10 University Collections on YouTube

[NOTE: Be sure to see our updated page: 70 Intelligent YouTube Video Collections]

Since October, universities have been getting busy and setting up shop on YouTube, enough so that it seemed worth putting together a collection of what’s out there. As you’ll see, universities aren’t always using YouTube to distribute educational content to the outer world. It’s sometimes about that. But it’s also often about “selling” the university — about PR, in short. Below, we’ve put the more meaningful collections at the top of the list. Over time, we’ll add new video collections as they come online, and we’ll continue to distinguish the good from the only so-so collections.

1.) University of California – Berkeley: This channel was launched in October, and it contains over 300 hours of academic programming. Most notably, you’ll find here a series of university courses that can be watched in their entirety (for free). It’s a deep collection worth starting with.

2.) MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): It’s a new collection and it already has some good meat to it. Click here and you will find clips from classroom lectures, many presumably coming from MIT’s ambitious OpenCourseWare initiative.

3.) UChannel: Spearheaded by Princeton University, this video service presents talks on international/political affairs from academic institutions all over the world. You can find a more extensive video collection on the UChannel web site.

4.) EGS (The European Graduate School): Here we have a video collection on YouTube that includes talks by important theorists/philosophers of the past generation — for example, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard. There are also some filmmakers mixed in — take for example, Peter Greenaway and John Waters.

5.) Vanderbilt: There’s hope for this channel in the future. The initial set of substantive videos can be found here.

6.) USC (University of Southern California): Find lectures here and videos of artistic productions here.

7.) Duke University: Borderline collection. Some interesting content, and I’m hopeful that it will improve over time.

8.) Purdue University: Heavier emphasis on promotional content; less emphasis on truly educational content.

9.) Oxford University Saïd Business School: So far this is highly tailored to marketing the b-school and helping students through the application process. This is not necessarily a bad use of the medium. But it’s not what we typically focus on here.

10.) Auburn University: Here’s a case of a university using YouTube for mostly promotional purposes … at least so far. I’m told by the university, however, that the collection is in its “infant stages” and plans for new, less promotional content are in the works. Keep an eye out.

Related Content:

• Open Culture’s YouTube Playlist
• Free University Courses (via Podcasts)
• University Podcast Collection
• 10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

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