This will probably be downvoted like crazy here, but I thought we were against for-profit education?
Pretty sure everyone was up in arms when University of Phoenix and the like were bilking students of tens of thousands in student loans and then dumping them on the street with worthless degrees (or worse incomplete degree programs).
Sure the content of the Coursera programs may be better than anything you might have had access to with UoP, but the reality is that the degrees/certificates are just as useful right now as UoP's ever were. Until the rigor is there the degrees will continue to be worth nothing. Unfortunately, that means that Coursera's business model is probably fundamentally broken, as they have previously admitted that too many people drop out if the courses are too hard. Also, making the courses meaningful would certainly require hiring a lot of TAs to grade assignments, which would cost them a lot of money.
I agree that online education definitely has a role to play in the future... But I'm really struggling to see why everyone agrees that one for-profit school is unequivocally bad, but the other gets a free pass.
Pretty sure everyone was up in arms when University of Phoenix and the like were bilking students of tens of thousands in student loans and then dumping them on the street with worthless degrees (or worse incomplete degree programs).
Sure the content of the Coursera programs may be better than anything you might have had access to with UoP, but the reality is that the degrees/certificates are just as useful right now as UoP's ever were. Until the rigor is there the degrees will continue to be worth nothing. Unfortunately, that means that Coursera's business model is probably fundamentally broken, as they have previously admitted that too many people drop out if the courses are too hard. Also, making the courses meaningful would certainly require hiring a lot of TAs to grade assignments, which would cost them a lot of money.
I agree that online education definitely has a role to play in the future... But I'm really struggling to see why everyone agrees that one for-profit school is unequivocally bad, but the other gets a free pass.