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Online education is nothing new. There are lots of for-profit institutions that offer college courses over the Internet – but a new interactive online learning system created by two Stanford University computer scientists may change everything. Coursera offers free college level courses in partnership with some extremely prestigious institutions of higher learning, including: Stanford, UC Berkeley, Michigan, Penn and Princeton. What’s the new part? Well, last fall, a free course taught by Stanford’s Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, attracted more than 160,000 students from 190 countries. The free course launched an intense debate at Stanford, where tuition is over $40,000 per year. Ultimately, the 22,000 students who finished the course received “certificates of completion” rather than credit towards a degree. But these are early days. If you want to start your free college education, you have some great options. Besides Coursera, you can take free online classes at Udacity, Minerva, Udemy, and even MIT. Is going to college online for free the future of education? It sure beats student loans.