MIT Professional Education
MIT Professional Education provides continuing education courses and lifelong learning opportunities for science, engineering, and technology professionals at all levels, from around the world. Worthy of note is that MIT professors and lecturers lead and teach all MIT Professional Education offerings. Some of our programs have a long history, others are relatively new.
Our Digital Plus programs go beyond online, blending cutting-edge content delivered using the best of online technology and traditional classroom instruction, to enable effective learning outcomes in a flexible, collaborative learning environment.
All MIT Professional Education courses offer certificates, and Continuing Education Units (CEUs), some offer MIT credit in addition.
Our mission
The MIT Professional Education mission is to provide a gateway to renowned MIT research, knowledge and expertise for working professionals engaged in science and technology worldwide, through advanced education programs designed for them.
The programs are delivered by MIT faculty and promote technical excellence through ongoing educational engagement with communities of practice.
MIT Professional Education fosters the development of innovative leaders equipped to address complex problems globally.
MIT Professional Education is central to MIT’s vision. It fulfills the mandate to connect practitioner-oriented education with industry, and to incorporate industry feedback and knowledge into MIT education and research.
The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to apply this knowledge for the benefit of humankind.
“It is the just-in-time aspect of learning, being able to apply the learning to the job immediately, that we are now fulfilling. It really is an amazing situation.
People know that it is very difficult to get into MIT. In fact, only 6% of applicants are able to get in for undergraduate and graduate level.
What we have done, through this methodology, is to allow you, as practitioners in the field, to have greater access to MIT knowledge and expertise, without high barriers to entry.
The idea is to reduce barriers, as our aim is to work with people from around the world for the betterment of humankind, which is our mission at MIT.”
BHASKAR PANT
Executive Director of MIT Professional Education
A long history at MIT
The MIT Professional Education office, established under MIT’s largest school, the School of Engineering in 2002, builds on decades of MIT’s outreach to science and engineering professionals. MIT first began offering summer study in 1898, primarily as an extension of regular courses and a preparation for incoming students. In 1949, MIT established a Summer Session Office to expand special summer offerings specifically for industries such as textiles, spectroscopy, and petroleum engineering. Over the years, MIT’s summer focus has turned toward professional education. Today’s Short Programs draws more than 1500 students a year to short courses spanning a wide array of topics from innovation and entrepreneurship to biotechnology, information technologies, data modeling and systems engineering.
The School for Advanced Study opened in 1956, “to give formal recognition to the importance of postdoctoral studies in advancing science and technology,” according to a February 1957 Technology Review article. The appointment of the school’s first fellow, Edwin H. Land, president of Polaroid Corporation, clarified a second goal, “to provide a means for the informal association of visiting scholars from all over the world with the MIT faculty,” the Institute Gazette reported in May 1956. The first class of certificate students entered the Center for Advanced Engineering Studies (CAES) in 1964-65. Today, the Advanced Study Program of MIT Professional Education draws over a hundred professionals to the MIT campus each year to study with MIT faculty and students.
“MIT Professional Education programs address the technologies that are giving way to the digital transformation and train the most demanding professionals to face the new challenges brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
CLARA PILOTO
Director of Global Programs at MIT Professional Education
To discover our full academic offering, please visit: www.professional.mit.edu
