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Analysis

[2024] 900 Free Computer Science Courses from World’s Top Universities

Combining leading university rankings to find the best computer science courses available online.

In this article, I compiled 900 online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2023.

I built the list using a data-driven approach. You can find my methodology below. But if you’d rather go straight to the course list, click here.

Methodology

First, I identified the leading world university rankings. Since I was interested in computer science specifically, I looked at their latest computer science rankings. Here are the ones I used:

Then, I crawled and scraped each ranking. You can find the raw data in my GitHub repository.

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

Combined ranking: top-10 universities for studying computer science in 2023

As you can see above, I found that the top three institutions are #1 MIT, #2 Stanford, and #3 Carnegie Mellon. You can also find my Jupyter Notebook in my GitHub repo.

Finally, I used the Class Central database, with its 150K online courses, to find all the computer science courses offered by the universities in the ranking.

The end result is a list of 900 online courses offered by the 60 best universities in the world for studying computer science in 2023.

Notable Computer Science Courses

Unsurprisingly, some of the courses in the list are also some of the best online courses of all time. You can find these top courses below. They’re all fantastic options.

Subjects

The full list is split into subjects. Click on a subject below to go to the relevant section. Courses also in Class Central’s best online courses of all time are denoted with a star (⭐).

With 900 courses to pick from, I hope you find something you like. But if these aren’t enough, check out Class Central’s catalog of over 150K online courses.

Without further ado, here are the computer science online courses offered by the world’s best universities.


Artificial Intelligence Courses (32)

Machine Learning Courses (68)

Deep Learning Courses (8)

Computer Vision Courses (18)

Self-Driving Cars Courses (7)

Computer Science Courses (86)

Algorithms and Data Structure Courses (88)

Databases Courses (24)

Bioinformatics Courses (25)

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Courses (6)

Human-Computer Interaction Courses (9)

Computer Networking Courses (7)

Data Science Courses (74)

Data Analysis Courses (74)

Big Data Courses (21)

Data Visualization Courses (13)

Data Mining Courses (8)

Programming Courses (56)

Python Courses (38)

SQL Courses (12)

Java Courses (11)

Scala Courses (8)

C++ Courses (8)

Software Development Courses (19)

Web Development Courses (38)

Mobile Development Courses (24)

Game Development & VR Courses (8)

Network Security Courses (3)

Cryptography Courses (6)

Information Technology Courses (13)

Internet of Things Courses (23)

Healthcare Informatics Courses (23)

Cloud Computing & DevOps Courses (10)

Quantum Computing (17)

Manoel Cortes Mendez Profile Image

Manoel Cortes Mendez

Software engineer and online graduate student in computer science passionate about education, technology, and their intersection.

Comments 4

  1. Ambreen Asif Qureshi

    I am an educationist since 1994 and am presently working as Director Quality Enhancement Cell at one of the private universities in Pakistan.

    I am pretty good at almost all MS Office applications, and an avid user of computers for daily professional work.

    However, I think post Covid-19, there will be lots of lay offs through the the world, and, God forbid, I may not be an exception considering my salary package and age.

    Therefore, I want to gain knowledge and brush up my qualifications which may help me in working online from Home. Can you please advise me what would match my experience (mainly University Administration and Quality Assurance in Higher Education) and qualifications (M.A. English).

    I want to remain gainfully employed. Please help me understand new technologies and equip myself for future.

    Reply
  2. XYG

    Very helpful list. Thanks very much!

    Reply
  3. Miria Cambie

    This is a wonderful resource. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Nasheema Fathali Shahbazi

      Ambreen, I would say input your above question into ChatGTP and the answer following will guide you as to what to study that will align with what you looking for.

      Also I want to say thank you so much for making this resource available for so many people. This is an excellent compilation. Hats off to you .

      Reply

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