The Great Courses

The Great Courses is a library of university-level lecture courses, documentaries and series for adult learners, sold title by title and streamed through a subscription service called The Great Courses Plus. Wikipedia describes the company behind it, The Teaching Company, as an American educational media producer founded by Thomas M. Rollins in 1990 and headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia. It names Brentwood Associates, a private equity firm, as the owner since 2006. This entry is written from third-party sources, Wikipedia, HandWiki, a Kindlepreneur review, a deals page on awediscounts.com and a press page on darley-newman.com, and each fact below is attributed to the one that states it.

The brand has changed names more than once. According to Wikipedia, the company announced in April 2021 that its streaming platform, The Great Courses Plus, would become Wondrium, and in 2024 it dropped the Wondrium name and went back to The Great Courses Plus. Kindlepreneur tells the same story and says the second rebrand was a return to the company's roots in academically rigorous courses and lectures. A reader who meets the Wondrium name in older reviews, app listings or deal pages is looking at the same service.

What learners actually get

The core product is the lecture course. Wikipedia says The Great Courses line typically features university-level experts and professors presenting in-depth learning across multiple lectures, that courses are developed by the experts together with the company's production team, and that many episodes run around thirty minutes. HandWiki adds that professors submit detailed outlines and company staff work with them so each 30-minute lecture is coherent, and that the firm sometimes sends recruiters to sit in on college lectures to find good teachers for new courses. Kindlepreneur describes a typical course as 12-60+ lectures long, so a single title is a commitment of many hours rather than a quick overview.

Wikipedia notes that the lectures often use computer graphics and animations, and that some courses come with an optional PDF guidebook that serves as a custom-made textbook. The production quality is "a cut above" free courses on YouTube, Wikipedia says, citing a report in The New York Times.

The subject range is wide. Wikipedia lists science, math, economics, literature, language, history, religion, philosophy, fine arts, music, better living, health, wellness, how-to courses, personal enrichment, hobbies and leisure, and travel, and names partnerships with The Culinary Institute of America, the Smithsonian Institution, the Mayo Clinic, National Geographic, Penguin Random House and Scientific American. For the TheGreatCourses.com store it lists categories including the arts, science, literature, self-improvement, history, music, philosophy, theology, economics, mathematics, business, professional advancement, photography and cooking.

Beyond lectures, the streaming service carries other formats. Wikipedia says that as of 2021 it held over 7,500 hours of content across documentaries, independent films, docuseries, short-form series, featurettes, courses and tutorials, with over 1,200 titles and more than 26,000 lectures. With the 2021 rebrand the company announced 1,000 hours of new content licensed from Kino Lorber, MagellanTV and Craftsy. Kindlepreneur says subscribers can browse by subject, by format (Courses, Series, TGC Classics, Documentaries and Shorts) and by collection, and names four main collections: Originals, made exclusively for the service; The Great Courses, the largest, with in-depth programs on topics such as Norse mythology and the history and archaeology of the Bible; Kino Lorber, with classic films and documentaries; and Craftsy, with creative skills such as drawing, woodworking and metalsmithing. The darley-newman.com press page describes the service as offering short-form videos, long-form courses, tutorials, how-to lessons, travelogues and documentaries, and says the travel series Travels with Darley streams there.

Ways to buy and watch

There are two routes in. The first is the store at TheGreatCourses.com: Wikipedia says titles can be bought digitally, as audio or video, or on DVD, and that as of 2024 courses are offered both through a subscription to The Great Courses library and for individual purchase. HandWiki reports that in 2018 single courses ranged in price from $35 to over $500.

The second is The Great Courses Plus subscription. Wikipedia calls it the company's direct-to-consumer streaming service, offering most of what The Great Courses produces plus licensed non-fiction from select partners, distributed globally. Kindlepreneur lists three tiers:

• $20 a month, billed monthly
• $45 a quarter ($15 a month), billed quarterly
• $150 a year ($12.50 a month), billed annually

Kindlepreneur says the service offers a 14-day free trial that can be canceled before the 14 days are up. The awediscounts.com page says every plan, monthly, quarterly or annual, comes with a free trial and unlimited streaming, that the trial gives access to the entire catalog, that a member who cancels during the trial keeps access until it ends and is never billed, and that canceling is done from the My Account page. The same page lists member benefits including audio streaming in the mobile apps and discounts with free shipping on products from The Great Courses.

Devices and formats

Wikipedia says the subscription is available on mobile, web, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, iOS and Android, and offers both video and audio streaming. Kindlepreneur's reviewer watches mostly on a phone or the web and notes one practical limit: the Roku app has no setting to raise playback speed, which matters to anyone who, like the reviewer, listens at 1.5 speed.

The company also reaches learners outside its own apps. Wikipedia describes The Great Courses Signature Collection, a second subscription of more than 300 courses distributed through Comcast, Roku Channels, Amazon Channels, YouTube and Apple TV. It says courses have been available through Audible since 2013 and that the company has produced over 75 audio-only titles for the Audible Originals brand as of 2022. It also describes True History, a free ad-supported channel with over 650 hours of non-fiction programming from the company's library.

Scale and track record

The third-party sources give a long track record. HandWiki says that as of 2015 the company had created over 700 courses and sold over 14 million copies. Wikipedia reports annual revenue of $150 million in 2016. HandWiki says the target market is primarily "lifelong learners", and that customers tend to be older professionals and retirees who have had successful careers.

What a subscriber does not get

None of the sources describe credit, degrees or accreditation tied to the courses. The model, as the sources describe it, is watching or listening to lectures; they mention no graded assignments, instructor feedback or learner community.

Who it suits

The Great Courses suits an adult who wants to study a subject in depth for its own sake: a retiree working through a history of the ancient world, a professional who wants a serious grounding in economics or philosophy, or a writer researching a period for a novel, which is how the Kindlepreneur reviewer uses it. Long multi-lecture courses by professors, optional guidebooks and audio streaming make it practical for people who learn by listening, including on a commute or during exercise. The annual plan brings the cost to $12.50 a month, and the store lets a buyer own a single course outright instead of subscribing.

Who it does not suit

A learner who needs a credential for a job or credit toward a degree should look elsewhere, since none of the sources mention any. People who learn best by doing, with exercises, feedback and projects, will find a lecture format limiting, and so will anyone who wants short clips rather than courses of 12 lectures or more. Children are not the audience the sources describe. Roku users who rely on faster playback should note the speed limit Kindlepreneur reports.