheless. My basic needs fulfilled, I started working on the presentation while I left model tuning as my procrastination activity. Eventually I added an Attention layer, and finally turned it into a bidirectional LSTM. The score was decent.

The final architecture I used, a BiLSTM with an Attention layer. It trained quite fast and gave a relatively good result. As before, you can see the whole kernel in kaggle.

5. The preparation

For the first time in my life, I had too much material for my presentation. I had to cut enough to fit into 30 minutes, but no more lest I made my talk too general. I had to show code but not only code, since in my experience it’s difficult to focus on just code for half an hour.

I spent the last two weeks documenting my code, adding all the references I had used, just in case someone somewhere thought I had made that project by myself and had retrieved the information from my imagination.

The openness in Kaggle and the availability of public and well-documented code is one of the greatest incentives of using Kaggle in my opinion.

I polished my presentation and trained with classmates to see that I didn’t talk for over 30 mins. I did, and they gave me tips to reduce repetition in what I was saying, showing in the slides, and showing again in the code; I made much simpler slide-code transitions as a result.

6. The presentation

For my presentation, I only used slides to explain the specifics of the competition: motivation, problem definitio, ninput data, metrics, etc.

For the EDA and preprocessing, I had a slide explaining what I would show in the code, later I switched to the code, and then came back to the slides and showed a recap of what I had just shown. At the end, I included all the advanced model architecture additions I hadn’t had time to consider.

The presentation went very well, I only spoke for 30 mins and there was a follow-up discussion of another 30 mins, where the whole class discussed different strategies to classify insincere questions. The professor praised my creativity and said he would consider changing the structure of the semester so that more students did their projects similar to mine.

I consider that a successful project!

7. Conclusion

Since I didn’t know what I was doing throughout the project, I had many doubts, it’s risky doing something completely opposite to the rest of the class, it can end very well or terribly.

I learnt that being creative can sometimes be rewarded, and that calculated risks are worth taking. In this case, I consulted with the professor before doing anything and he approved, so the risk was smaller.

I learnt a lot doing the Kaggle competition, I scored on the top 29% which is not so terrible! I’m quite proud of it, considering it was my first competition.

If there’s anything I can say as a takeaway, it’s this:

If you’re at university or at a course/program, use the time to learn, experiment, and put yourself in situations where you could fail, but also succeed. My professional relationship with the professor got stronger because of my project.

If you can afford to do more than just completing the subject, consider going beyond what the professor says. Read the references, research online, propose topics. Who knows where your initiative could take you.

And lastly, you don’t have to do exactly what the other students do. Just because everyone follows a certain structure or submission format doesn’t mean it’s the correct one. Talk to the professor or teaching assistants, ask students who had the subject the previous year, and then decide consciously how you want to handle the subject.

I hope you liked my story! If you want to hear more about it or contact me in any way, you can reach me on twitter.