People used to say you needed a degree in order to get anywhere. But with skyrocketed tuition and the worst job market in six decades, is a college education still worth the cost? A higher degree no longer necessarily leads to a larger paycheck, after all. Today's job market is saturated with BAs, MAs, and PhDs.

What if you just wished to learn for the sake of learning? Interestingly, the dramatic hike in college tuition has been accompanied by a wonderful counter-trend: the rise of open source educational opportunities. Ironically, just as tuition seems to be climbing beyond reach, it has become easier than ever to take noncredit university classes for free.

Did you know that you can download free Stanford University lectures on your iPod? Berkeley also makes audio lectures available through Webcast and iTunes, and even has a video portal where you can watch class lectures on YouTube. A comprehensive list of free university lecture podcastings has been compiled by the Online Education Database.

You can take free online health courses, such as Biostatistics or Population Science, through The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's OPENCOURSEWARE program. At the Open University, in the United Kingdom, there's an initiative that lets students study for free using specially designed distance learning materials. These include an interactive learning space with video conferencing and text chat, online learning journals, and use of a virtual LabSpace. The Open University makes these free resources available in support of "a belief that knowledge is a common good and that placing it in the commons enables opportunities and freedoms for all." Finally, don't overlook the free online offerings of MIT, whose open courseware program gives access to the lecture notes, exams, and videos of more than 1,000 courses.

This is just a glimpse of the open source materials out there. A few websites have attempted to archive all that's available. World Lecture Hall publishes links to course pages created by faculty worldwide. A key word search in their database, however, turned up a number of dead links and sources listed as "courses" that were actually just syllabi. Another database, Free-Ed.net, claims to be "the world's largest database of totally free educational offerings." The site produces many of its own video lecture series, in a range of subject areas. Finally, another excellent database is the OpenCourseware Consortium.

Need a study partner for your free online courses? Find one at Cramster.com.

You'll probably also want to find reading material for your studies. Open source e-Books, as well as book trading networks, make it possible to acquire recent textbooks and related course readings for free.Check out Wiki Books, eScholarship Editions and Google Books for free eBooks online (there are many others). Are you studying medicine? Get free full-text medical books online at FreeBooks4Doctors. To join a book swapping club, check out Bookmooch or The Paperback Swap.