Universal Learning: cross-disciplinary education to address the world's most pressing challenges

The world's biggest challenges like climate change, artificial intelligence, and healthcare won’t be solved from a single point of view. They demand professionals who can connect and apply ideas across myriad fields, and create, propose, and execute innovative, integrated solutions. Universal Learning empowers learners worldwide to understand and approach these cross-cutting challenges through curricula that leads with core foundational knowledge in and builds to industry-specific applications.

MIT faculty and experts lead modules that make complex ideas accessible without losing rigor, while concepts and theories come to life through practical examples and real-world case studies. Learners’ asynchronous study is supported with personalized help from the “AskTIM” AI assistant.

Universal Learning is launching at a pivotal moment, as advances in online learning and AI have created an unprecedented opportunity to deliver MIT-quality education at scale and personalized for each learner. All offerings are delivered on the MIT Learn platform, the Institute’s lifelong learning destination.

What's included in Universal Learning:

• Foundational modules that establish the key concepts, theories, and frameworks for each topic area.
• Vertical modules that demonstrate how these foundations translate to specific industries like healthcare, sustainability, business, entrepreneurship, and more.
• AI-powered learning support—the AskTIM AI assistant—that reinforces concepts, summarizes content, and tutors learners through challenging problems.

Universal Learning topics

We're developing programs across the most critical areas shaping our world.