College courses for free!

According to the College Board, the average annual cost of a private 4 year university is $23,712. But there is a way to take college courses for free, without homework or exams, and taught by the the top professors in the country: check out from the library one or more of the Great Courses series, available on CD or audiocassette. For example, one such course is Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, taught by Robert Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a Professor of Neuroscience at Stanford University in its Program in Molecular and Genetic Medicine and a recipient of a MacArthur "genius" fellowship and several teaching awards.

The publisher describes the course as discussing "behavioral biology, a field that explores interactions among the brain, mind, body, and environment that have a surprising influence on how we behave. In short, it is the study of how our brains make us the individuals that we are. In 24 lectures, you will investigate how the human brain is sculpted by evolution, constrained or freed by genes, shaped by early experience, modulated by hormones, and otherwise influenced to produce a wide range of behaviors, some of them abnormal. You will see that little can be explained by thinking about any one of these factors alone because some combination of influences is almost always at work."