OPEN MASTERS
THE SELF-EDUCATION UNIVERSITY

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Follow university-style programs built from the world's best free courses and textbooks. Move from beginner to master's-level competence with graded checkpoints and a Mastery Transcript, for $5.99 a month.

SIX MASTERY PROGRAMS

Choose your degree path

Every program runs Foundation, Bachelor, Master and Capstone using free resources from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Khan Academy, OpenStax and others. Check off resources, pass module quizzes, and unlock the next level at 80%.

HOW IT WORKS

Learn like a university. Pay like the internet.

Structured curriculum

Every program climbs Foundation, Bachelor, Master and Capstone. Each module names the exact free resources and hours.

Graded checkpoints

Every program has graded module quizzes, and Business adds full assessments and a capstone lab, so you prove you learned it instead of just watching it.

Mastery Transcript

A running record of modules finished, quizzes passed and your Mastery Score. Not a degree, but proof of what you can do.

ACCOUNT
DASHBOARD
MASTERY TRANSCRIPT

Free lessons and practice labs

Business Foundations pilot

01 · Percentages, prices, and profit

  1. Read OpenStax Prealgebra 2e §6.2. Start at “Translate and Solve Basic Percent Equations.” Read through “Find Percent Increase and Percent Decrease.” Stop at the section exercises.
  2. Practice percent word problems at Khan Academy. Complete one percent word-problem practice set. For each miss, identify the starting amount before retrying.
  3. Watch Khan Academy’s percent word problem on YouTube from start to finish. Pause before the solution and write an equation for the original price.

Worked examples

A $120 sale price after 20% off represents 80% of the original price. Divide 120 by 0.80 to get $150. If the seller’s total cost is $90, profit is $30 and profit margin is $30 ÷ $120 = 25%.

For a separate product priced at $50 with $30 variable cost per unit and $175 fixed costs, each sale contributes $20 toward fixed costs. Selling 8 covers $160. Selling 9 covers $180, so 9 is the minimum whole number of units needed to break even.

Practice with explanations

12-question mastery assessment

Score at least 10 of 12, including both transfer questions, to unlock the applied project. Enter percentages as plain numbers.

MEMBERSHIP

Keep learning with Open Masters

Free forever: the Foundation level of all six programs, the Business free lessons, and your account with synced progress.

Members, $5.99 a month: Bachelor, Master and Capstone levels with their graded module quizzes. Cancel any time.

  • Six Mastery Programs from Foundation to Capstone
  • 42 graded module quizzes and a Mastery Transcript
  • Progress that syncs across all your devices
  • New programs added at the same price

Business study sequence

  1. Foundations. Percentages and spreadsheets → contribution and break-even → cash timing and working capital. Evidence: a pricing model and cash forecast with documented assumptions.
  2. Undergraduate core. Financial statements → managerial accounting → microeconomics → marketing → operations → organizational behavior. Evidence: reconcile three statements, test a customer hypothesis, and model a capacity constraint.
  3. Applied management. Budgeting → process improvement → experiments and inference → negotiation → governance. Evidence: an operating budget, experiment protocol, and decision memo comparing alternatives.
  4. Advanced study. Competitive strategy → capital allocation → strategic risk → research design → capstone defense. Evidence: defend a recommendation with sensitivity analysis and specify what evidence would overturn it.

The first three units and the lab below are available now. Later courses are outlined for development.

Foundations capstone lab · Price and fund a service business

A simulated service business charges $480 per job, pays $290 per job in direct costs, and has $760 in monthly overhead. It completes five jobs this month. Customers pay half this month and half next month. The business starts with $400 in cash and pays all its costs this month.

  1. Build two spreadsheet tabs, one for accrual profit and one for cash. Show all inputs and formulas.
  2. Model the same month with a 10% discount and the same number of jobs.
  3. Recommend a price, estimate the minimum starting reserve for each case, and explain how the result changes if customers pay in full this month.
Check your model

Full price: revenue $2,400, profit $190, cash collected $1,200, cash paid $2,210, ending cash −$610. Discounted: revenue $2,160, loss $50, cash collected $1,080, cash paid $2,210, ending cash −$730. The minimum starting reserves for nonnegative month-end cash are $1,010 and $1,130. Intramonth reserve needs depend on the dates cash moves. With full collection this month, ending cash is $590 and $350, respectively.

Business Core · Financial statements