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For the four years of tuition, books, personal expenses room, and board at Yale University, it will cost you (or most likely your parents) a whopping $292,720. But what if I told you can get a Yale education for $Free.99? Well, you won’t be able to receive a full free ride to the prestigious Ivy League school, but you can take Yale’s most popular class ever for free. Zip. Zero. Nada.
This semester, 1,200 students or about a quarter of the undergraduate student body, enrolled in PSYC 157. The course is titled “Psychology and the Good Life” and students affectionately refer to the class as “Laurie Santos’ happiness class.” The extremely trendy course is taught by psychology and cognitive science professor Laurie Santos. The class covers the science behind positive psychology and behavioral change, but the main objective is to teach students self-improvement.
Santos noticed that antidepressants are prescribed at 400 times the rate then they were 20 years ago. So she created this class to help students find happiness without adding chemicals to their body. The class also provides gives students guidance on how to select a meaningful career and other practical advice to increase happiness.
In Yale’s 316-year history, “Psychology and the Good Life” was the university’s most popular course ever. And now you can take it for free. Santos created an expanded version of the highly coveted Yale course that is available to everyone. The online class was filmed in Santos’ own home and it titled “The Science of Well-Being.” The seminar-based course available for free on Coursera.
The purpose of the six-week course is to “not only learn what psychological research says about what makes us happy but also to put those strategies into practice.” Santos tackles topics such as misconceptions about happiness, why expectations can be bad, and which things actually increase happiness. The class will offer “activities that have been proven to increase happiness along with strategies to build better habits.” Take the class, it’s free and what do you have to lose? Plus, you get to brag that you’re “Yale-educated.”
[Inc]