Apple says iTunes U content downloads have topped one billion. iTunes U features the world’s largest online catalog of free educational content from top schools and prominent libraries, museums and organizations helping educators create courses including lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and more for iOS users around the world.

More than 1,200 universities and colleges, and 1,200 K-12 schools and districts host over 2,500 public and thousands of private courses encompassing the arts, sciences, health and medicine, education, business and more. Universities including Duke, Yale, Cambridge, MIT and Oxford continue to extend their reach by enrolling more than 100,000 students in single iTunes U courses, with Stanford University and The Open University each surpassing 60 million content downloads. The Ohio State University’s Matthew "Dr. Fus" Stoltzfus’ General Chemistry course enrolled over 100,000 iTunes U students in the first year it was offered.

Over 60%of iTunes U app downloads originate from outside the US, giving schools of any size the ability to share their content with a worldwide audience, says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. The unmatched global reach of iTunes U gives educators, like University of California, Irvine Professor Dan Stokols, international recognition and acclaim in their fields, he adds.