18 ms·

MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

422 points by rolandm 5y ago

nobody0 5y ago
I feel pretty disturbing about this. One of the determining feature of edX is it is backed by MIT. And that's also the reason why I trust the platform to give out information. I don't want to be machine learnt on the Internet.
jp0d 5y ago
I'm doing my Micromasters in Statistics from MIT on EDX. Enjoying the amazing content and recognition of certificate. I'm not sure what this means for enrolled students like me. Is anyone else doing MicroMaster or similar course from a university and worried what this means? "MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online."
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  i had never heard the phrase "micromasters". Wikipedia suggests it is unique to EdX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    I think it's just a standard use of the prefix "micro-" to denote something with a value of one-millionth of the original thing.
  - ecshafer 5y ago
    They are basically graduate certificates, which are a normal university thing. You take 3-5 graduate courses, they give you a certificate saying that you did this, you give them money. Not a full blown masters, thus the micromasters branding, but it can open the door to changing a career or entering a specialization.
    - itsbenweeks 5y ago
      Its even less than that. This micro masters is sold as an entry point for a full-fledged masters program. The order of operations is something like: 1. Complete the micromasters courses at your speed. 2. Get a passing grade in a proctored exam. 3. Get accepted to a masters program with 1/2 of your credits taken care of. 4. Finish the masters degree on-campus.
      - jrochkind1 5y ago
        i don't know if that's "less" or "more" than a graduate certificate. Certificates don't usually give you half the credits toward a masters program at the same university, do they? I can see this being great "marketing" for the university too though -- once you got the "micromasters", the only way to get half your credits toward a degree is to go to the same university that gave you the micromasters (if you can get accepted, they took your money for the micromasters without promising that) -- they've kind of locked you in.
        itsbenweeks 5y ago
        That fair. I suppose its about the same as a graduate certificate until you take the extra steps to get a degree.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        Has anyone actually transferred from a Micro-Master to a real masters at Harvard/MIT?
        jrochkind1 5y ago
        Pretty crucial question!
      - ryosuke 5y ago
        I dunno, giving people who might not be able to afford a masters otherwise or aren’t able to move away for two years an opportunity to get half a masters degree from home seems like a pretty big deal to me.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > i had never heard the phrase "micromasters". Wikipedia suggests it is unique to EdX. Coursera has something similar called MasterTrack; there's not a generic cross-platform name for it, though if it is successful for multiple platforms and graduate institutions that will probably change over time.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    Micromasters is a trademarked credential. Each of the different online learning platforms has their own, normally leaning on/leeching off established and recognised credentials as in this case the Masters. They could have made it an entire category, open to use by others and instead chose to TM it.
brutus1213 5y ago
This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).
- benrbray 5y ago
  I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!". * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. * An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction. Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.
  - maayank 5y ago
    > * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. That's actually one of my favorite things when taking online courses...
    - benrbray 5y ago
codeisawesome 5y ago
So the universities have decided to monetise their own great reputations by simply selling it to a bidder?
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > So the universities have decided to monetise their own great reputations by simply selling it to a bidder? I think that this is a terrible decision and regret it, but there's not much surprise: this monetisation of their reputation is kind of the business of modern universities.
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  Well, patents and degrees work that way too. Universities are businesses first... extracting value from students and faculty. It's uncool when it becomes the primary focus. It's not like Harvard and MIT don't have enough money already, so it's curious why they need obscenely more.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  This happened a long time ago with Harvard Extension School.
  - codeisawesome 5y ago
    Hmm.. continuing education that’s more accessible seems to be the gist of it; I wouldn’t quite put that in the same bucket as this post’s headline…
hashhar 5y ago
I'm sad that all education endeavours eventually turn for-profit and then the goals get misaligned. Produce as many courses at as minimum cost as possible. Enroll as many people as possible without regards for completion percentage. Create an economy where random people are incentivised to create courses and then the course quality tanks. I wish this turns out differently. Even Udemy and Coursera have become commericialised with edX the last major standing.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Udemy and Coursera were entirely commercial from their start, were they not?
  - nosianu 5y ago
    Originally Coursera only wanted money for the - for the vast majority of people useless - verified completion certificate. You had access to all course content including all the tests and could access course content long after the course had ended. So if you did not see any value in that "verified certificate" there was no reason to pay anything. You got a free certificate either way. I saved all certificates I ever got from edX and from Coursera as PDFs to remember which courses I took. They actually look quite fancy. - Example certificate that was free at the time: https://i.imgur.com/XFX05gx.png https://i.imgur.com/XFX05gx.png - The course was part of a series, which these days is available here: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science#courses https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science#co... - Here is an R-Markdown document I created for another of the courses in that series, which used peer assessment where we had to evaluate each others results: https://rpubs.com/Noseshine/74191 https://rpubs.com/Noseshine/74191 At the start everything was free, including all these exercises, all the assessments, and even the certificates. I knew it would not last and used the opportunity, over three years of heavy course taking, over 50 completed courses. I did not have much to spend at the time, I could definitely not have spend the current amounts. I took over a dozen courses on Coursera alone, medicine and statistics, it was good. I just checked my (long unused) login just now, they only list two courses under completed and "forgot" the other well over a dozen others. Good thing I saved those completion certificates, although there probably is little use in remembering what courses I took - either I remember what I learned or I don't. . Just for fun, this was one of my favorite courses, great professor too, great content: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience Don't know if it still is as complete, at the time it was almost 25 hours of videos alone, never mind all the reading and all the tests and exercises. It wasn't complicated though, you just had to invest the time but not nearly as much brain as for other "STEM sciency" courses.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
This ia unfortunate but not altogether surprising. I think it can even be deemed benefocial as follows: If they manage to increase offering, enrollment and completion by say 3x, a big chunk of those students may be coming from paid physical colleges, which means huge savings in education dollars overall. I guess my point is, losing nonprofit edX to paid education is not a negative if on the whole it chips away at students paying full sticker price and lowers the overall avg cost of education.
pcranaway 5y ago
Apparently Bono is into academia now
ludamad 5y ago
Why now? Is online learning not a big opportunity, or not the opportunity for them?
etempleton 5y ago
I suspect it was just not a sustainable program from a revenue perspective for either school and has the risk to lower the schools reputation and suck away resources. 2U is one of the biggest for-profit higher education companies and seemingly one of the most successful ones, often partnering with other colleges and universities. I am suspicious of any of the for-profits being able to sustain a business. Most end up failing because, as it ends up, education is not very profitable if done correctly.
- extra88 5y ago
  > I am suspicious of any of the for-profits being able to sustain a business. Blackboard has been around a long time and seems to do okay. Instructure (makers of Canvas) has done very well. Both sell Learning Management Systems (LMSes), not educational content itself. Big textbook publishers, like Pearson, have been managing incorporating online educational materials. But yeah, don't expect a unicorn to come around and "disrupt" education.
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    > But yeah, don't expect a unicorn to come around and "disrupt" education. The easiest way to get a bright-eyed SV entrepreneur to try to take something on is to tell them, "That industry is non-disruptable."
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Well people have been saying that for decades around education, so my intuition is that this represents decades of bright-eyed failure.
      - tehjoker 5y ago
        The people most in need of education have the least money. Monetize that. Education is a public good that requires social subsidy and personal interaction.
switchb4 5y ago
One of the news among many for which I don't give a damn
neovive 5y ago
From 2U's press release [https://2u.com/latest/industry-redefining-combination/ https://2u.com/latest/industry-redefining-combination/] it's clear that they benefit significantly from associating themselves with the MIT, Harvard, and EdX brands. At $800M, I assume they have a well-planned monetization strategy for EdX. My personal experience with EdX over the years is mixed. I audited a few EdX courses (CS50, Linear Algebra) and generally enjoyed the quality and pace of the courses, but was never compelled to purchase a verified certificate since these were more for leisure. I recall hitting up against the paywall and losing access to the exams. Although, I understand the need to monetize, it was a bit demoralizing. Overall, I feel EdX helped define massively open online education and I hope they continue to support this mission in the future.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  Everyone at edX who helped define the future of education left about a half-decade ago. A third of the staff, including everyone who cared about learning, poor people, open, or much of anything else. edX was overmonetized. If you want to see corruption on a grander scale, see where this $800M goes.
tsjq 5y ago
MIT and Harvard did this for 800million? Don't these two universities have multi hundred billion dollar endowments ? Squeezing every single drop of money from every single brick of the university : great work, MBAs . Slow clap
- henvic 5y ago
  It's a shame how academy ends up being unaccessible for many people, even though they receive a lot of endowments... while there are a lot of ways to make them more accessible! Like: online courses... or... What about the white elephant in the room? The cost of social events and Ivy League athletes/sports. I don't have anything against those, but if I were in a position of power in one academic entity, I'd definitely make sure sports is not a cost center, as it is today for many.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    You don't need to do anything regarding Ivy League sports to be involved with the academy, how is this relevant?
    - henvic 5y ago
      I think you either misread what I wrote. The relevance is the that such activities have been driving up the tuition costs, so attending or not, they've a cost on the student. Usually this extra cost is not explicit, though, as nowadays most students have to get a loan to attend university. This wasn't always the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnMCbSB_T4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnMCbSB_T4Q
- Finnucane 5y ago
  No, they do not have 'multi-hundred billion dollar endowments'. Harvard's is around $40 billion, which is a lot, but income from the endowment only covers about a third of operating costs. It is all already budgeted for other purposes. Even for Harvard and MIT, $800 million is a non-trivial amount of money.
colllectorof 5y ago
Good. Less cognitive dissonance for me. I can now more confidently and accurately say that the higher ed in US is dead and produces little more than fake credentials and political propaganda.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  "I am glad that something I perceive as negative occurred, so that I don't have to be wrong about my assumptions".
  - colllectorof 5y ago
    More like "I'm tired of anticipating the inevitable, while being relentlessly gaslit about its probability". Whether or not edX is sold to a third party, the underlying problems are already in the system. It's the effect, not the cause.
doggodaddo78 5y ago
We have this new, open-source water fountain system that properly prevents overconsumption and resource depletion. It was just sold to Chevron for 100 megabucks and they intend to monetize them... $1 per sip.
kobiguru 5y ago
I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer https://swayam.gov.in/explorer
- xNeil 5y ago
  Second this. They're genuinely amazing, with IIT professors teaching their subjects (for engineering). It's basically Indian OCW.
- truth_ 5y ago
  Quality of most of the courses is horrible, and nowhere nearly comparable to what you get from a Harvard or MIT course. The professors use very old PowerPoint slides and they themselves are not interested in teaching. Programming problems are dull and boring. However, there are exceptions. The Discrete Math course taught by IIT-Ropar is among the most amazing introductory DM course I have ever seen- taken in person or online. There's also a 40 lecture Japanese course which is also quite good. Indian schools are highly credentialist, so it is worth checking the backgrounds of the Professors beforehand. Do they have degrees from abroad? Are they interesting persons? And so on. Only then enroll in an NPTEL course.
- Arun2009 5y ago
  I have surveyed these, but in general, they simply don't come anywhere close in quality to that of courses offered by edX. An example that readily comes to mind are the courses on manufacturing processes offered by both MITx and NPTEL. The MITx course was clearly a class apart - you actually got to see the processes in question and how they were applied in the real world factories. When speaking about how a product was made, the lecturer actually bothered to bring samples of those products, sometimes dismantled them, and showed us how they could have been put together. I only audited this a few months ago, and to this day I remember the concepts vividly. On the other hand, in the videos I watched, the NPTEL course lecturer simply read out from powerpoint slides, which he prepared from a standard textbook. You were better off reading the textbook directly than watching the video alternating between the slides and the lecturer's face. It was a very uninspiring, depressing experience.
rossdavidh 5y ago
Hypothesis: MIT and Harvard had enough experience in distance learning by now to realize that it is NOT going to be the wave of the future in education. They don't want to exactly say this out loud and take flak for it, so they're just unloading this (for significant $$) primarily in order to refocus on in-person education, since they've realized that distance learning has been around for decades and nothing about the Internet has really made much difference in how well it works. For a few people, it could be significant, especially if they are in a remote location and don't have the option of attending in person, and have an iron will to remain motivated when not in a school environment. It is not what most students need, does not give the networking bonus that is a big part of MIT and Harvard's value, and is not going to be the future of education.
- dentemple 5y ago
  Seems like an overly negative take. I see no reason not to take the article at face-value here, namely, that MIT & Harvard saw the growing gap between for-profit and not-for-profit online education--and decided to take steps ensure that the latter doesn't fall behind. It's also pointed out in the article that MIT & Harvard will be investing money into a new non-profit to explore the "next generation" of online learning, which is literally the opposite of "[refocusing] on in-person education", as you hypothesize.
- nightski 5y ago
  The problem with MIT's online courses is that while the content itself was fantastic they refused to treat it like an online course. They wanted to have it run on a schedule, strict no-compromising deadlines, and large fees for full access. That's fine and all but it's forcing the university model they know into an online format and it doesn't work so great for the audience that wants to take online courses imho. The value proposition on it's Micro Masters course was that you could use it for credit at full universities. The problem is it was extremely unlikely one would get the opportunity to use it at MIT, and the rest of the partners were universities that I had never even heard of before. Not necessarily places I'd probably want to go to further my studies.
  - 5y ago
the__alchemist 5y ago
Anecdote: MitX's science and math classes (QM, molecular bio, general bio, materials, Diffeq etc) are outstanding. I wish they didn't have to move to a paid model for exams etx a few years back. The classes I tried from other universities on EdX seemed to be of lower quality.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
So can I get a bachelor degree in CS/CE for 5k or less purely online?
- salutis 5y ago
  Yes, from the University of the People, for instance: https://www.uopeople.edu/ https://www.uopeople.edu/
antoviaque 5y ago
Note that the benefits of the sale ($800M) will all go to a non-profit dedicated to the development of the Open edX project. This just gave the project one of the largest warchests of any open source project, and freed it from the sometimes conflicting needs of monetization edx.org had.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  Author of Open edX left a long time ago due to corruption at edX / MIT. See commit log for who built the platform. See press releases for who got the credit. MIT promised all open courses, all open platform, all open everything. The $800M will be used to line the pockets of privileged MIT professors. It will be as effective at closing equity gaps as supply-side (trickle-down) economics. 60% will go to overhead, which will fund faculty clubs and yachts. From there, a ton will go into generous salaries and benefits packages. And so on down the line. I am willing to bet that this will be equivalent to giving maybe $10M to an HBCU, in terms of benefits to the poor.
lstmemery 5y ago
This really feels like the end of an era. I got my start going through the MITx computer science and probability courses. I wouldn't be a data scientist today if I didn't have those resources available. I now understand how to self-learn difficult subjects with textbooks and online lectures but I really appreciated MITx's commitment to making rigorous courses freely available.
sanjiva 5y ago
edX has been my go-to recommendation for people in my side of the world (I live in Sri Lanka) to get quality education at no cost. This is the end of that - they might have some protections but its no longer going to be focused on quality content delivered in a highly learnable manner.
maxFlow 5y ago
The key to online learning's sucess is counter to the current system's goals. What these big-name universities could do to make online learning go mainstream is lower the barrier to entry by: i) lowering tuition fees in accordance with mass production practices and ii) provide real credits and degrees without the pomp. But both these actions would water down the "good" name of these legendary institutions (a legend built on exclusion and cronyism). In other words, they themselves are the ones holding on-site education as superior, lest the system collapses. No matter, it's just delaying the inevitable.
RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
I guess we're sticking to youtube university then..
MR4D 5y ago
This makes no sense. They could do a simple transaction transferring it to a 401c3 entity and be done with it. The idea of a public company, a public benefit company, a university, a nonprofit, and 800 million dollars changing hands in this complicated of a transaction seems incongruous.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Harvard and MIT are selling the right to use their name-marks in a limited context for $800mm, which they will now invest in becoming leading institutions in AI teaching/tutoring. They also get to divest themselves of something that was (perceived as) cutting-edge and world-changing 20 years ago but is no longer particularly hot/novel. Doing MOOCs was good business for Harvard/MIT like 10-15 years ago when designing and delivering MOOCs constituted "thought leadership". Now, MOOCs are ubiquitous and AI teachers are the hotness.
  - MR4D 5y ago
    FTA: "...2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization..." While that org is led by Harvard and MIT, the institutions are not getting the money. Which begs the question - why didn't the edX organization just sell off the IP to 2U? would have been much cleaner.
kerkeslager 5y ago
If Julius Caesar had taken Alexandria in 2021, he'd have sold the library to a for-profit corporation. What a terrible loss.
loughnane 5y ago
This is a huge bummer. edX was the prime example I would hold up when people said "remote learning is terrible". Several of the courses I took on there ranked among some of the best classes I've ever taken, in-person or otherwise. I agree with another commenter in that I had hoped it would persist since 1) education is ostensibly the business of Harvard and MIT and 2) Their pockets are deep enough to think long-term. I will admit that I haven't used it much in the past few years. Had been getting turned off by the credential chasing and access disappearing after some time. Tough to see an excellent path forward from here. I've never heard of this 2U firm.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  "MIT will continue to offer courses to learners worldwide via edX, as well as on a new platform now known as MITx Online. MIT’s Office of Digital Learning will build and operate MITx Online as a new world-facing platform, based on Open edX, that MIT is creating for MITx MOOCs. MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online." It's worth reading the article - there is much more that's not being addressed on HN.
  - loughnane 5y ago
    I read it. Honestly that just feels like momentum. I’d be surprised if in two years the product was recognizable
- rantwasp 5y ago
  yeah. edX was stellar compared to other platforms. like really really good. sad that it's uncertain what is going to happen to it now
adnmcq999 5y ago
Download or get a textbook and read it yourself + find some lectures on YouTube with a high rank that you also feel you are getting something from. This is and always has been the best way to learn most subjects.
- jasonharris555 5y ago
  This is also how I do it but I would also like some sort of computer based tools to help learn.
- ibdf 5y ago
  I agree that you can find resources else where but these courses have already a structure, have tests and deadlines… that makes you study! At least for me, a good structure is essential.
itsbenweeks 5y ago
I was originally worried at how dishonest seemed to faculty and TAs who have spent years creating many textbooks' worth of content for edX. Something akin to MIT Press selling their catalog to Elsevier or Pearson wouldn't be tolerated by the faculty. But, in the press release they do mention that MIT faculty can opt-out and operate in a MIT-only instance & fork of the Open edX platform: "MIT will continue to offer courses to learners worldwide via edX, as well as on a new platform now known as MITx Online. MIT’s Office of Digital Learning will build and operate MITx Online as a new world-facing platform, based on Open edX, that MIT is creating for MITx MOOCs. MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online." With that in mind, it seems that Open edX development will be under a new non-profit held by MIT and Harvard. I hope this new non-profit will be less at odds with itself in respect to maintaining openness while creating profitable pay2play courses.
- nverno 5y ago
  MIT is the gold standard of education. Most of their computing classes already give you full access to all the course materials, videos, labs, readings, handouts, etc. directly from the course page. These direct resources are far better than typical edX/Coursera courses. The same is not generally true of Harvard courses (with a few exceptions like cs50), which hide all materials behind paywalls.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > MIT is the gold standard of education A complete tangent, but its somewhat amusing that this idiom remains popular when the literal gold standard itself is no longer generally considered a figurative gold standard of anything.
    - nverno 5y ago
      Orwell says something along the lines of never use outdated idioms in his Politics and the English Language. I'm withholding judgement on the extinctioness of this one until we see how the whole debt bubble plays out though :)
sriram_sun 5y ago
Oh no! Should I start downloading videos?
ncfausti 5y ago
Like others, this worries me. Does anyone know of a platform or service that backs up quality educational content (think Coursera, edX, YouTube lectures, etc.) forever, so that its open-access is not at the whim of a for-profit corporation?
- clintonb 5y ago
  Note that the content belongs to the professors and university partners, not edX or 2U.
ibdf 5y ago
I just recently found out about EdX and signed up because even when paying for the course, you get a good deal.
streamofdigits 5y ago
Will this help the moodle ecosystem?
laptop-man 5y ago
I have a friend who works for 2u. the bootcamps just pump out bad devs. everything is taught way to fast, everything is glossed over, they are expected to learn the majority on the own
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  Tbh what do you expect from a 3 month intro to web dev? You have 12 weeks so you spend a week learning HTML, a week learning JS, then CSS, SQL, etc. With that in mind, of course it’s pumping out bad devs, just like every other boot camp. I wish it were different but that’s what happens. What’s worse is they charge over $10K for the pleasure.
  - laptop-man 5y ago
    theirs almost no focus either. html, css, js, react, mysql, Mongo, various apis, jquery, and there's more. I'd be surprised if any were hirable after the class
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  At this point it's pretty well known bootcamps are not a great hiring pipeline. Unless you can get "grads" at a significant discount. There's a reason Lambda is so desperate that they will "loan" you someone for a month at no costs (the VCs pay for it!). [0] [0] https://lambdaschool.com/hire-fellows https://lambdaschool.com/hire-fellows
  - rtpg 5y ago
    That is probably very bootcamp-dependent, I've found bootcamp grads have been very good. In particular, the fact that most grads have had "real jobs" elsewhere mean that they have good people skills/time management/actual sense of "getting things done" that vastly outweighs the skill imbalance. Hell of a lot easier to increase someone's React knowledge than it is to, like, fix how they interact with people.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
user_7832 5y ago
I am an assistant and help handle an edX course at a <fairly well known EU university>, so from my perspective there were a few things that I thought might be interesting to share (though I am quite a few hours late to this thread). > Nearly 10% of the students have paid for a certificate. I do not know how much server hosting costs, but given the cost of a certificate being several tens of Euros, I wouldn't be surprised if this covered costs (though I'm not aware if the uni gets a cut). > Apparently the main issue with Coursera (which is why our uni chose edX) was over copyright - edX material remains owned by the creating uni and not edX itself. I wonder how this will be impacted by this change.
ixacto 5y ago
EdX really got to me with their removal of past class materials and the "class starts today" dark pattern, and the constant certificate upsell attempts. Something like freecodecamp and Udemy is much more usable IMO.
dghughes 5y ago
I bailed from edX many years ago after my course was abruptly ended to modify it. I was near the end but that didn't matter. After much back and forth arguing the best offer was 50% off the same course. I declined since there was no way to know whether edX would do the same thing again.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I suspect that they're stepping back and makeing $$$ because if this stuff was really going to take off it would have happened during the pandemic. When that didn't pan out they decided to divest.
ablekh 5y ago
Just another example of industry consolidation, out of zillion others. This time in the MOOC domain.

422 points by rolandm 5y ago

I feel pretty disturbing about this. One of the determining feature of edX is it is backed by MIT. And that's also the reason why I trust the platform to give out information. I don't want to be machine learnt on the Internet.

jp0d 5y ago

I'm doing my Micromasters in Statistics from MIT on EDX. Enjoying the amazing content and recognition of certificate. I'm not sure what this means for enrolled students like me. Is anyone else doing MicroMaster or similar course from a university and worried what this means? "MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online."

jrochkind1 5y ago
i had never heard the phrase "micromasters". Wikipedia suggests it is unique to EdX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters
- Y_Y 5y ago
  I think it's just a standard use of the prefix "micro-" to denote something with a value of one-millionth of the original thing.
- ecshafer 5y ago
  They are basically graduate certificates, which are a normal university thing. You take 3-5 graduate courses, they give you a certificate saying that you did this, you give them money. Not a full blown masters, thus the micromasters branding, but it can open the door to changing a career or entering a specialization.
  - itsbenweeks 5y ago
    Its even less than that. This micro masters is sold as an entry point for a full-fledged masters program. The order of operations is something like: 1. Complete the micromasters courses at your speed. 2. Get a passing grade in a proctored exam. 3. Get accepted to a masters program with 1/2 of your credits taken care of. 4. Finish the masters degree on-campus.
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      i don't know if that's "less" or "more" than a graduate certificate. Certificates don't usually give you half the credits toward a masters program at the same university, do they? I can see this being great "marketing" for the university too though -- once you got the "micromasters", the only way to get half your credits toward a degree is to go to the same university that gave you the micromasters (if you can get accepted, they took your money for the micromasters without promising that) -- they've kind of locked you in.
      - itsbenweeks 5y ago
        That fair. I suppose its about the same as a graduate certificate until you take the extra steps to get a degree.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Has anyone actually transferred from a Micro-Master to a real masters at Harvard/MIT?
      - jrochkind1 5y ago
        Pretty crucial question!
    - ryosuke 5y ago
      I dunno, giving people who might not be able to afford a masters otherwise or aren’t able to move away for two years an opportunity to get half a masters degree from home seems like a pretty big deal to me.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > i had never heard the phrase "micromasters". Wikipedia suggests it is unique to EdX. Coursera has something similar called MasterTrack; there's not a generic cross-platform name for it, though if it is successful for multiple platforms and graduate institutions that will probably change over time.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Micromasters is a trademarked credential. Each of the different online learning platforms has their own, normally leaning on/leeching off established and recognised credentials as in this case the Masters. They could have made it an entire category, open to use by others and instead chose to TM it.

brutus1213 5y ago

This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).

benrbray 5y ago
I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!". * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. * An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction. Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.
- maayank 5y ago
  > * Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc. That's actually one of my favorite things when taking online courses...
  - benrbray 5y ago

codeisawesome 5y ago

So the universities have decided to monetise their own great reputations by simply selling it to a bidder?

JadeNB 5y ago
> So the universities have decided to monetise their own great reputations by simply selling it to a bidder? I think that this is a terrible decision and regret it, but there's not much surprise: this monetisation of their reputation is kind of the business of modern universities.
doggodaddo78 5y ago
Well, patents and degrees work that way too. Universities are businesses first... extracting value from students and faculty. It's uncool when it becomes the primary focus. It's not like Harvard and MIT don't have enough money already, so it's curious why they need obscenely more.
whimsicalism 5y ago
This happened a long time ago with Harvard Extension School.
- codeisawesome 5y ago
  Hmm.. continuing education that’s more accessible seems to be the gist of it; I wouldn’t quite put that in the same bucket as this post’s headline…

hashhar 5y ago

I'm sad that all education endeavours eventually turn for-profit and then the goals get misaligned. Produce as many courses at as minimum cost as possible. Enroll as many people as possible without regards for completion percentage. Create an economy where random people are incentivised to create courses and then the course quality tanks. I wish this turns out differently. Even Udemy and Coursera have become commericialised with edX the last major standing.

sokoloff 5y ago
Udemy and Coursera were entirely commercial from their start, were they not?
- nosianu 5y ago
  Originally Coursera only wanted money for the - for the vast majority of people useless - verified completion certificate. You had access to all course content including all the tests and could access course content long after the course had ended. So if you did not see any value in that "verified certificate" there was no reason to pay anything. You got a free certificate either way. I saved all certificates I ever got from edX and from Coursera as PDFs to remember which courses I took. They actually look quite fancy. - Example certificate that was free at the time: https://i.imgur.com/XFX05gx.png https://i.imgur.com/XFX05gx.png - The course was part of a series, which these days is available here: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science#courses https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science#co... - Here is an R-Markdown document I created for another of the courses in that series, which used peer assessment where we had to evaluate each others results: https://rpubs.com/Noseshine/74191 https://rpubs.com/Noseshine/74191 At the start everything was free, including all these exercises, all the assessments, and even the certificates. I knew it would not last and used the opportunity, over three years of heavy course taking, over 50 completed courses. I did not have much to spend at the time, I could definitely not have spend the current amounts. I took over a dozen courses on Coursera alone, medicine and statistics, it was good. I just checked my (long unused) login just now, they only list two courses under completed and "forgot" the other well over a dozen others. Good thing I saved those completion certificates, although there probably is little use in remembering what courses I took - either I remember what I learned or I don't. . Just for fun, this was one of my favorite courses, great professor too, great content: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience Don't know if it still is as complete, at the time it was almost 25 hours of videos alone, never mind all the reading and all the tests and exercises. It wasn't complicated though, you just had to invest the time but not nearly as much brain as for other "STEM sciency" courses.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

This ia unfortunate but not altogether surprising. I think it can even be deemed benefocial as follows: If they manage to increase offering, enrollment and completion by say 3x, a big chunk of those students may be coming from paid physical colleges, which means huge savings in education dollars overall. I guess my point is, losing nonprofit edX to paid education is not a negative if on the whole it chips away at students paying full sticker price and lowers the overall avg cost of education.

pcranaway 5y ago

Apparently Bono is into academia now

ludamad 5y ago

Why now? Is online learning not a big opportunity, or not the opportunity for them?

etempleton 5y ago

I suspect it was just not a sustainable program from a revenue perspective for either school and has the risk to lower the schools reputation and suck away resources. 2U is one of the biggest for-profit higher education companies and seemingly one of the most successful ones, often partnering with other colleges and universities. I am suspicious of any of the for-profits being able to sustain a business. Most end up failing because, as it ends up, education is not very profitable if done correctly.

extra88 5y ago
> I am suspicious of any of the for-profits being able to sustain a business. Blackboard has been around a long time and seems to do okay. Instructure (makers of Canvas) has done very well. Both sell Learning Management Systems (LMSes), not educational content itself. Big textbook publishers, like Pearson, have been managing incorporating online educational materials. But yeah, don't expect a unicorn to come around and "disrupt" education.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  > But yeah, don't expect a unicorn to come around and "disrupt" education. The easiest way to get a bright-eyed SV entrepreneur to try to take something on is to tell them, "That industry is non-disruptable."
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Well people have been saying that for decades around education, so my intuition is that this represents decades of bright-eyed failure.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      The people most in need of education have the least money. Monetize that. Education is a public good that requires social subsidy and personal interaction.

switchb4 5y ago

One of the news among many for which I don't give a damn

neovive 5y ago

From 2U's press release [https://2u.com/latest/industry-redefining-combination/ https://2u.com/latest/industry-redefining-combination/] it's clear that they benefit significantly from associating themselves with the MIT, Harvard, and EdX brands. At $800M, I assume they have a well-planned monetization strategy for EdX. My personal experience with EdX over the years is mixed. I audited a few EdX courses (CS50, Linear Algebra) and generally enjoyed the quality and pace of the courses, but was never compelled to purchase a verified certificate since these were more for leisure. I recall hitting up against the paywall and losing access to the exams. Although, I understand the need to monetize, it was a bit demoralizing. Overall, I feel EdX helped define massively open online education and I hope they continue to support this mission in the future.

murgindrag 5y ago
Everyone at edX who helped define the future of education left about a half-decade ago. A third of the staff, including everyone who cared about learning, poor people, open, or much of anything else. edX was overmonetized. If you want to see corruption on a grander scale, see where this $800M goes.

tsjq 5y ago

MIT and Harvard did this for 800million? Don't these two universities have multi hundred billion dollar endowments ? Squeezing every single drop of money from every single brick of the university : great work, MBAs . Slow clap

henvic 5y ago
It's a shame how academy ends up being unaccessible for many people, even though they receive a lot of endowments... while there are a lot of ways to make them more accessible! Like: online courses... or... What about the white elephant in the room? The cost of social events and Ivy League athletes/sports. I don't have anything against those, but if I were in a position of power in one academic entity, I'd definitely make sure sports is not a cost center, as it is today for many.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  You don't need to do anything regarding Ivy League sports to be involved with the academy, how is this relevant?
  - henvic 5y ago
    I think you either misread what I wrote. The relevance is the that such activities have been driving up the tuition costs, so attending or not, they've a cost on the student. Usually this extra cost is not explicit, though, as nowadays most students have to get a loan to attend university. This wasn't always the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnMCbSB_T4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnMCbSB_T4Q
Finnucane 5y ago
No, they do not have 'multi-hundred billion dollar endowments'. Harvard's is around $40 billion, which is a lot, but income from the endowment only covers about a third of operating costs. It is all already budgeted for other purposes. Even for Harvard and MIT, $800 million is a non-trivial amount of money.

colllectorof 5y ago

Good. Less cognitive dissonance for me. I can now more confidently and accurately say that the higher ed in US is dead and produces little more than fake credentials and political propaganda.

unethical_ban 5y ago
"I am glad that something I perceive as negative occurred, so that I don't have to be wrong about my assumptions".
- colllectorof 5y ago
  More like "I'm tired of anticipating the inevitable, while being relentlessly gaslit about its probability". Whether or not edX is sold to a third party, the underlying problems are already in the system. It's the effect, not the cause.

doggodaddo78 5y ago

We have this new, open-source water fountain system that properly prevents overconsumption and resource depletion. It was just sold to Chevron for 100 megabucks and they intend to monetize them... $1 per sip.

kobiguru 5y ago

I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer https://swayam.gov.in/explorer

xNeil 5y ago
Second this. They're genuinely amazing, with IIT professors teaching their subjects (for engineering). It's basically Indian OCW.
truth_ 5y ago
Quality of most of the courses is horrible, and nowhere nearly comparable to what you get from a Harvard or MIT course. The professors use very old PowerPoint slides and they themselves are not interested in teaching. Programming problems are dull and boring. However, there are exceptions. The Discrete Math course taught by IIT-Ropar is among the most amazing introductory DM course I have ever seen- taken in person or online. There's also a 40 lecture Japanese course which is also quite good. Indian schools are highly credentialist, so it is worth checking the backgrounds of the Professors beforehand. Do they have degrees from abroad? Are they interesting persons? And so on. Only then enroll in an NPTEL course.
Arun2009 5y ago
I have surveyed these, but in general, they simply don't come anywhere close in quality to that of courses offered by edX. An example that readily comes to mind are the courses on manufacturing processes offered by both MITx and NPTEL. The MITx course was clearly a class apart - you actually got to see the processes in question and how they were applied in the real world factories. When speaking about how a product was made, the lecturer actually bothered to bring samples of those products, sometimes dismantled them, and showed us how they could have been put together. I only audited this a few months ago, and to this day I remember the concepts vividly. On the other hand, in the videos I watched, the NPTEL course lecturer simply read out from powerpoint slides, which he prepared from a standard textbook. You were better off reading the textbook directly than watching the video alternating between the slides and the lecturer's face. It was a very uninspiring, depressing experience.

rossdavidh 5y ago

Hypothesis: MIT and Harvard had enough experience in distance learning by now to realize that it is NOT going to be the wave of the future in education. They don't want to exactly say this out loud and take flak for it, so they're just unloading this (for significant $$) primarily in order to refocus on in-person education, since they've realized that distance learning has been around for decades and nothing about the Internet has really made much difference in how well it works. For a few people, it could be significant, especially if they are in a remote location and don't have the option of attending in person, and have an iron will to remain motivated when not in a school environment. It is not what most students need, does not give the networking bonus that is a big part of MIT and Harvard's value, and is not going to be the future of education.

dentemple 5y ago
Seems like an overly negative take. I see no reason not to take the article at face-value here, namely, that MIT & Harvard saw the growing gap between for-profit and not-for-profit online education--and decided to take steps ensure that the latter doesn't fall behind. It's also pointed out in the article that MIT & Harvard will be investing money into a new non-profit to explore the "next generation" of online learning, which is literally the opposite of "[refocusing] on in-person education", as you hypothesize.
nightski 5y ago
The problem with MIT's online courses is that while the content itself was fantastic they refused to treat it like an online course. They wanted to have it run on a schedule, strict no-compromising deadlines, and large fees for full access. That's fine and all but it's forcing the university model they know into an online format and it doesn't work so great for the audience that wants to take online courses imho. The value proposition on it's Micro Masters course was that you could use it for credit at full universities. The problem is it was extremely unlikely one would get the opportunity to use it at MIT, and the rest of the partners were universities that I had never even heard of before. Not necessarily places I'd probably want to go to further my studies.
- 5y ago

the__alchemist 5y ago

Anecdote: MitX's science and math classes (QM, molecular bio, general bio, materials, Diffeq etc) are outstanding. I wish they didn't have to move to a paid model for exams etx a few years back. The classes I tried from other universities on EdX seemed to be of lower quality.

AzzieElbab 5y ago

So can I get a bachelor degree in CS/CE for 5k or less purely online?

salutis 5y ago
Yes, from the University of the People, for instance: https://www.uopeople.edu/ https://www.uopeople.edu/

antoviaque 5y ago

Note that the benefits of the sale ($800M) will all go to a non-profit dedicated to the development of the Open edX project. This just gave the project one of the largest warchests of any open source project, and freed it from the sometimes conflicting needs of monetization edx.org had.

murgindrag 5y ago
Author of Open edX left a long time ago due to corruption at edX / MIT. See commit log for who built the platform. See press releases for who got the credit. MIT promised all open courses, all open platform, all open everything. The $800M will be used to line the pockets of privileged MIT professors. It will be as effective at closing equity gaps as supply-side (trickle-down) economics. 60% will go to overhead, which will fund faculty clubs and yachts. From there, a ton will go into generous salaries and benefits packages. And so on down the line. I am willing to bet that this will be equivalent to giving maybe $10M to an HBCU, in terms of benefits to the poor.

lstmemery 5y ago

This really feels like the end of an era. I got my start going through the MITx computer science and probability courses. I wouldn't be a data scientist today if I didn't have those resources available. I now understand how to self-learn difficult subjects with textbooks and online lectures but I really appreciated MITx's commitment to making rigorous courses freely available.

sanjiva 5y ago

edX has been my go-to recommendation for people in my side of the world (I live in Sri Lanka) to get quality education at no cost. This is the end of that - they might have some protections but its no longer going to be focused on quality content delivered in a highly learnable manner.

maxFlow 5y ago

The key to online learning's sucess is counter to the current system's goals. What these big-name universities could do to make online learning go mainstream is lower the barrier to entry by: i) lowering tuition fees in accordance with mass production practices and ii) provide real credits and degrees without the pomp. But both these actions would water down the "good" name of these legendary institutions (a legend built on exclusion and cronyism). In other words, they themselves are the ones holding on-site education as superior, lest the system collapses. No matter, it's just delaying the inevitable.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago

I guess we're sticking to youtube university then..

MR4D 5y ago

This makes no sense. They could do a simple transaction transferring it to a 401c3 entity and be done with it. The idea of a public company, a public benefit company, a university, a nonprofit, and 800 million dollars changing hands in this complicated of a transaction seems incongruous.

throwawaygh 5y ago
Harvard and MIT are selling the right to use their name-marks in a limited context for $800mm, which they will now invest in becoming leading institutions in AI teaching/tutoring. They also get to divest themselves of something that was (perceived as) cutting-edge and world-changing 20 years ago but is no longer particularly hot/novel. Doing MOOCs was good business for Harvard/MIT like 10-15 years ago when designing and delivering MOOCs constituted "thought leadership". Now, MOOCs are ubiquitous and AI teachers are the hotness.
- MR4D 5y ago
  FTA: "...2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization..." While that org is led by Harvard and MIT, the institutions are not getting the money. Which begs the question - why didn't the edX organization just sell off the IP to 2U? would have been much cleaner.

kerkeslager 5y ago

If Julius Caesar had taken Alexandria in 2021, he'd have sold the library to a for-profit corporation. What a terrible loss.

loughnane 5y ago

This is a huge bummer. edX was the prime example I would hold up when people said "remote learning is terrible". Several of the courses I took on there ranked among some of the best classes I've ever taken, in-person or otherwise. I agree with another commenter in that I had hoped it would persist since 1) education is ostensibly the business of Harvard and MIT and 2) Their pockets are deep enough to think long-term. I will admit that I haven't used it much in the past few years. Had been getting turned off by the credential chasing and access disappearing after some time. Tough to see an excellent path forward from here. I've never heard of this 2U firm.

wrycoder 5y ago
"MIT will continue to offer courses to learners worldwide via edX, as well as on a new platform now known as MITx Online. MIT’s Office of Digital Learning will build and operate MITx Online as a new world-facing platform, based on Open edX, that MIT is creating for MITx MOOCs. MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online." It's worth reading the article - there is much more that's not being addressed on HN.
- loughnane 5y ago
  I read it. Honestly that just feels like momentum. I’d be surprised if in two years the product was recognizable
rantwasp 5y ago
yeah. edX was stellar compared to other platforms. like really really good. sad that it's uncertain what is going to happen to it now

adnmcq999 5y ago

Download or get a textbook and read it yourself + find some lectures on YouTube with a high rank that you also feel you are getting something from. This is and always has been the best way to learn most subjects.

jasonharris555 5y ago
This is also how I do it but I would also like some sort of computer based tools to help learn.
ibdf 5y ago
I agree that you can find resources else where but these courses have already a structure, have tests and deadlines… that makes you study! At least for me, a good structure is essential.

itsbenweeks 5y ago

I was originally worried at how dishonest seemed to faculty and TAs who have spent years creating many textbooks' worth of content for edX. Something akin to MIT Press selling their catalog to Elsevier or Pearson wouldn't be tolerated by the faculty. But, in the press release they do mention that MIT faculty can opt-out and operate in a MIT-only instance & fork of the Open edX platform: "MIT will continue to offer courses to learners worldwide via edX, as well as on a new platform now known as MITx Online. MIT’s Office of Digital Learning will build and operate MITx Online as a new world-facing platform, based on Open edX, that MIT is creating for MITx MOOCs. MIT faculty may choose to continue to offer their courses through the new edX after the transaction is completed, or move them to MITx Online." With that in mind, it seems that Open edX development will be under a new non-profit held by MIT and Harvard. I hope this new non-profit will be less at odds with itself in respect to maintaining openness while creating profitable pay2play courses.

nverno 5y ago
MIT is the gold standard of education. Most of their computing classes already give you full access to all the course materials, videos, labs, readings, handouts, etc. directly from the course page. These direct resources are far better than typical edX/Coursera courses. The same is not generally true of Harvard courses (with a few exceptions like cs50), which hide all materials behind paywalls.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > MIT is the gold standard of education A complete tangent, but its somewhat amusing that this idiom remains popular when the literal gold standard itself is no longer generally considered a figurative gold standard of anything.
  - nverno 5y ago
    Orwell says something along the lines of never use outdated idioms in his Politics and the English Language. I'm withholding judgement on the extinctioness of this one until we see how the whole debt bubble plays out though :)

sriram_sun 5y ago

Oh no! Should I start downloading videos?

ncfausti 5y ago

Like others, this worries me. Does anyone know of a platform or service that backs up quality educational content (think Coursera, edX, YouTube lectures, etc.) forever, so that its open-access is not at the whim of a for-profit corporation?

clintonb 5y ago
Note that the content belongs to the professors and university partners, not edX or 2U.

ibdf 5y ago

I just recently found out about EdX and signed up because even when paying for the course, you get a good deal.

streamofdigits 5y ago

Will this help the moodle ecosystem?

laptop-man 5y ago

I have a friend who works for 2u. the bootcamps just pump out bad devs. everything is taught way to fast, everything is glossed over, they are expected to learn the majority on the own

aardvarkr 5y ago
Tbh what do you expect from a 3 month intro to web dev? You have 12 weeks so you spend a week learning HTML, a week learning JS, then CSS, SQL, etc. With that in mind, of course it’s pumping out bad devs, just like every other boot camp. I wish it were different but that’s what happens. What’s worse is they charge over $10K for the pleasure.
- laptop-man 5y ago
  theirs almost no focus either. html, css, js, react, mysql, Mongo, various apis, jquery, and there's more. I'd be surprised if any were hirable after the class
908B64B197 5y ago
At this point it's pretty well known bootcamps are not a great hiring pipeline. Unless you can get "grads" at a significant discount. There's a reason Lambda is so desperate that they will "loan" you someone for a month at no costs (the VCs pay for it!). [0] [0] https://lambdaschool.com/hire-fellows https://lambdaschool.com/hire-fellows
- rtpg 5y ago
  That is probably very bootcamp-dependent, I've found bootcamp grads have been very good. In particular, the fact that most grads have had "real jobs" elsewhere mean that they have good people skills/time management/actual sense of "getting things done" that vastly outweighs the skill imbalance. Hell of a lot easier to increase someone's React knowledge than it is to, like, fix how they interact with people.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago

user_7832 5y ago

I am an assistant and help handle an edX course at a <fairly well known EU university>, so from my perspective there were a few things that I thought might be interesting to share (though I am quite a few hours late to this thread). > Nearly 10% of the students have paid for a certificate. I do not know how much server hosting costs, but given the cost of a certificate being several tens of Euros, I wouldn't be surprised if this covered costs (though I'm not aware if the uni gets a cut). > Apparently the main issue with Coursera (which is why our uni chose edX) was over copyright - edX material remains owned by the creating uni and not edX itself. I wonder how this will be impacted by this change.

ixacto 5y ago

EdX really got to me with their removal of past class materials and the "class starts today" dark pattern, and the constant certificate upsell attempts. Something like freecodecamp and Udemy is much more usable IMO.

dghughes 5y ago

I bailed from edX many years ago after my course was abruptly ended to modify it. I was near the end but that didn't matter. After much back and forth arguing the best offer was 50% off the same course. I declined since there was no way to know whether edX would do the same thing again.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I suspect that they're stepping back and makeing $$$ because if this stuff was really going to take off it would have happened during the pandemic. When that didn't pan out they decided to divest.

ablekh 5y ago

Just another example of industry consolidation, out of zillion others. This time in the MOOC domain.