It's "Back To School" time and whether or not you are currently in education you may be feeling the urge to enrol in a course to deepen your knowledge, to gain certificates to validate your skills or even just for fun. So it's a good time to take up the current Coursera Plus offer of 30% discount on an annual subscription.

A year-long Coursera Plus  subscription normally costs $399 (compared to $59 per month if you want a shorter commitment), but there's a limited-time offer of $100 off the annual subscription until September 22, 2025, open to anyone who hasn't previously subscribed.

Coursera Plus gives you unlimited access for a year to over 10,000+ programs from Coursera's 388 partners across 55 countries top. This includes companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM and Universities including Stanford, Penn, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University of Oxford (Saïd Business School) and Imperial College London. 

Disclosure: When you make a purchase having followed a link to Coursera from this article, we may earn an affiliate commission.

If you are currently a student, you may be wondering, "Why should I add to my workload?" There are plenty of answers to this, starting with to get a fresh perspective on a subject you are already doing or have already done.

Most Computer Science undergraduate degrees have obligatory courses on Algorithms, which is a core topic. Coursera has several Specializations in this area including the Data Structures and Algorithms Specialization, a 5-month program from UC San Diego which has a rating of 4.6 of a possible 5. It is at Intermediate level so you need some programming experience before you join it.

 According to its blurb:

Learn exactly the same material as undergraduate students in “Algorithms 101” at top universities and more!

If you are considering a career change with the prospect of job interviews, this taking this course could be a real boon. It's blurb also states:

Play with 50 algorithmic puzzles on your smartphone to develop your algorithmic intuition!  Apply algorithmic techniques (greedy algorithms, binary search, dynamic programming, etc.) and data structures (stacks, queues, trees, graphs, etc.) to solve 100 programming challenges that often appear at interviews at high-tech companies. Get an instant feedback on whether your solution is correct.

Another reason students rely on Coursera is to make up for gaps in what their own college doen't offer and despite it being the most popular language for learners, Python isn't taught on some campuses. Coursera has the highly popular Python for Everybody Specialization, which is suitable for beginners  and Python 3 Programming Specialization, which is aimed at developers with another primary language, both from the University of Michigan. For more details of them, see Learn A New Language With Coursera Plus.

A third reason is to explore topics that you might want to specialize in. So if want to be a Data Scientist, consider the Data Mining Specialization from University of Illinois, and if you want to do it with an extra ML twist, how about Machine Learning With Big Data, part of the Big Data Specialization from UC San Diego.

You can also look to Coursera when you want to do something completely different as light relief:

My recommendations include Mountains 101 and Dino 101 from the University of Alberta, Developing Your Musicianship from Berklee or The Science of Well-Being from Yale. Just type a keyword for your area of interest in the Coursera search bar and you should find something that suits.

From a learner's point of view Coursera Plus is ideal - lots of choice of instantly accessible material that you can dip into whenever you want. When you find a course that suits you,  complete it at you own pace and earn the certificate that validates your success. So this offer, which is available by following this link, Coursera Plus Offer, is one that is well worth snapping up.

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Coursera Plus Offer

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