Udacity raised $105m with a valuation of $1b for developing its concept of Nano-degree. To differentiate themselves recently, they claimed that MOOCs are dead.
But on the Coursera side, they have a very similar strategy. At the beginning of March 2018, they doubled the number of their master's and bachelor’s degrees created in partnership with universities like Arizona State University, Imperial College, and the Universities of London. Successful students will receive the same degree as the on-campus students. The price to obtain these types of degrees will be 25% of the on-site tuitions. This is possible because Coursera will tap into its 31 million users, reducing dramatically the acquisition costs. Again, like Udacity, the for-profit MOOCs are breaking the degree down in smaller pieces.
The non-profit MOOC, Open EdX (Harvard &MIT), recruited a new operating CEO in October 2017 from TripAdvisor for his “expertise in driving successful online businesses and pioneering platform products”.
Will that be the end of universities?
2012 was “the year of the MOOC”, then this trend started fading away because very few users were completing their online courses. The universities will not expire in the two coming decades. They will cooperate or/and create their own MOOCs to provide online valuable degrees, mostly from a target of already working people. They will also organize real life meetings and courses during the weekends when the campuses are empty. Of course, MOOCs will tap into the $30 billion market of annual tuitions, but again, people from other countries, especially China, are a better target than the US students?
What do you think will happen with Universities and MOOCs? Leave a comment below or tweet at us @gutenbergtech.
If you enjoy our blog, please subscribe to our newsletter. We jump in topics about education, technology, publishing, and eLearning.
Leave a comment