Free Online "University" Makes Its Debut

Posted by: Louis Lavelle on August 4, 2010

Too busy for b-school? Too broke? You might want to check out a new offering from PricewaterhouseCoopers. The audit giant recently launched the PwC Open University, a free online library of PwC-developed courses.

For anyone familiar with OpenCourseWare, the effort by dozens of colleges and universities worldwide to make course materials available free online, this is a very similar, but slightly wonkier, version of that. Courses, in the form of video, audio podcasts, and webcasts, are available in nearly a dozen disciplines, including such b-school-friendly topics as banking and capital markets, health care, technology, and utilities.

Actual classes range from the general interest (“Health reform: Prospering in a post-reform world”) to the painfully narrow (“Deciphering the initial Treasury guidance on Section 48D therapeutic discovery project credit”). As expected, tax and audit topics dominate, but there are courses on talent management, intellectual property, sustainable growth and other areas, too.

The courses feature PwC experts on the subject matter at hand. Lengths vary, but most seem to be in the 10 minute range—long enough for a meaty discussion of the topic without posing a challenge to our Twitter-enfeebled attention spans. Check it out.