The Great Courses Reviews

The Great Courses, found online at TheGreatCourses.com, is a subsidiary of The Teaching Company which promises customers educational courses that are uniquely crafted for lifelong learners.

How Does It Work?

The creators of The Great Courses choose course subjects and select professors from thousands of options each year, and then build support teams for the professors so they can create a customized, entertaining, and comprehensive educational experience.

The website says that their students can get fulfilling learning experiences without the drawbacks of traditional university classes like prerequisites, homework assignments, or exams.

You can also choose the format that best suits your needs, whether that is video or audio, discs or digital. 

Customers who know that they will take advantage of more than a single course are also welcome to sign up for The Great Courses Plus, which is a monthly subscription service.

The Great Courses Plus provides access to all of the great courses which are conducted on video, though it does not include audio courses at this time.

Currently the range of subjects offered by this company include Science, Music, Economics & Finance, Mathematics, Religion, Better Living, History, Philosophy, Professional, Fine Arts, Literature & Language, and more.  

Reputation

The Great Courses gets mixed customer reviews at this time, largely because of issues with their mobile application.

The courses themselves, their design and their content, all appear to be well liked by users, dating back to the time when the company was still called The Teaching Company.

But most people are at a place where having the convenience of accessing their purchases via mobile apps on the go is extremely important, so having an app that still has issues and glitches is very disappointing to many customers. 

Customers must consider this when choosing whether or not to invest in this company’s courses.  

Customer Service

Customers who would like to speak to their Customer Service team about their questions, concerns, or complaints can do so by phone at 800-832-2412 or by email at [email protected]

 

Mobile Options

At this time, there are actually two different mobile applications for The Great Courses at this time.

The first is the general application for students of The Great Courses, and the second is the app specifically designed for The Great Courses Plus, which is designed for video streaming. These apps are available on iOS, Android, Roku, and more.   

 

Cost & Price Plans

Customers who are interested in purchasing a single course will be able to find them at a variety of price points, from courses as affordable as $19.95 to those that begin as high as $89.95.

Customers who are interested in signing up for The Great Courses Plus can do so for $49.99 per month, which will begin with a free one month trial, or you can choose to pay annually which is $359.99, or a 40% savings off of paying monthly. 

 

Refund Policy

Whenever you order a course from this website, a Return Form will be printed on the back of the invoice included in your package.

To return or exchange a product, all you have to do is fill out this form and send it back with all original discs, boxes, and guide books. 

The Great Courses says that their customer satisfaction is 100% guaranteed, and customers who are dissatisfied with their purchase are welcome to exchange it for one of equal or lessor value at any time within a year of the initial purchase date.

If a disc ever breaks or warps, they will replace it as long as that course is still in production.    

Competitors and Alternatives?

There are many different companies that offer people access to high quality continuing educational courses, including Coursera, Khan Academy, Memrise, Skillshare, and many others.   

If you have any experience with The Great Courses or their products, please leave your reviews below.

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The Great Courses Customer Reviews

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What We Know and how we Know It
January 3, 2024
I am just concluding "Early Humans: Ice, Stone and Survival" and I am sad to see it ended. I have complete about a half dozen "Great Courses" lecture series and this one is by far the best. Suzanne Pilar Birch has presented us with a mighty tour de force. Every one of the twenty lectures is a peek into the the most up-to- date sites the methodology, dating and analysis of the findings and the interpretation, anthropological, and geographical that resulted. She introduces us to the names of the dig leaders and researchers. She lets us know about the techniques, technologies and their limits and strengths. She has done an amazing amount of preparation for each and every lecture but her delivery is smooth and sure. This is not, however, a lecture series for the layman. At least a general feeling for the topics is helpful. I taught some of what is on Doctor Pilar Birch's presenting and for me this is a refresher and an update but it was also a pleasure. for those fresh to the field it should excite them to dig-in to learn more. Dr. Suzanne Pilar Birch puts to shame some others who shamble in bearing scuffed and dusty products that are just their old, biased loafers without even a hint of new shoe polish.

No service, just trackers
September 1, 2021
They ised to be great, now they're selling out to ancient aliens and islamophobia. And since thwy launched Windrium their customer service basically disapearedand was replaced by rude stubborn trolls that doesn't want to hear that anything is wrong with their website(which us useless with more viruses and trackers than a porn site)

Do not put your information in for a free trial. NOT FREE.
March 7, 2021
Do not even attempt to look at this website. I went on the website put my information in and was on the website only 5 minutes. Today I had a charge for 160.88. I didn't realize that I had signed up for a trial. When I called to get a refund they said they don't give refunds. BIG SCAM....

The National Parks...very disappointing
February 11, 2021

Having been to Yellowstone, I looked so forward to the two segments devoted to it. However when I watched them I was very very disappointed. Illustrated with hundreds of still photos don't do Yellowstone justice...it made it stagnate and boring.

We watched both Yellowstone LECTURES...the host looked like he had spent a week or so wearing his pants while camping...and the material was so factual to the point of the whole thing being boring...and with no film...none of the excitement of Yellowstone was conveyed.

We decided to just donate the whole series to a school in our neighborhood and forget it. Don't waste your money.

Usually good courses, but beware the ordering procedure
August 28, 2020
I have bought these courses for about 20 years, and have usually enjoyed them, except for the last one -- a history course that was full of factual errors and extreme bias. I tossed it out. Where you have to be VERY careful is in the ordering process! See what's ON SALE and make a telephone order, insisting on the course that's ON SALE, because another page of their website will show you that same course for 4x the price. I had a clerk on the phone insist that the ONLY one available was the course at 4x as much as the one on sale. I hung up on her and went back online, finally finding the ON SALE section, phoned again and ordered the course. After you order, you will be subjected to "the pitch"! Wouldn't you also like to buy ..............??? NO, I WOULD NOT. I'm buying ONE course, on sale at $34.95 -- THAT:S IT. . You have to be very firm while ordering from these people and extremely sure that you're getting the exact thing you want. They are tricky and I think they're right on the border of being crooked.

Overall Satisfied
June 3, 2020

Typically high production value. The information is well presented by those knowledgeable in the field. Depending on the topic and the instructor the material may be slanted. For example, when it comes to the theology courses, I do not understand the inclusion of Bart Ehrman who has an overwhelmingly skeptic opinion. Why would you have a person who does not believe teaching what to believe?

On the other hand, the courses by William Cook are amazing and informative and well aligned with the "orthodox" position of historical Christianity.

Meaning, if you expect things to be 100 percent the way you believe you will be upset. At the same time you must not be too terribly familiar with higher education which frequently confronts the student with different and even radical ways of looking at a subject.

Bottom-line - If you see a course that looks interesting, do a quick search for the professor, see what he or she has written, taught, said, in the past and see if that is the type of person with the priorities you are interested in learning from.

Left Wing Bias in The Great Courses
January 18, 2020

I agree with the above review about left wing bias in the Great Courses. I mainly get the courses on science and mathematics. You can see the left wing bias in many of the course descriptions. For example, a new course has just come out, "Fighting Misinformation: Digital Media Literacy" with major support by IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), which is a left wing propaganda organization. I don't object to people expressing their point of view, but I object when it is called education as a subterfuge for propaganda.

On the other hand, there are some courses that I thought would be biased and were not. The new course "The Rise of Marxism" by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, was surprisingly not biased, at least in my opinion. He didn't downplay the failure of Marxism as an ideology or the atrocities Marxism has engendered. Another one, Understanding the Misconceptions of Science, I was expecting a propaganda campaign targeted to fundamentalist Christians who doubt Evolution. But it was pretty good.

You have to look closely at the course descriptions. With the online version, Great Courses Plus, you can pick and choose courses, stop watching one that looks biased, and move on to another one. But if you have to buy the DVDs, then you should be careful.

WillChristie January 13, 2021

So you consider a class to be left wing biased when it disagrees with YOU, as the center of the universe. So you consider a class to be left wing biased because you think an association that does not share your views is "propaganda". And where, sir, do you get your bias free information? Fox News? QAnon? AON? Breitbart? Alex Jones?

WillChristie January 13, 2021

So if a course disagrees with YOU, that means it has a Left wing bias? So some organization that you don't like (and is therefore Left wing) is a "propaganda" arm for some fantasy Left wing agenda? Where, Sir, do you get your biased free information? Fox News? QAnon? Breitbart? OAN? Alex Jones? This may come as a shock, but reality does tend to have a Left wing slant, as American right wingers far inside a bubble of GOP lies, would see it.

TheTruf January 09, 2022

I think this site would disagree with you 100% https://www.thefactual.com/news

TheTruf January 09, 2022

https://www.thefactual.com/news

editing my other comment: Left wing bias (and right wing), does in fact exist. Sorry Will Christie you're living in your echo chamber. I personally don't dig into CNN or FOX News anymore for this reason. It's out there.

Avoid courses on history or politics - extreme LEFT wing bias
September 23, 2019

I've purchased 70 courses from them. Most are science, astronomy, geology, photography etc.

NOTE: any website that controls its OWN 1-5 star reviews is a SHAM. Do you REALLY think you will get the WHOLE picture?

I've written about 40 reviews - most 4-5 star positive reviews. The process is as follows: the review is submitted then read and analyzed by their "politically correct" staff, then posted. If economically threatening (as this note is), then they call it "moderation" (censored).

They've CENSORED twice my review on the course Power Over People where I pointed out that the professor goes into great detail about the RIGHT-wing atrocities of 6M dead (genocide) and 70M dead in WW2.

However when it comes to the LEFT-wing communist atrocities of 20M dead under Stalin and 40M dead under Mao – the professor blathers to us with frivolous insignificance about Karl Mark’s furniture and burial site and other irrelevance.

WHAT does that tell you? Is this rocket science? They refused to post this.

So avoid buying any courses on history and especially politics.

WillChristie January 13, 2021

Karl Mark? Is he a game show host?

Video v Audio
September 19, 2019
I find the courses themselves exceptional but I have always listened to them in my car so I have always downloaded the audio version because the video version was useless to me (driving my car), the CDs were inconvenient (I don't walk around with a CD player) and the audio versions were reasonably priced. It seems that Great Courses has teamed up with Audible and Audible requires that I maintain a subscription with it which I don't want to do or I pay for a "one-off" at a seriously inflated price. As a result, I will be checking into other options.