Maybe you're in a deadend job in a deadend career and are thinking about going back to school to retrain and retool. Or maybe you've already gotten that pink slip and severance package, and are thinking about getting more education while the job market is undergoing a massive transformation.

Or maybe you're just a knowledge geek, hungry for good information wherever you can get it -- especially if it's free. If any of the above apply to you, you might want to check out a new web site called Academic Earth.

The site offers full, free lectures from professors at some of the most prominent universities in the United States, including: Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. You can view lectures (and download them to your iPod or embed in your blog or Website) in a wide range of subjects, from the hard sciences to law, medicine, and religion.

So if you're thinking about law school, business school, or med school as a way to a career change, you might want to watch a few videos to get a feel for what you could expect before you shell out tens of thousands of dollars on tuition.

Here's an example video from a lecture on entrepreneurship, by Yale's Barry Nalebuff, called: "Why not? How to use everyday ingenuity to solve problems big and small."