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Joe Martins
Coursera has abandoned what was once its core principal and mission. Frankly, the organization has lost its way in its more recent quest to further monetize its offerings.
You'll notice they've changed their home page introduction. It only reads "Take the world's best courses, online."
"Free Online Courses" only appears in the URL title for search results before you click the link to proceed to the website. My skeptical self believes this was either intentional--to continue to attract people to the website from search results--or an error on the part of whomever manages the website--it's easy to overlook and forget to update header code. Either way, "free" has all but disappeared from the website itself.
You may have also noticed that Coursera email notifications which used to offer dozens of completely free courses now peddle 100% paid and subscription bundles.
For a while, users were still able to sign up for individual courses for free. Now that too has been stripped away. You'll find that a very large majority of "courses" offer 3 options:
A "free course" that does not offer free access to graded materials or any sort of grading is not a free course, nor should it even be referred to as "a course". Materials without grades/grading....well that's called reading books and you can still do that for free at your local public library and a variety of online resources.
I had wondered if Coursera eventually found itself up against a wall. Was it Coursera's plan all along to eventually monetize all "courses" and only permit rather useless free auditing once it grew its base? Or was it the result of pushback from educators/institutions unwilling to continue to provide free access and grading? No matter what the motivation....Coursera has officially failed. That Coursera now heavily markets "financial aid" where once it marketed "free" is, to me, the legacy of that failure.
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Coursera has abandoned what was once its core principal and mission. Frankly, the organization has lost its way in its more recent quest to further monetize its offerings.
You'll notice they've changed their home page introduction. It only reads "Take the world's best courses, online."
"Free Online Courses" only appears in the URL title for search results before you click the link to proceed to the website. My skeptical self believes this was either intentional--to continue to attract people to the website from search results--or an error on the part of whomever manages the website--it's easy to overlook and forget to update header code. Either way, "free" has all but disappeared from the website itself.
You may have also noticed that Coursera email notifications which used to offer dozens of completely free courses now peddle 100% paid and subscription bundles.
For a while, users were still able to sign up for individual courses for free. Now that too has been stripped away. You'll find that a very large majority of "courses" offer 3 options:
- buy the bundle of which it is a part
- buy the individual courses "with access to graded material"
- "audit" the course with no access to graded materials or grading.
A "free course" that does not offer free access to graded materials or any sort of grading is not a free course, nor should it even be referred to as "a course". Materials without grades/grading....well that's called reading books and you can still do that for free at your local public library and a variety of online resources.
I had wondered if Coursera eventually found itself up against a wall. Was it Coursera's plan all along to eventually monetize all "courses" and only permit rather useless free auditing once it grew its base? Or was it the result of pushback from educators/institutions unwilling to continue to provide free access and grading? No matter what the motivation....Coursera has officially failed. That Coursera now heavily markets "financial aid" where once it marketed "free" is, to me, the legacy of that failure.
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Continue reading...
