LONDON , England ( CNN ) -- The wisdom of business professors , once only available to MBAs and business students , can now be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection . At HEC Paris , MBA students are given an iPod Touch so they can download podcasts of lectures . Hundreds of universities , and a growing number of business schools , are making recordings of lectures , seminars and conferences available to the general public via Web sites such as iTunes and YouTube . Leading business schools including University of Cambridge Judge Business School , Fuqua School of Business , and Yale School of Management make course content available for download through iTunes University ( iTunes U ) , part of the of the iTunes online store . That means those whose budget wo n't stretch to a two-year MBA can simulate the experience at home -- or at work , in the gym or anywhere else they choose . And even better for money-conscious learners , the iTunes U content can all be downloaded free of charge . French business school HEC Paris is due to launch its iTunes U content in the next few months , but it has been running an ambitious podcast program since 2006 . Begun as an experiment in partnership with Apple , all new MBAs at HEC are provided with an iPod Touch . Around half of the MBA lectures are filmed using an automatic camera system and the footage is made available for students to download and view on their iPhones . Vanessa Klein , HEC 's project manager for iTunes U , told CNN that the iPod-enabled curriculum has proved a hit with students . As well watching lectures , she said the students ' own presentations are recorded and made available for download so they can review their performance . She says one teacher noticed that each year his MBA students would ask the same questions after his end-of-course summary , so he made a podcast of recurring questions and answers . After encouraging students to come up with new questions , he is now recording responses to those in an effort to compile a video archive of questions and answers . Read more business features . Klein says that by making lectures available via iTunes U , HEC wants to be at the forefront of providing content for the rest of the world , but she acknowledges that the technology is also a great way to promote the business school . `` It 's a good marketing tool , not as publicity but to really show people what we are providing , '' she told CNN . `` You can watch a lecture , learn a lot and think ' I wish I could be there . ' The idea is to show what you could learn if you were at this place . '' YouTube EDU was launched in March this year and hosts the YouTube channels of hundreds of universities . Earlier this month it added content from 45 universities in Europe and Israel and now holds videos of lectures and discussions provided by business schools including INSEAD , ESCP Europe and University of California Haas School of Business . Launched at the same time as YouTube EDU , Academic Earth hosts videos from U.S. universities including Harvard , Yale and Princeton , although the business content is provided almost exclusively by Stanford University . Offering less audio/visual content , but still full of business school information , MIT 's Open Course Ware site gives free access to almost all MIT course content , including extensive lecture notes , assignments and exams from MIT 's Sloan School of Management . Interested in the `` Advanced Topics in Real Estate Finance ? '' You can download the complete lecture notes from Sloan 's 2007 course on the subject at MIT 's Open Course Ware site . Other universities have their own Open Course Ware sites and the Open Course Ware Consortium has been set up as an agglomerator site , providing content from more over 200 higher education institutions . But it 's iTunes U that 's generating the most interest . The University of Oxford says there have been more than one million downloads from its iTunes U site , while Stanford University says its course on creating iPhone applications was downloaded more than one million times in just seven weeks . This week 's most popular business download on iTunes U is a University of Oxford lecture called `` Entrepreneurship and the Ideal Business Plan . '' It may not get as many downloads as Michael Jackson 's posthumous single , but it should prove more useful when it comes to getting a business off the ground .
A growing number of business schools are putting lectures on the Internet . YouTube University , Harvard University and Google Earth all host free lectures . At HEC Paris , students can attend lectures and Q & A sessions . MIT 's Open Course ##s site gives free access to MIT course content .