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1200 Free Computer Science Courses from the World’s Top Universities

ManoelJanuary 28, 2025About 91 minEngineeringComputerArticle(s)blogfreecodecamp.orgengineeringcoencomputerengineeringcomputer-engineering

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1200 Free Computer Science Courses from the World’s Top Universities
In this article, we’ve compiled 1200+ online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2024. We first built the list in 2020 using a data-driven approach that we have used each year, including 2024. You...

In this article, we’ve compiled 1200+ online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2024. We first built the list in 2020 using a data-driven approach that we have used each year, including 2024. You can find the methodology below.


Methodology

First, we identified the leading world university rankings. Since we were interested in computer science specifically, he looked at their latest computer science rankings.

For the 2024 update, Suparn, my colleague used the same sources and methodology to find the top 60 universities offering online computer science courses.

Here are the rankings used:

QS World University Rankings for Computer Science and Information Systems 2024
Discover the world's top universities for Computer Science and Information Systems 2024. Explore the QS World University Rankings by Subject in various disciplines.
World University Rankings 2024 by subject: computer science
The computer science subject table uses the same trusted and rigorous performance indicators as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, but the methodology has been recalibrated to
ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects

ShanghaiRanking began to publish world university ranking by academic subjects in 2009. By introducing improved methodology, the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) was first published in 2017. The 2024 GRAS contains rankings of universities in 55 subjects across Natural Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences. More than 1,900 out of 5,000 universities across 96 countries and regions are finally listed in the rankings. The GRAS rankings use a range of objective academic indicators and third-party data to measure the performance of world universities in respective subjects, covering in 5 major evaluation categories such as World-Class Faculty, World-Class Output, High Quality Research, Research Impact and International Collaboration. The index of international academic awards is based on Academic Excellence Survey (AES) conducted by ShanghaiRanking.(Methodology)

Then, we crawled and scraped each ranking.

Now that we had some data, we used Jupyter with Python to process it. We combined the three rankings into one by averaging the position of each university in each ranking. Then, we filtered out the universities that didn’t offer online courses, and limited the list to the top 60 institutions — the cream of the crop.

Combined ranking: top 10 universities for studying computer science in 2024
Combined ranking: top 10 universities for studying computer science in 2024

As you can see above, we found that the top three institutions are #1 MIT, #2 Stanford, and #3 Carnegie Mellon.

Finally, we used the Class Central database, with its 250K online courses, to find all the computer science courses offered by the universities in the ranking.

The end result is a list of 1200+ online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2024. ---

Stats

  • Enrollments range from 10 to over 13 million, with 20 courses exceeding 1 million enrollments
  • Altogether, they have over 110M enrollments, with an average of 155K enrollments
  • 1180 courses are in English, 39 Chinese, 15 Spanish, 13 Arabic, 12 French, 12 Korean, 7 Russian, 3 Portuguese, 3 German, 1 Dutch, and 1 Japanese
  • Together, they account for more than 78K reviews at Class Central, with an average of 216 reviews
  • Average rating: 4.07 out of 5.0
  • All these courses are free or can be audited for free
  • 240 courses are beginner level, 281 are intermediate level, and 70 are advanced level.

More Courses

The full list is split into subjects. Click on a subject below to go to the relevant section. With over 1200 courses to pick from, I hope you find something you like. But if these aren’t enough, check out Class Central’s catalog of 250K online courses or our thematic collections:

1500+ Free Developer and IT Certifications — Class Central
Massive list of free certificates and badges for developers in data science, software development, and more.
Harvard CS50 Guide: How to Pick the Right Course (with Free Certificate) — Class Central
In 2024, Harvard CS50 offers 10 free certificate courses on topics such as computer science, Python, and AI.
40+ Free Certificates from Wolfram U: Expand Your Computational Universe — Class Central
Guide to the Wolfram U platform, which offers 220+ hours of courses with a free certificate of completion.
10,000+ Free Courses from Tech Giants: Learn from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and More — Class Central
Including thousands of free certificates and badges from these leading big tech companies.
8000+ OpenCourseWare Courses from Top Institutions — Class Central
Curated collection of thousands of open educational resources from MIT, Stanford, Yale, and more.

Programming (267)


Computer Science (736)


Data Science (221)


Information Security (InfoSec) (62)

1200 Free Computer Science Courses from the World’s Top Universities

In this article, we’ve compiled 1200+ online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2024. We first built the list in 2020 using a data-driven approach that we have used each year, including 2024. You...