mvillaloboz/open-source-cs-degree: a free, term-by-term CS curriculum built from university courses

A curriculum index, not a course platform

The repository contains a README.md, a LICENSE, a CONTRIBUTING.md, a .lycheeignore file and a .github directory. That is the whole project. There is no application code, no build step and no server. The README states its purpose directly: it outlines free online courses from schools like Harvard, Stanford and MIT, grouped by Term to pace and structure a course of study along a typical Computer Science track, with liberal arts and GenEd courses left out.

The audience is someone who wants the shape of an undergraduate CS major without tuition, and who is comfortable assembling it themselves. The README credits The Open-Source Data Science Masters as its inspiration, which places it in a lineage of GitHub-hosted curricula rather than in the category of accredited online programs. If you are looking for a degree, this is the wrong artifact. If you are looking for the order in which to take things, it is a reasonable one.

How the four terms are structured and why the ordering is the real content

The value here is sequencing, not the links themselves. Term 1 starts with Intro to Computer Science, Discrete Mathematics, Data Structures and Computer Architecture. That ordering puts discrete math alongside the first programming course rather than after it, which is the choice a CS department makes and many self-taught paths do not. Data Structures arrives in the same term as the intro course, so the two run in parallel.

Term 2 moves to UX Design, Intro to Web Development, Intro to Databases, Operating Systems and Computer Graphics. Term 3 covers Programming Languages Theory, Algorithms, System Engineering, Embedded and Real-Time Systems, Software Engineering and Principles of Computing. Term 4 closes with Computer Networking, Mobile Software Development, Compilers, Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Computing and Machine Learning.

Most topics offer two or three alternatives joined by the word or, so the reader picks one. Algorithms, for example, lists a Stanford Coursera specialization, a Princeton Coursera course and MIT 6.006. That redundancy is deliberate and useful: when one offering goes dark, the term does not collapse.

Getting started: read the README and work through Term 1

There is nothing to install in the software sense. The project is consumed by reading it, and the practical step is to open the repository on GitHub so you have the document in front of you while you enroll in courses. The README is at the repository root, alongside CONTRIBUTING.md and LICENSE.

Open README.md and read Term 1. For each topic, the README gives one or more links; pick one and enroll or bookmark it. For the first topic, the README lists Stanford CS106A with a note that it teaches in Python, or Harvard CS50x, or UC Berkeley CS61A. The second topic offers UC Berkeley CS70, MIT 6.042J or Carnegie Mellon 15-251.

If you want to track your own progress, keep a separate file of your own. The README is the only document the project ships, so any planning file is yours to create and the repository's CONTRIBUTING.md is the place to look if you want to propose a change to the list itself.

What you should see when you open the repository is a single long README with no source tree and no package manifest. That is expected. The deliverable is the document.

The weekly link check and what it does not cover

The README carries a note that many of the courses are long-running and that the canonical URL may change between offerings. It asks readers to open an issue or send a pull request when a link breaks, and it states that a weekly automated link check runs against the README. The .lycheeignore file at the repository root is consistent with that: lychee is a link checker, and an ignore file exists to suppress URLs that fail for reasons the maintainers already know about.

This is the project's main maintenance mechanism, and it is worth being precise about its limits. A link checker confirms that a URL responds. It cannot tell you that a course moved from one platform to another, that registration closed, that the syllabus changed, or that a Coursera offering is now behind a paywall for graded work. The README's own note about canonical URLs changing between offerings is the maintainers acknowledging exactly this gap. Expect to verify availability yourself before committing a term to a course.

Where the curriculum is thin and where it is not a substitute for a degree

The README says GenEd courses are omitted and that the focus is core Computer Science. That is a defensible scope decision, and it also means the result is narrower than a bachelor's degree. There is no mathematics sequence beyond discrete math, no probability or statistics course listed as a standalone requirement, and no writing or communication component. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence both appear in Term 4, which is late if either is your goal; a reader aiming at ML would reasonably reorder the list, and the README does not claim the ordering is universal.

There is also no assessment layer. Nothing in the repository grades you, verifies that you completed a course, or issues anything on completion. Course materials linked from the list are owned by their respective institutions and subject to their own licenses, as the README's license section states. If you need a transcript, a certificate recognized by an employer, or a cohort with deadlines, this project does not provide any of those and does not claim to.

How it differs from OSSU and from a single MOOC provider

The closest comparison is OSSU, the Open Source Society University CS path, which appears in the searches people run around this project. Both are GitHub-hosted, community-maintained CS curricula assembled from free university courses, and both are organized to be followed in order. The difference is in granularity and governance rather than in subject matter. This repository is a single README with four terms and a set of alternatives per topic, plus a weekly automated link check and a CONTRIBUTING.md for fixes. OSSU is a larger organizational effort with its own course structure and community processes. If you want a lean document you can read in one sitting and adapt freely, this one is easier to hold in your head. If you want a project with more structure and more contributors around it, OSSU is the better-known reference point.

The other comparison is a single MOOC provider. A provider gives you one platform, one account and consistent grading, but its catalog is limited to its own courses. This list mixes Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, CMU, Princeton, Brown, Rice, UT Austin and others, which is why the alternatives exist: the trade-off for breadth is that you manage several platforms and several enrollment processes yourself.

Licence and the cost of keeping it current

The repository is published under the MIT License, and the README states that the curriculum itself is under MIT while linked course materials remain under their own institutions' licences. In practice that means you can copy, adapt and redistribute the list, including commercially, provided the licence terms are met. It says nothing about the courses, so a link to a Coursera or edX offering carries whatever terms that platform imposes. This is a description of what the files say, not legal advice.

The last push to the repository was on 2026-09-10. That is recent enough that the weekly link check described in the README is plausibly still running, but the only maintenance signal the repository itself gives is that automated check plus the issue and pull request path in CONTRIBUTING.md. Upgrading is trivial in the software sense, since there is no dependency to bump: pull the default branch and diff the README. The real cost is editorial. Course URLs rot, platforms change their catalogs, and each fix is a manual pull request. Contributing a corrected link is therefore the highest-value thing a reader can do here.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt this if you want a paced, no-cost sequence of core CS courses and you are willing to self-enroll in each one and track your own progress. Do not adopt it if you need a credential, graded feedback, or a fixed schedule; the repository is a README, not an institution. Before starting, open the course links for Term 1, confirm each one resolves and that you can register, and check the CONTRIBUTING.md file if you plan to submit a fix for a dead link.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. mvillaloboz/open-source-cs-degree on GitHub
4. README