Stanford University charges $65,127 per year in tuition. A 4-year degree costs roughly $260,000 before room, board, and fees. The acceptance rate is 3.6%. For every 100 students who apply, 96 are told no.
Stanford has also published for free, online, accessible to anyone on Earth with an internet connection over 2,100 courses, the complete AI curriculum its graduate students use, hundreds of full lecture series on YouTube, one of the most comprehensive philosophy references ever written, a design thinking toolkit used by Google and Nike, medical school health courses, business strategy lectures from Stanford GSB, entrepreneurship resources from the university that produced Google, Netflix, Instagram, LinkedIn, and PayPal and research papers that have shaped entire industries.
A Stanford professor told a friend: "Most people think Stanford's knowledge is locked behind a $65,000/year gate. It's not. The gate is the degree the credential, the campus, the network, the diploma. The knowledge has been free for over a decade published on YouTube, Coursera, edX, and Stanford's own website. The same lectures I give to students who paid $65,000 are sitting on a YouTube channel with 4 million subscribers. Most people have never searched for them because they assumed a university this expensive would never give anything away."
She said: "Why would Stanford give it away?"
"Because the degree is the product not the knowledge. The knowledge is the marketing. A free Stanford course that changes your life is the best advertisement for a $260,000 degree. And the research the papers, the encyclopedias, the toolkits exists to advance human knowledge, not to generate tuition revenue. Stanford publishes freely because the mission has always been public. The price tag is for the credential. The education has been free since the moment they uploaded the first lecture."
He showed her 11 free Stanford resources most people don't know exist resources that replaced $3,000 in textbooks, $10,000 in professional workshops, and $100,000 in degree programs.
"Stanford's reputation is behind a gate. Stanford's knowledge is not."
Here are the 11 resources 🧵