Wharton School Offers Free Online MBA Courses

Whether you’re interested in previewing first-year MBA material, or just looking to get up-to-date with the fundamentals of business and management, the new MOOCS, or massive open online courses, offered by University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School should fit the bill.

Announced earlier this month, the Wharton MBA Foundation Series in Coursera’s course catalog offers four classes taught by Wharton faculty. There’s no cost to take any of these courses, unless you wish to receive a verified electronic certificate for $49 indicating you’ve mastered the course requirements—something to keep in mind if you want to put it on your resume.

“This is the first time that a business school has bundled a collection of MOOCs together in this fashion,” Don Huesman, managing director of the innovation group at Wharton, tells Bloomberg Businessweek. “We’re taking our core required classes in the MBA program, with the same instructors, to provide those same core concepts.”

The four new courses are:

1. An Introduction to Financial Accounting, taught by Brian J Bushee. Began Sept 16th 2013 (10 weeks long)

2. An Introduction to Operations Management, taught by Christian Terwiesch. Begins Sept 30th 2013 (8 weeks long)

3. An Introduction to Marketing, taught by David Bell, Peter Fader and Barbara E. Kahn. Begins Oct 14th 2013 (9 weeks long)

4. An Introduction to Corporate Finance, taught by Franklin Allen. Begins Oct 28th 2013 (6 weeks long)

Bloomberg Businessweek notes that along with five existing electives, which include courses on sports business and health care, the new offerings make it possible to learn much of what students in Wharton’s full-time MBA program learn. All nine courses will likely attract students from around the world.