DEMO HOMEPAGE for Dave's review: the decluttered layout in the current design. Links go to the real starvard.org.

A free university. Open to everyone, everywhere.

Starvard.121 real courses. Zero dollars. No applications, no tuition, no deadlines, no debt. One of the largest free universities on the internet, and class is always in session.

No application. No account. No cookie wall. One click and you're in a course.

The Starvard University seal, embroidered in navy and gold on white silk
A one hundred dollar bill

Get Paid to Learn

Some Starvard courses come with cash challenges attached. We have hundreds of dollars set aside right now to reward students who do the work and show it: finish the challenge, upload your proof, get paid.

See the challenges →

First up: the 99 Days of Piano Challenge, with a $100 prize pool shared between everyone who finishes.

Start here

Start with the interesting stuff.

Three doors, three obsessions. AI, games, and building a business: the courses students actually finish.

A student playing the game he built, in Vibe Coding Video Games at Starvard

The game course · $10 bounty inside

Build a real video game this week.

You describe the game. The AI builds it. You steer, tune, and ship it. Build a game, get $10. That is the whole deal: a finished, playable game earns you ten dollars, no coding experience needed.

Start building your game >
A friendly robot in the Starvard library, watching a galaxy of words rise from a book

How AI Works

What the machine is actually doing when it answers you. The course we send every skeptic to first.

A kid’s lemonade stand at golden hour, doing booming business

Business 101

Opens with the kid who made a million dollars with a lemonade stand. Then it teaches you how.

Learn from the best

The greatest teachers alive, on video, free.

Full university courses, curated into proper Starvard hubs: lessons in order, one click each.

The Yale emblemThe Stanford emblemThe Mit emblem

Psychology

Yale, Stanford, MIT

Paul Bloom, Robert Sapolsky, John Gabrieli, and Hank Green. Four full courses.

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Philosophy

Harvard and Yale

Michael Sandel on justice, Shelly Kagan on death, and Crash Course to warm up.

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Computer Science

Stanford and MIT

Mehr Sahami's legendary CS106A, MIT's 6.0001, and Carrie Anne Philbin's Crash Course.

The catalog

Nine topics. One campus.

Starvard is organized like a real university, because it is one. Pick a topic, wander its halls, take anything you like. There are no prerequisites and no one will ever check.

The Masters Library

Taught by the Masters. The greatest teachers who ever lived.

Every expensive university on Earth builds its courses on the same shelf of books. At Starvard, the shelf itself is free. Read the originals in the Masters Library, beautiful on a phone, many with free audio. Fifty-four classics are on the shelf today, and the shelf is growing to one hundred.

S

Socrates

Athens · 399 BC

He wrote nothing and taught everyone. Meet him in Plato's Dialogues, where the questions are still sharper than most answers.

Read The Republic >

A

Aristotle

Greece · 384 BC

The tutor of Alexander and the inventor of thinking clearly. Start with the Ethics: how to live well, argued like a science.

Read the Ethics >

M

Marcus Aurelius

Rome · AD 121

An emperor who wrote himself reminders to be kind. Meditations is the most honest self-help book ever written, and he never meant to publish it.

Read Meditations >

C

Confucius

China · 551 BC

The Analects: two thousand five hundred years of students have started here, with respect, ritual, and decency as a curriculum.

Read the Analects >

W

Shakespeare

England · 1564

Every human feeling, in the best sentences ever built. The plays and sonnets, free, the way his own audience heard them: standing up and spellbound.

Read Hamlet >

J

Jane Austen

England · 1775

The funniest serious writer in English. Pride and Prejudice is on the shelf today, with full audio.

Read Pride and Prejudice >

Also on the shelf: Homer · Dante · Seneca · Epictetus · Laozi · Montaigne · Frederick Douglass · Charles Dickens · Mark Twain · Thoreau · Melville

Enter the Masters Library >

Field notes

Questions worth a detour

Twelve courses, introduced by the question they answer.

FIELD NOTE 01?Mind & life

MIND & LIFE

Why does your brain love a shortcut?

Spot the assumptions hiding in plain sight, and give your first answer a second thought.

Critical Thinking 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 02✳Technology

TECHNOLOGY & AI

What is the machine actually doing when it answers you?

Words become numbers, numbers become answers. The plain English tour, no math degree needed.

How AI Works ↗+
FIELD NOTE 03$Business & money

BUSINESS & MONEY

Can all of personal finance fit on one index card?

Nine rules, one card, and the quiet confidence of knowing your money is handled.

The Money Index Card ↗+
FIELD NOTE 04ΨMind & life

MIND & LIFE

Why do you remember the embarrassment and forget the compliment?

A friendly tour of how minds actually work, from Yale's lecture hall to your own head.

Psychology 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 05↗Mind & life

MIND & LIFE

Why do winners and losers want the exact same thing?

Goals are not what separate them. Systems are. Build one of your own in seven days.

Systems, Not Goals ↗+
FIELD NOTE 06↻Mind & life

MIND & LIFE

Why is starting the hardest part?

Shrink the first step until you cannot talk yourself out of it, then let the streak do the rest.

Habits 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 07“Arts & wonder

ARTS & WONDER

What makes a story hard to put down?

A character, a want, and something in the way. Learn to build all three on purpose.

Storytelling 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 08☽Health & body

HEALTH & BODY

Why does one bad night follow you for three days?

What sleep is really doing while you are not watching, and how to get more of it.

Sleep 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 09▶Technology

TECHNOLOGY & AI

Can you build a real game without learning to code first?

You describe it, Claude builds it, you steer. A finished game by the end of the week.

Vibe Coding Video Games ↗+
FIELD NOTE 10♫Arts & wonder

ARTS & WONDER

How long until your hands know the song by themselves?

Ninety nine days of small daily practice, and a recital at the end of it.

Learn Piano ↗+
FIELD NOTE 11%Business & money

BUSINESS & MONEY

Why does doing nothing beat doing something, most of the time?

The case for patience, index funds, and leaving your future alone to grow.

Investing 101 ↗+
FIELD NOTE 12¡Languages

LANGUAGES

When does a new language stop sounding like noise?

The first hundred words, the patterns underneath them, and conversations sooner than you think.

Spanish 101 ↗+

Go global

Thirty courses, five languages.

The same university, in your own words. Pick a language in the header of any page, or start here.

Español  ·  Bahasa Indonesia  ·  Português  ·  हिन्दी  ·  Français

The Commons

The world's first university with an official Discord.

Courses are half of college. The people are the other half. Join and the sorting hat places you in one of four fraternities: earn house points, compete with your house, and show up for radio nights, read-alongs, and a book club that actually finishes the book.

Join the Discord >