Online Courses for Free
A number of universities are opening up their courses and lectures to the public via the internet. Stanford’s School of Engineering has their Stanford Engineering Everywhere program, MIT has their OpenCourseWare program, and so on. The Open Culture website has a list of free online courses. The classes range from Introduction to Archaeology to Quantum Mechanics. Lifehacker describes how and where to find more courses.
Many of the courses and lectures are of very high quality. Sometimes entire classes are available online including video and/or audio of the lectures, hand-outs, quizzes, etc. So, if you have always wanted to attend MIT or Stanford, this is your chance!