[Review] Hillsdale College's Free Courses

So chances are, at some point, you've probably stumbled across a random advertisement for a Hillsdale College online class. And if you were like me, you were wondering, is this legit? What exactly is this? And why is it free? One of the most prominent courses that has a ton of advertisements is their course on reading Genesis. It has a very thrilling trailer, if you will, for the course with the professor and showing how you can read Genesis in different literature forms and methods, and it looks very intriguing. So I took the class. I've actually taken two classes from Hillsdale, the first being one in Western Theology, because Hillsdale offers a ton of different courses. Courses in politics, history, literature, philosophy and religion, and even economics. But it almost seems like there would be a catch, right? Since it's being advertised as free, what exactly are you going to get from this? Well, we're going to dive into Hillsdale online courses from a student's perspective and from someone not being paid by Hillsdale to promote it. So let's begin. To enroll, it's very easy. You create an account, and then once you create an account, you click enroll, and you're enrolled. It's definitely not that way with an actual university class. With the classes I've taken, you don't have to purchase any other supplemental material, definitely not a textbook. In the Genesis course, they even gave the study guide to where it listed all the main points and gave you a place to take notes. Very well laid out. The first lecture is always a lecture by the current president of Hillsdale College, Larry Arnn, where he sort of introduces the course and why the course is important to the college's overall perspective on things. And then you dive into the professors. Now, for the Theology course I had, it had multiple professors, and some were really thrilling and some were less than thrilling. With the Genesis course, it is just the one professor. He didn't need another professor to support him. He held the whole show together. Now, in addition to the study guide, you also have a place within the website where you can put notes. You can also participate freely in discussions about the lesson. Not that you would want to, because that's usually tedious in a regular online course, but if you're just wanting to talk about it with someone, you can talk about it. At the end of each lecture, you also have the ability to watch supplemental videos on the same topic, which is sort of like the response from the professor if you had a question, and it's them just answering some of those questions for two minutes or so. And if you're into apologetics, a lot of the conversations with the Genesis class have some sort of apologetics undertones, especially some of the questions that are asked about Genesis. Now, the Genesis course doesn't go into dating or young earth or old earth creationism. It's more about the story and what people can derive from the story using literary methods and things like that. It's not a full exegesis of every chapter. It's bouncing around to the primary accounts that are of interest. With the theology course, the same thing applied. It was going to prominent aspects of theology. It wasn't covering each century. So once you watch the lecture, any supplemental videos, you've looked at the study guide notes, you're ready to take that lecture test, which is usually going to be about 10 questions. Since I take these courses primarily when I'm on break, I try and take those quizzes without any notes just to keep the mind sharp for when I'm taking courses in seat at my actual university, just to work the noggin a little bit. And you can typically do pretty well if you've just watched the lecture before. That same pattern continues with the remaining lectures. You watch the lectures, you look at your study notes, you do the quiz, and then once you've reached the end of the course, you take a final quiz. A lot of the questions are very similar in nature to the ones that you took during your end of lecture quizzes. The final quiz is about 50 questions. It's not timed. No one is going to proctor the exam. No one's going to review it. It gives you the score at the end. It tells you if you pass, you can take it again. It's very relaxed. And then at the end of the course, you get these nice certificates, which are digitally signed by the president. It lists your completion date and then the course that you took. The only negative is it's sort of worth the paper it's printed on. If you're going into one of these courses thinking that this is going to be a serious academic credit, it's not. If you think this is going to help advance you in your field, it's probably not. If you think it's going to look great on your LinkedIn page, it's probably not. But if you're looking for just some basic information about a topic or something you're really interested in, then it's worth it. It's great knowledge. It's great information to have. And it's free. If you look at other websites that offer courses like this, such as Masterclass, those can range from $90 per class, or you have to buy a subscription to see all the classes. This is free, and you get the same professors that work at Hillsdale, and you can avoid paying that tuition. I would say, though, that this would have a lot of benefit for someone in high school. If you're taking online college classes, and you're getting in the rhythm of what's expected of you, and you're getting into some of these meaty academic topics, then I could see where that would be a big benefit on a transcript, or just in general. Also, if you're interested in things like apologetics, as I mentioned before, there are some topics in here that could be beneficial, could give you a better grasp on a subject. For me, I don't go to a Christian university, so it's nice for me to sort of get a break and study some things that I do on my free time, but do it in an academic sort of setting. Whatever it may be, this is an awesome free tool for you to use, and there are a ton of classes for you to take. You don't even have to complete the classes, you can just do a lecture that interests you, and you still get certificates to hang up, and you can try and fool people with, and say, look, I went to Hillsdale College. Just don't look very closely on the paper, it's just a certificate. And definitely print out the study guide, so you can flip back to this, and look at what you learned, and add some more notes as you go along the way. Let me know if you enroll in one of these classes yourself, or if you have any other questions in the comments below.