Edible Apple

You might not have heard of iTunes U, but it’s certainly worth checking out. iTunes U is a special section within iTunes that provides users with an extensive amount of educational content (audio and video lectures, slides) from actual classes at a good number of prestigious universities, including Harvard UCLA, Princeton, and MIT. Though some content is restricted to students at particular schools, an impressive amount of content is free for the taking.

That said, The Loop is now reportingthat downloads on iTunes U recently surpassed the 250 million mark.

Apple told me on Tuesday that iTunes U, the part of iTunes dedicated to educational content, has just surpassed 250 million downloads from users around the world. In fact, the free service reached more than 100 million downloads in 2009 alone.

That’s gotta make Steve Jobs, who famously attended college courses he wasn’t enrolled in, crack a smile.