Penn LPS Online courses are created to expand your professional knowledge or allow you to explore an area of personal interest. Designed and led by Ivy League faculty and experienced professionals, Penn LPS Online courses offer hands-on learning and highly collaborative online experiences that can be completed on your schedule. You can dive into a course to satisfy intellectual curiosity, try out a new skill, take several courses to achieve a certificate, or use course blocks to build a degree.
With open enrollment and an accessible online format, getting started at Penn LPS Online is easy. You do not need to be enrolled in a certificate or degree program to take a course, and all Penn online courses offer academic credit.* All Penn LPS Online courses are taught at the undergraduate level by Penn instructors. Individual non-degree courses are not eligible for financial aid.
Please note: Courses delivered through Penn LPS Online count toward a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in LPS, but do not count toward a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Courses must be taken for a grade; they cannot be audited or taken on a pass/fail basis. Students planning to transfer Penn LPS Online credits to another institution should be aware that transfer credits are awarded at the discretion of the other institution.
*Academic credit is defined by the University of Pennsylvania as a course unit (c.u.). A course unit (c.u.) is a general measure of academic work over a period of time, typically a term (semester or summer). A c.u. (or a fraction of a c.u.) represents different types of academic work across different types of academic programs and is the basic unit of progress toward a degree. One c.u. is usually converted to a four-semester-hour course.
