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Senior Education

5 Free Educational Programs For Seniors

Written by Liam

Did you know that seniors may also be eligible for extra funding possibilities when it comes to educational programs? Some financial assistance programs treat any person older than 55 as a senior, and others regard those older than 60 as seniors.

Getting back into school or learning a new skill is never too late. As a matter of fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics records, 41% of students that went to private, for-profit colleges in the fall of 2017 were aged 35 and older. Approximately 33% of those that attended a private, nonprofit school over the same period of time were 35 years of age or older. 

With retirement comes the opportunity for a new passion, and pursuing a degree online could be your ticket to success. Today, universities all over the world have degrees and unique certifications in areas such as tasting wine and floral arrangement. Getting degrees in pleasurable fields this can enable individuals to change a hobby into gainful work. Some universities might actually provide free online classes for seniors.

Interior Design Professional Degree:

In this world-renowned course, you’ll get to know the skills to design and maintain your own interior planning projects, either for your personal house or for another person’s. The free online course reviews everything you would normally associate with an interior designer, along with some common design concepts and terminology. Also, you will be introduced to things like floor plans, sections, elevations, models, perspective drawings, individual style, and much more. This course is really a complete overview of the entire interior design landscape that will help you meet all of your design goals. 

The Shaw Academy supports the idea of getting your own way in the future, no matter if you are a senior! With so much to achieve in later life, that interior design degree might be the ticket to getting started on a new hobby or maybe a new career. In general, to get into the Shaw Academy, you need to be able to afford to be paying close to $70 a month. Although, this interior design degree is among the few courses available for free on the site. It requires approximately 4 weeks obtaining this diploma, which provides you with the necessary materials to be an interior design professional. 

The Science of Compassion:

In this free online course for seniors, the biology of compassion can be deconstructed, which enables you to learn about the physical body systems that make it possible for you to be sympathetic to other people. Compassion manifests itself differently in the brain, nervous system, and heart, all of which are analyzed in this course. Also, the course instructor Kelly McGonigal leads participants in the Heart Breathing for Compassion practice. 

The older we get and the more we move forward in life, the more we understand the value of being compassionate to others. You just simply cannot be sure about the things that anyone is actually experiencing, therefore making life as comfortable as possible and being as sympathetic as possible is the best thing that you can do for them. With this course from LinkedIn Learning, we are able to distribute the intricacies of compassion, by taking apart the very real biology of exactly what being compassionate is all about. LinkedIn Learning is a fee-based, subscription educational platform, which generally involves a charge to unblock its free online learning content. New users, though, can get a free month’s subscription trial when signing in to the site, and plenty of students who are attending a college or university are able to get into the platform for free. 

Yoga:

Who could benefit more from social distance than a private gym class in the comfort of their own home during the day? The moderator behind this tutorial, Adriene, has developed a worldwide online community with over 7 million people who are looking at her free yoga videos. She has over 500 free videos and the list is growing all the time, so there is no end to the variety. 

edX Courses:

You have the possibility to select the available courses in several options on the edX website. Choose to search according to type, level, subject or school. There are many easy-to-find choices for an art course, if you are going to be searching for a course related to art, there are 150 art and culture courses available, such as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the 19th Century Orchestra from Harvard, Modern Japanese Architecture from Tokyo Tech, or The Rise of the Superhero and its Impact on Popular Culture from the Smithsonian.  Most of the time, you will be able to watch a video sample of the course with no obligation to sign up for the course. 

Coursera: 

Coursera is an amazing online community that provides endless pages of free online courses for seniors to pick and choose through. Most of the courses are being instructed and taught through well-known universities such as Yale, with so much available that it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll never miss out on something that works for you! Some examples of course offerings include: Intro to Classical Music, Science of Wellness at Yale University, Intro to Psychology at Yale University, Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History at the University of Illinois. 

About the author

Liam