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Coursera is phasing out free certificates

205 points by joegreen 11y ago

kiloreux 11y ago
While what the OP mentioned is True , what i really think is that the real value of MOOCs is not in the certificate (it not that much important especially from MOOC providers) but the opportunity that it creates for people to gain knowledge , and personally speaking , MOOCs have changed my life , i live in 3rd world country where the quality of education is worse than you can imagine, but thanks to Coursera, Edx and Udacity , i managed to learn so many things , so what we should focus on , is that the opportunity it provides for people around the world to learn new things and change their lives in one way or another is the true factor that should be considered in the MOOC revolution .
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  This is a really great observation. For many people they have been raised that it doesn't count unless you get the certificate. That has elements of truth to it in the job market, you need an independent third party to say that you have learned the material. However, for just as many people it has really about accelerating their ability to be effective by rapidly absorbing the knowledge and learning of people that have come before, which then allows them to push forward with that learning already in place. And that does change lives, and villages.
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  - verbin217 11y ago
    IMHO this is what distinguishes exceptional software engineers. They're not just trying to get a job, do well in their classes or otherwise satisfy external ideals. They just want to experience their own excellence as an end in itself. In the job market pretension is extremely effective. You can likely make a better living by optimizing appearances and neglecting actuality. If you're not able to evaluate a person's abilities you desperately need an independent third party. Notably, this doesn't imply that it's an effective pedagogical practice. A person simply intent on becoming more than yesterday has no one to fool. Their capacity for self-evaluation is preserved. They can enter into an autodidactic loop that isn't utterly bound on I/O. I suspect this is much more effective than traditional education, albeit much less convergent and measurable.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Coursera has increasingly pushed non-participation in a course's verified certificate process as a signifier of lower status as a student. Originally, certificates were a mark of academic performance and the business model was more akin to a dual license open-source project where the non-paying community was just the non-paying community; the verified certificate was solely a value added proposition based on the value of verification. The change has been that certificates have shifted toward a mark of consumer status. There has been a trend toward attaching stigma to taking the courses for free. Removing the certificates from free tracks is an obvious part of it.
    - rhizome 11y ago
      Private Universities and diploma mills have attractive business models for some organizations and operators.
- Sven7 11y ago
  How did learning new things change your life?
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  - icebraining 11y ago
    What's the point of asking, if learning the answer won't change yours? :)
  - jotm 11y ago
    By acquiring knowledge and skills that can be used to get a job or at least an internship, start a business and expand your expertise beyond what is possible locally. Just a guess.
  - jzsprague 11y ago
    is this a serious question?
    - Sven7 11y ago
      Yes. He says it changed his life. I just wanted to know how.
  - kiloreux 11y ago
    Although that it's not important how MOOCs changed my life , but i will tell you how , i was raised in a poor family (like really poor) , i got my first computer when i was 16 years old , and saw the internet for the first time when i was 18 years old , i always had hunger for knowledge and learning new things but never could go further than reading some old books from the high school library , when i first got the internet access it was just the beginning of the MOOCs and i was amazed by the opportunity it gives , given that i always loved computers and the "magic" behind it , i started my first MOOC at that time which was CS50 by David Malan in HarvardX (Edx) , and never stopped MOOCing from the the three platforms , now thanks to MOOCs and of course practicing on my free time i am a 20 years old full stack developer, i am still a junior developer ,but i gained enough money to change the situation of my family from worse to the better, while most of my peers still studying in our system (I am studying too and graduating this year from electrical engineering) , the real difference is between our education system and the MOOCs , i have to emphasize that there is no way to compare the quality , and of course the price (which is free) , i really encourage everyone to never stop learning from MOOCs because knowledge and new skills can create a completely change a life .
- andyidsinga 11y ago
  this! Once someone learns something -- they can put it into practice (or not if they were just learning for fun). It makes sense that in the future, rather than a certificate, examples of putting learning into practice would become more important. It is certainly easy to show proof of practice already with smartphones, cheaper computers and great publishing tools. portfolio trumps certificate :)
  - nraynaud 11y ago
    In some fields you just can't experiment at home (often because the capital expenditure is too high), think some chemistry, some rocket design, some metallurgy etc. You need to get a job to build your portfolio, and you need a piece of paper to get the first job.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      In chemistry rather for legal reasons.
    - andyidsinga 11y ago
      This is true, but only to the extent that we're looking at the current state of moocs - which don't offer access to those kinds of equipment. When we start seeing that happen, we're back to the focus on ability to show work, experiments behind them, and the ability to describe the work in great detail to a potential employer in order to get the job. also , for new college grad jobs in chemistry, rocket design, metalurgy -- these can most certainly be done at home, or civilian grade facilities. See also Amateur Rocket Society and the kinds of things they're up to http://www.space-rockets.com/arsa.html http://www.space-rockets.com/arsa.html
      - rpcope1 11y ago
        I have some very strong doubts that a MOOC will ever be able to offer the laboratory experience that you'd get at a traditional university (I'm not talking entry level). To do a lot of the EE work I've done in the past, you really need to know what you're doing, and a lot of the equipment, like a good vector network analyzer, is both incredibly cost prohibitive (new ones can reach a quarter of a million), and really take some expert knowledge to operate effectively (i.e. someone should be there with you to ensure the you don't break the machine). MOOCs may be good for CS, and they may be good for teaching entry level knowledge, because of the way the accumulation of very expensive equipment and experience/intelligence surrounding the field, at least for the immediate engineering fields I've been exposed to. I think it's still far better (if not the only decent way) to have a faculty mentor present and have a lot more close cooperation (as atleast I did when I was in university) when learning a lot of the specialist EE knowledge I got back when I was in school. I doubt you'll ever see MOOCs progress much in this regard, nor would I want to hire an engineer who did not have some level of hands on design and lab experience described above. Also to deflect a potential counterpoint: most of the very expensive equipment will probably never be any cheaper because it isn't built in enough quantities, and for things like good RF equipment, everything needs to be carefully spec'd and machined, and the manufacturing is very time and resource intensive (you're getting your money's worth on a good spectrum analyzer or network analyzer, typically).
- carc 11y ago
  Completely agree. I switched out of the finance/accounting industry to be a software developer because I fell in love with coding. I would not have been able to learn the skills to make that switch (while already working full time) without MOOCs and other awesome online resources to guide me along the way. MOOCs help us reach the goal that any motivated, bright individual can learn the skills necessary to reach their potential. Obviously we're still far away from that - but free online courses are certainly one step in the right direction.
smsm42 11y ago
I have take a lot of Coursera courses, and I guess this news is a bit of a downer, but not too much. For me, SOA is more of a memorabilia peace than any value, though I admit it is convenient to have an externally visible list of courses. But if any employer ever cared, I could just print out the profile page listing them anyway :) OTOH, they have to make money somehow, and the fact that I still can learn so much without paying anything is plain awesome.
lukaslalinsky 11y ago
I honestly don't understand this. The article talks about revolutionizing the world of education and yet expects the online courses to give out certifications, like classical schools do. The free online courses exist so that you have free access to education, not that you have a piece of something that you can show to people. That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing wrong with strict requirements and charging money for it, but the primary purpose is the education, not the certificate.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing wrong with strict requirements and charging money for it, but the primary purpose is the education, not the certificate. This seems to be a very US-centric mentality. In Germany's mentality it's rather different: Universities are (mostly) free, but about anybody will want to see a certificate for about anything that you claim to have accomplished. So if you can't show some kind of certificate, then you won't believed to have any knowledge in it. Some (older) Germans love to joke that some people mostly do further education while in job only to have lots of certificates to show. ;-)
  - wyager 11y ago
    That seems like an absolutely terrible attitude. "Oh, you can clearly demonstrate knowledge in this area? Well, that's too bad, because you don't have a certificate reaffirming what we can easily tell by interviewing you."
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      Nearly all personnel managers don't have the knowledge to examine whether the candidate has a solid knowledge in an area or not. So in my opinion it makes a lot of sense to rather trust in institutions (in particular universities) that have.
      - joshuapants 11y ago
        Yes, as long as the institution is reputable this is a pretty good heuristic. Of course, determining how reputable an institution is can be a problem in its own right if there are tons of institutions offering seemingly identical certification.
dmart 11y ago
Does this really demonstrate Coursera "giving up on the dream [of eliminating barriers to education]?" IMO, the important thing about MOOCs has never been accreditation (show me an employer who actually cares about potential candidates' MOOC certifications, anyway), but simply making university-level courses available without the overhead of actually attending school. And in that regard, nothing's changed.
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  - anthony_d 11y ago
    Or maybe it's just not a German-centric argument.
    - nraynaud 11y ago
      Latin countries are the same.
- munin 11y ago
  part of what makes a course "university level" is the assessment, though. there is way more to a course than just sitting in on the lectures - you do the projects and the homework and that is where the real learning happens. courseras assessment story is weak for projects and homework, so those areas of their classes are ridiculously watered down from what is offered at a university, to scale.
kmax12 11y ago
One thing I'd add is another comparison to edX. edX is a non-profit, while Coursera is for-profit. Considering that point, I view the "bait-and-switch" slightly differently, but I agree more transparency is necessary.
joelgrus 11y ago
Honestly, if someone's resume tells me they took (say) the Coursera Natural Language Processing course, never in a million years would it occur to me to ask to see the certificate, any more than I'd ask to see their transcript to verify that they took specific classes in college. And vice versa, I have lots of Coursera courses on my resume, no one has ever asked to see my certificates either.
- sadkingbilly 11y ago
  Same. Even if they did, just take a screenshot of the "Course Records" screen that proves you took the class and the grade. Besides, you can still download the Statement of Accomplishment.
- jlarocco 11y ago
  Putting Coursera on a resume had never occurred to me. Do you use it to bolster other experience and education? Or would you be comfortable applying for a position where your only relevant experience was from Coursera?
  - joelgrus 11y ago
    I have no non-Coursera CS training, so I use it as the "CS training" part of my resume. (I also have relevant work experience and a math degree.) I would be comfortable hiring someone entry-level most of whose relevant experience was from Coursera, assuming they convinced me they would be a good hire. If you are a quick learner, IMO you should feel comfortable applying for any job you think you can get hired for, even if it's a stretch based on your experience.
- SilasX 11y ago
  In a sense, I agree: if the course is relevant to the work, the normal interview process will naturally identify people who don't know the relevant material. But then, what about when you have far more applicants than time to interview them, and the question of course/degree completion really matters? Do you bring in everyone claiming to have a Stanford degree?
- 11y ago
vdaniuk 11y ago
"Free MOOC certificates for most platforms? Forget about it" would be a more accurate title. Nevertheless, the post content is quite accurate. I was immensely disappointed with Coursera's decision to remove free statement of accomplishment certificates. On the bright side, It seems that edX won't be implementing a policy change. The reason is quite simple: coursera is a for-profit and edx is a non-profit. The largest and most popular MOOC platforms are nearly universally for-profit orgs: Udacity, Iversity, Coursera, Futurelearn. Same with programming education platforms: Codecademy, Codeschool, Treehouse, Lynda, Pluralsight. Putting it in UN terms: This is a reason for grave concern. Platforms like Treehouse and Codeschool have superior learning UX and require monthly payment of $25-50. While this is certainly not much, the majority users of worldwide internet users won't be able to afford this price tag. Dangers to public benefit will become more pronounced as soon as M&A commence and online education will become an oligopoly. Pluralsight has already acquired Codeschool for $x0 MM. As Gibson's quote goes: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." If this massive disparity in access to knowledge persists we will find ourselves in the world predicted by cyberpunk authors. Are we able to change this?
brudgers 11y ago
In my experience over about a dozen completed courses and many more with less attentive participation, Certificate policies vary from course to course. Some of it is due to policies of the sponsoring institution, some is due to the business transaction between the institution or the instructor and Coursera. There's a whole host of branding issues that come with putting Blub State University on a course description. And good old BSU has a team of administrative staff that have nothing else to do than worry about BSU's brand. That said, the Coursera Android App has become consistently worse. It wants to run at startup and once entered, never release the camera even after the app is stopped. To get rid of the camera-in-use toast, the app has to be uninstalled or the device rebooted. I came to the conclusion that unfortunately Coursera is headed down the road to finding the optimum between suck and income as a business model. Basically, it's given up on platform growth via innovation and is optimizing for Venture Capital fund liquidation timelines. MOOC's are a model that can live off of exhaust fumes (in the words of Spolsky) but turning them into part of the people tracking infrastructure is simply more consistent with conventional wisdom and ten year investment fund timelines. [edit:] On the 50% for a certificate comment, that's what Jeff Ullman does for his Finite Automata course and for me, it was non-trivial and required a lot of learning. There have been other courses where 90% and distinction was far easier.
- andyidsinga 11y ago
  nice touch with the blub reference :) (thinking to myself: how can put blub state on my linkedin profile) more seriously though, to your points about Coursera and VC liquidation timelines: We need coursera like moocs that are "B-Corps" or similar http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx . I made some comments along similar lines in the comment section of this post : http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-capital http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-capita... - ironically a VC's blog, but don't prejudge - he's also a philosopher of sorts and has some good ides.
ajays 11y ago
Certificates lose their meaning if they are doled out willy-nilly. Hence, Coursera has to implement (or at least try to) some sophisticated verification technology. This stuff doesn't come cheap; who's going to pay for it? Me, personally, I don't care about certificates. I want the knowledge; and that is still free. Methinks the OP is making a big deal about a piece of paper.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  >sophisticated verification technology Haha. Coursera's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the worst cases of cheating. >Me, personally, I don't care about certificates What's fine for you is fine for others, right?
  - current_call 11y ago
    Haha. Coursera's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the worst cases of cheating. It really is terrible. It can't recognize me, so I stopped caring about verification.
pmorici 11y ago
I don't see the problem here. The important part, the actual knowledge being communicated by the class is still being given for free.
- aheilbut 11y ago
  For now.
  - penprogg 11y ago
    And then all of the universities submitting courses to coursera would stop...
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Yeah it is free for now, there are no guarantees about the future (death and taxes excepted and then I am not even sure about death), but why would you make that comment? The MOOCs don't owe you anything, they are providing the equivalent of a university degree for no cost, so why so negative?
    - aheilbut 11y ago
      I think there are conflicting incentives, and we've seen how these things tend to play out. It's really the universities and the professors teaching the classes who are providing the courses, and they need to be careful that they don't inadvertently put all this material into a walled garden under the assumption that they're giving it away to the world.
      - smsm42 11y ago
        So far, there's no wall. There's just a gardener that can sell you a certificate that you indeed visited the garden, but you can still visit it anytime whether you pay or not.
kevinpet 11y ago
I seem to remember that my certificate for Functional Programming with Scala had a shareable link code, whereas now it is only available to me. It's not anything I ever wanted to show someone, but it's slightly alarming from a company trust perspective that they would retroactively change the value of the free certificate.
nickbauman 11y ago
MOOCs ultimately face the same problem that the old Chinese Imperial Exam had that (albeit circuitously) led to the holocaust of the Taiping Rebellion of 1850. You cannot create a true meritocracy for a number of reasons, gatekeeping being one of the biggest ones. http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html
ColinWright 11y ago
People in other comments are saying the certificates are pointless, or useless, or never needed. In contrast to their claims, recently when applying for a job I was asked for proof that I really do have a PhD. I have no idea where the certificate is, and pointed out in an email that certificates can, these days, easily be faked. To provide a certificate merely gives them grounds later, if they find I don't have a PhD after all, to claim that I actively misled them. Instead I referred them to the British Library thesis lookup service[0] and pointed out that there's no way I could fake that. It was accepted (much to my relief!) but others may not have that option. So sometimes some sort of documentary evidence of a qualification is going to be necessary. [0] http://ethos.bl.uk http://ethos.bl.uk
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- mkozlows 11y ago
  It's not the case that all credentials are worthless -- but it is the case that a Coursersa "statement of accomplishment" is. If you take a Coursera course, it should be for the interest of learning something, not for the credentials, because nobody will ever care about those credentials. (I suspect the point of what they're doing here is to make it so people will care about them -- if you can't get the credentials for free, it makes them rarer and therefore more valuable maybe eventually.)
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- penprogg 11y ago
  When people are saying the certificate is worthless they mean that when applying for a job, employers do not care if you have completed a mooc or not. A Mooc's value doesn't come from the fact that you finish the course, it comes from the fact that you've learned something new from great teachers. With the knowledge from that mooc you should then do something which you can then show to whomever.
- jeffwass 11y ago
ChristianGeek 11y ago
Interesting article (and responses) on Coursera's actions, but am I the only one who objects to the clickbait title? This has nothing at all to do with the loss of free MOOCs, even with respect to Coursera itself.
Soloquay 11y ago
All of these MOOCs lack true verification of knowledge. Ultimately I think that the certification test should be done in person, at a cost to the person taking the test, since they are the ones who benefit most from the legitimacy of the certificate. Also the signed certificate should include a clear photo of the person who took the test.
webhat 11y ago
“The Statements of Accomplishment (free) and Verified Certificates (signature track) will be provided to all those who achieve 50% or higher grade, and will be released within 1-2 weeks after the final submission deadline closes. Everyone will be notified by email when they are ready. You will be able to download the certificate from your course records after they are released.” 50% as a passing grade?
- recursive 11y ago
  According to the excerpt you included, yes it is.
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- randomnumber53 11y ago
  Usually the grading scale is the same as is used in the iteration of the college class that the MOOC is based off of.
  - webhat 11y ago
    You might be right, although a 50% grade to pass The Clinical Psychology of Children and Young People still seems a little on the low side to me.
alexashka 11y ago
Well that's what happens when you are trying to do charity AND make money - it doesn't make sense. Either it is free, or it is for profit. You have to choose which. Khan Academy is free. MIT Courses on youtube are free. These websites that want you to sign up, only be able to view courses at certain times, etc etc. Please, just give me youtube links and pdf/slides and have a forum for discussion. This is not hard, youtube is free, pdf/slides are very cheap to host, as is a forum. Why does Coursera even exist, what's the differentiating factor?
- rocha 11y ago
  Learning is more than watching videos. Coursera, edX and other providers provide automatic graded exercises, discussion forums, peer-grading assessments, etc.
- rhc2104 11y ago
  edX is a nonprofit, and they also charge for certificates. https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate There are labor costs involved in grading assignments and "making sure that you're the one taking the class".
  - drhodes 11y ago
    There are two tiers of certification at edx. The unverified certificate is free.
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jeffreyrogers 11y ago
I don't see the problem with charging for providing a valuable service. If Coursera is valuable then of course the people who contribute their time to making it so deserve to profit from their efforts. If it isn't valuable, then why does it matter what they charge?
- g_delgado14 11y ago
  I totally agree with what you're saying. However, I'd like to point out that the initial intention with MOOCs was to lower barriers to entry for low income learners around the world. Adding a fee to certificates may have increased barriers to entry in jobs that require certificates now. This, too, may prove to be a trend for increasing charges in MOOCs ... who knows maybe in a few years you'll be paying a massive sum of money to take a course course.
  - ninebrows 11y ago
    > "trend for increasing charges in MOOCs" Exactly.
- brudgers 11y ago
  The change is not in charging for value, it's in removing the value from the alternative. It's got some equivalence to a company with dual licensing open source software crippling the community edition in order to sell more of the commercial edition.
snambi 11y ago
Do we really need coursera? Most universities are uploading their lectures into youtube anyway.
- smsm42 11y ago
  Depends on your preferred learning model. If you can learn by just absorbing the narrative lectures, fine, but not everybody prefers it. For some, like myself, a degree of structure and interactivity provided by Coursera, helps a lot.
- aikah 11y ago
  Well a lot of coursera courses come with : - a community where you can discuss courses like in a real class - exercises,source,... that are often reviewed by real teachers or peer-review which absolutely invaluable at least for me . I learned a whole lot because of this. So it's way more than a youtube channel with a bunch of videos. Course are shot specifically for coursera.
jordigh 11y ago
Y'know, back when I actually read the legalese, I feared some day Coursera would take their ball home and nobody would be allowed to play anymore: http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-tp4470602p4470781.html http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-Prob... Granted, my fears at the time were about the materials vanishing, not the diplomas, but I still fear that the entire thing will some day become completely closed up.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  It isn't an unreasonable fear. The interesting thing though is that the university system (actually all post secondary education) has a vested interest in having this sort of moat. Of course 'subjects' is only one of many things you learn by going off to college, but as a new 'tradesman' class of job emerges in technology it is struggling with its own accreditation and evaluation crisis. In my youth I was a mason part time and I was required to join the union (although as I was just starting and doing odd jobs it really was more of temporary membership rather than entering as an apprentice with the goal of making masonry my profession). What struck me was how very much the masonry union was, in large part, a educational facility which dedicated a big chunk of its resources to both training new recruits, and ensuring the skills of existing members. And as software has gone from being something just a few people understood or worked on, to something every nerdy secondary school child can do the basics of, I realized that perhaps one way to solve both the 'tuition debt' and employee shortage is to just create a coders union. Something you can walk into at 15 if you want and start apprenticing, and structured so that once you were a master in good standing you could be relied upon by any employer to tackle what ever coding task they threw at you. The conditions are ripe for this transformation of the software industry, but it is going to be painful for the entrenched players.
jwr 11y ago
Who cares? I don't think it matters in the slightest whether you got a certificate or not. These online courses provide a tremendous value by letting people learn. They are especially valuable for expanding your knowledge later on in life, when you already work. As an employer, I don't care about certificates of any kind. I care about the person I'm hiring — and it isn't difficult for me to get a feel for his/her knowledge in a particular area.
shmerl 11y ago
I prefer edX, it's more open in general.
ipsin 11y ago
The shame for me is that I occasionally used the "with distinction" grading to push myself where I might otherwise think I've done a "good enough" job understanding the content. It really helped push me over the line when taking the "Mathematical Biostats Boot Camp" series, which I enjoyed. https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game.
- SloopJon 11y ago
  > It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game. Absolutely. Even if I'm the only person in the world who even knows I took the class, grades and deadlines, and (to a lesser extent) certificates are part of the added value of an online class, compared to self study.
alok-g 11y ago
I am very happy to pay to get a certificate for a course that I actually get an opportunity (i.e. time) to finish. With a full-time job, a family, and side projects, it is generally hard for me to predict during sign-up if I'll be able to give enough time for course completion. It is also clear that if I do spent enough time on a course, the monetary value of my time spent and knowledge gained is much more than the cost of the certificate (I am based in the US). Additionally, while I care for the knowledge as the main thing, I do feel "why not" for the certificate too. However, I do mind getting a certificate showing say a score of 51% when my score is 51% (instead of say 97%) just because I was unable to find time to finish. Does anyone else feel this way? Is my concern real? Assuming so, I would like to pay to get the certificate after I finish the course, not when I start it.
lizardhands 11y ago
I work for one of the large MOOC providers. We "sell" "certificates" as a means to enable us to keep on providing education for free for those who would otherwise not have access to it. Certificate sales enable us to function (e.g. pay for staff and infrastructure) and work with our university partners in putting on courses for free. Every day we get email from learners complaining that we charge for certification. Everyday we also get email from learners thanking us for providing free education. It's a tough balance.
lizardhands 11y ago
I work for one of the large MOOC providers. We "sell" "certificates" as a means to enable us to keep on providing education for free for those who would otherwise not have access to it. Certificate sales enable us to function (e.g. pay for staff and infrastructure) and work with our university partners in putting on courses for free. Every day we get email from learners decrying us and complaining that we charge for certification. Everyday we also get email from learners thanking us for providing free education. We don't differentiate the experience at all between these groups: one might be seen as subsidising the other. It's a tough balance.
wolfgke 11y ago
I accept that Coursera wants to earn money. But if paid, verified certificates can't fulfill this wish to Coursera (others on this discussion page already have argued, why it is not that easy to offer additional value for verified certificates), why doesn't Coursera try a completely different way to earn money: It is often discussed on HN that there is a lack of qualified, say, programmers, data science experts etc. The "typical graduate" of Coursera courses is an ideal candidate to fulfill this role: Why doesn't Coursera instead let employers pay for access to their user database so that they can find high-potential candidates for their open jobs (a little bit similar to Stack Overflow Careers, but with a different focus). Why don't startups that look for underestimated, say, Python programmers search the Coursera database for good graduates of some Python programming course on Coursera. I can imagine that there could be money to be made if the often argued shortage of qualified programmers etc. is true.
eccstartup 11y ago
You have my support. PS: MOOCs(massive, online ordered courses)
retali8 11y ago
I'm quite surprised there isn't a general "sigh of relief" that this is happening... HN is a tech news community, where many if not most of you who are working have tech salaries that can easily pay for the new Coursera pricing... everyone knows the tech industry is volatile in the way that every few months, a new technology comes out that sends IT professionals scrambling to learn it in order to, not stay ahead of the pack, but just to keep up with the pack. the enormous amount of free tech/programming/CS theory/knowledge from Coursera and others have created more competition in terms of tech jobs. By principle, all members of our society deserves access to quality education, especially in the STEM areas. But let's face it -- this is good news for existing professionals in IT...for the most part ;-)
HannahCoursera 11y ago
Thank you all for the discussion. I am on the support team at Coursera and wanted to share the official response we posted on the Coursera Junkie blog below. +++ Hi Kathryn and readers, My name is Hannah, and I’m on the support team here at Coursera. We’re glad that you raised this concern, and we sincerely apologize for any confusion around our policies. We are fully committed to our mission of providing universal access to the world's best education. As such, we continue to offer free and open access to all courses. We also offer learners the option to earn Verified Certificates, which provide official recognition from Coursera and the partner institution offering the course and formally showcases their achievements. Our robust financial aid program offers full support to learners who can demonstrate that the registration fee for a Verified Certificate is beyond their financial means. Coursera's free certificates, also called Statements of Accomplishment, were designed before we made Verified Certificates available. Over time, we noticed confusion regarding the relative significance of the free certificate and the Verified Certificate. The latter is an official document, while the former is an unofficial, unverified memento of the course. We chose to phase out Statements of Accomplishment in order to better distinguish the official status of the Verified Certificate. Last November, we published a blog post (http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-certificates-ensure-academic-integrity http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-certific...) explaining the value of Verified Certificates and describing how most courses would no longer provide Statements of Accomplishment. Still, some older courses continue to offer Statements of Accomplishment, including the Child Psychology course you’ve referenced above. Understandably, that inconsistency has proven somewhat confusing. We do our best to communicate changes clearly and will strive to be more transparent in our communication around such changes moving forward. If you have any further questions about Coursera’s certificates, I encourage you to visit this page in our learner help center: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/201212139-Certificates-and-Course-Credit https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/201212139-Ce....

205 points by joegreen 11y ago

While what the OP mentioned is True , what i really think is that the real value of MOOCs is not in the certificate (it not that much important especially from MOOC providers) but the opportunity that it creates for people to gain knowledge , and personally speaking , MOOCs have changed my life , i live in 3rd world country where the quality of education is worse than you can imagine, but thanks to Coursera, Edx and Udacity , i managed to learn so many things , so what we should focus on , is that the opportunity it provides for people around the world to learn new things and change their lives in one way or another is the true factor that should be considered in the MOOC revolution .

ChuckMcM 11y ago
This is a really great observation. For many people they have been raised that it doesn't count unless you get the certificate. That has elements of truth to it in the job market, you need an independent third party to say that you have learned the material. However, for just as many people it has really about accelerating their ability to be effective by rapidly absorbing the knowledge and learning of people that have come before, which then allows them to push forward with that learning already in place. And that does change lives, and villages.
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- verbin217 11y ago
  IMHO this is what distinguishes exceptional software engineers. They're not just trying to get a job, do well in their classes or otherwise satisfy external ideals. They just want to experience their own excellence as an end in itself. In the job market pretension is extremely effective. You can likely make a better living by optimizing appearances and neglecting actuality. If you're not able to evaluate a person's abilities you desperately need an independent third party. Notably, this doesn't imply that it's an effective pedagogical practice. A person simply intent on becoming more than yesterday has no one to fool. Their capacity for self-evaluation is preserved. They can enter into an autodidactic loop that isn't utterly bound on I/O. I suspect this is much more effective than traditional education, albeit much less convergent and measurable.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Coursera has increasingly pushed non-participation in a course's verified certificate process as a signifier of lower status as a student. Originally, certificates were a mark of academic performance and the business model was more akin to a dual license open-source project where the non-paying community was just the non-paying community; the verified certificate was solely a value added proposition based on the value of verification. The change has been that certificates have shifted toward a mark of consumer status. There has been a trend toward attaching stigma to taking the courses for free. Removing the certificates from free tracks is an obvious part of it.
  - rhizome 11y ago
    Private Universities and diploma mills have attractive business models for some organizations and operators.
Sven7 11y ago
How did learning new things change your life?
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- icebraining 11y ago
  What's the point of asking, if learning the answer won't change yours? :)
- jotm 11y ago
  By acquiring knowledge and skills that can be used to get a job or at least an internship, start a business and expand your expertise beyond what is possible locally. Just a guess.
- jzsprague 11y ago
  is this a serious question?
  - Sven7 11y ago
    Yes. He says it changed his life. I just wanted to know how.
- kiloreux 11y ago
  Although that it's not important how MOOCs changed my life , but i will tell you how , i was raised in a poor family (like really poor) , i got my first computer when i was 16 years old , and saw the internet for the first time when i was 18 years old , i always had hunger for knowledge and learning new things but never could go further than reading some old books from the high school library , when i first got the internet access it was just the beginning of the MOOCs and i was amazed by the opportunity it gives , given that i always loved computers and the "magic" behind it , i started my first MOOC at that time which was CS50 by David Malan in HarvardX (Edx) , and never stopped MOOCing from the the three platforms , now thanks to MOOCs and of course practicing on my free time i am a 20 years old full stack developer, i am still a junior developer ,but i gained enough money to change the situation of my family from worse to the better, while most of my peers still studying in our system (I am studying too and graduating this year from electrical engineering) , the real difference is between our education system and the MOOCs , i have to emphasize that there is no way to compare the quality , and of course the price (which is free) , i really encourage everyone to never stop learning from MOOCs because knowledge and new skills can create a completely change a life .
andyidsinga 11y ago
this! Once someone learns something -- they can put it into practice (or not if they were just learning for fun). It makes sense that in the future, rather than a certificate, examples of putting learning into practice would become more important. It is certainly easy to show proof of practice already with smartphones, cheaper computers and great publishing tools. portfolio trumps certificate :)
- nraynaud 11y ago
  In some fields you just can't experiment at home (often because the capital expenditure is too high), think some chemistry, some rocket design, some metallurgy etc. You need to get a job to build your portfolio, and you need a piece of paper to get the first job.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    In chemistry rather for legal reasons.
  - andyidsinga 11y ago
    This is true, but only to the extent that we're looking at the current state of moocs - which don't offer access to those kinds of equipment. When we start seeing that happen, we're back to the focus on ability to show work, experiments behind them, and the ability to describe the work in great detail to a potential employer in order to get the job. also , for new college grad jobs in chemistry, rocket design, metalurgy -- these can most certainly be done at home, or civilian grade facilities. See also Amateur Rocket Society and the kinds of things they're up to http://www.space-rockets.com/arsa.html http://www.space-rockets.com/arsa.html
    - rpcope1 11y ago
      I have some very strong doubts that a MOOC will ever be able to offer the laboratory experience that you'd get at a traditional university (I'm not talking entry level). To do a lot of the EE work I've done in the past, you really need to know what you're doing, and a lot of the equipment, like a good vector network analyzer, is both incredibly cost prohibitive (new ones can reach a quarter of a million), and really take some expert knowledge to operate effectively (i.e. someone should be there with you to ensure the you don't break the machine). MOOCs may be good for CS, and they may be good for teaching entry level knowledge, because of the way the accumulation of very expensive equipment and experience/intelligence surrounding the field, at least for the immediate engineering fields I've been exposed to. I think it's still far better (if not the only decent way) to have a faculty mentor present and have a lot more close cooperation (as atleast I did when I was in university) when learning a lot of the specialist EE knowledge I got back when I was in school. I doubt you'll ever see MOOCs progress much in this regard, nor would I want to hire an engineer who did not have some level of hands on design and lab experience described above. Also to deflect a potential counterpoint: most of the very expensive equipment will probably never be any cheaper because it isn't built in enough quantities, and for things like good RF equipment, everything needs to be carefully spec'd and machined, and the manufacturing is very time and resource intensive (you're getting your money's worth on a good spectrum analyzer or network analyzer, typically).
carc 11y ago
Completely agree. I switched out of the finance/accounting industry to be a software developer because I fell in love with coding. I would not have been able to learn the skills to make that switch (while already working full time) without MOOCs and other awesome online resources to guide me along the way. MOOCs help us reach the goal that any motivated, bright individual can learn the skills necessary to reach their potential. Obviously we're still far away from that - but free online courses are certainly one step in the right direction.

smsm42 11y ago

I have take a lot of Coursera courses, and I guess this news is a bit of a downer, but not too much. For me, SOA is more of a memorabilia peace than any value, though I admit it is convenient to have an externally visible list of courses. But if any employer ever cared, I could just print out the profile page listing them anyway :) OTOH, they have to make money somehow, and the fact that I still can learn so much without paying anything is plain awesome.

lukaslalinsky 11y ago

I honestly don't understand this. The article talks about revolutionizing the world of education and yet expects the online courses to give out certifications, like classical schools do. The free online courses exist so that you have free access to education, not that you have a piece of something that you can show to people. That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing wrong with strict requirements and charging money for it, but the primary purpose is the education, not the certificate.

wolfgke 11y ago
> That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing wrong with strict requirements and charging money for it, but the primary purpose is the education, not the certificate. This seems to be a very US-centric mentality. In Germany's mentality it's rather different: Universities are (mostly) free, but about anybody will want to see a certificate for about anything that you claim to have accomplished. So if you can't show some kind of certificate, then you won't believed to have any knowledge in it. Some (older) Germans love to joke that some people mostly do further education while in job only to have lots of certificates to show. ;-)
- wyager 11y ago
  That seems like an absolutely terrible attitude. "Oh, you can clearly demonstrate knowledge in this area? Well, that's too bad, because you don't have a certificate reaffirming what we can easily tell by interviewing you."
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    Nearly all personnel managers don't have the knowledge to examine whether the candidate has a solid knowledge in an area or not. So in my opinion it makes a lot of sense to rather trust in institutions (in particular universities) that have.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      Yes, as long as the institution is reputable this is a pretty good heuristic. Of course, determining how reputable an institution is can be a problem in its own right if there are tons of institutions offering seemingly identical certification.

dmart 11y ago

Does this really demonstrate Coursera "giving up on the dream [of eliminating barriers to education]?" IMO, the important thing about MOOCs has never been accreditation (show me an employer who actually cares about potential candidates' MOOC certifications, anyway), but simply making university-level courses available without the overhead of actually attending school. And in that regard, nothing's changed.

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- anthony_d 11y ago
  Or maybe it's just not a German-centric argument.
  - nraynaud 11y ago
    Latin countries are the same.
munin 11y ago
part of what makes a course "university level" is the assessment, though. there is way more to a course than just sitting in on the lectures - you do the projects and the homework and that is where the real learning happens. courseras assessment story is weak for projects and homework, so those areas of their classes are ridiculously watered down from what is offered at a university, to scale.

kmax12 11y ago

One thing I'd add is another comparison to edX. edX is a non-profit, while Coursera is for-profit. Considering that point, I view the "bait-and-switch" slightly differently, but I agree more transparency is necessary.

joelgrus 11y ago

Honestly, if someone's resume tells me they took (say) the Coursera Natural Language Processing course, never in a million years would it occur to me to ask to see the certificate, any more than I'd ask to see their transcript to verify that they took specific classes in college. And vice versa, I have lots of Coursera courses on my resume, no one has ever asked to see my certificates either.

sadkingbilly 11y ago
Same. Even if they did, just take a screenshot of the "Course Records" screen that proves you took the class and the grade. Besides, you can still download the Statement of Accomplishment.
jlarocco 11y ago
Putting Coursera on a resume had never occurred to me. Do you use it to bolster other experience and education? Or would you be comfortable applying for a position where your only relevant experience was from Coursera?
- joelgrus 11y ago
  I have no non-Coursera CS training, so I use it as the "CS training" part of my resume. (I also have relevant work experience and a math degree.) I would be comfortable hiring someone entry-level most of whose relevant experience was from Coursera, assuming they convinced me they would be a good hire. If you are a quick learner, IMO you should feel comfortable applying for any job you think you can get hired for, even if it's a stretch based on your experience.
SilasX 11y ago
In a sense, I agree: if the course is relevant to the work, the normal interview process will naturally identify people who don't know the relevant material. But then, what about when you have far more applicants than time to interview them, and the question of course/degree completion really matters? Do you bring in everyone claiming to have a Stanford degree?
11y ago

vdaniuk 11y ago

"Free MOOC certificates for most platforms? Forget about it" would be a more accurate title. Nevertheless, the post content is quite accurate. I was immensely disappointed with Coursera's decision to remove free statement of accomplishment certificates. On the bright side, It seems that edX won't be implementing a policy change. The reason is quite simple: coursera is a for-profit and edx is a non-profit. The largest and most popular MOOC platforms are nearly universally for-profit orgs: Udacity, Iversity, Coursera, Futurelearn. Same with programming education platforms: Codecademy, Codeschool, Treehouse, Lynda, Pluralsight. Putting it in UN terms: This is a reason for grave concern. Platforms like Treehouse and Codeschool have superior learning UX and require monthly payment of $25-50. While this is certainly not much, the majority users of worldwide internet users won't be able to afford this price tag. Dangers to public benefit will become more pronounced as soon as M&A commence and online education will become an oligopoly. Pluralsight has already acquired Codeschool for $x0 MM. As Gibson's quote goes: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." If this massive disparity in access to knowledge persists we will find ourselves in the world predicted by cyberpunk authors. Are we able to change this?

brudgers 11y ago

In my experience over about a dozen completed courses and many more with less attentive participation, Certificate policies vary from course to course. Some of it is due to policies of the sponsoring institution, some is due to the business transaction between the institution or the instructor and Coursera. There's a whole host of branding issues that come with putting Blub State University on a course description. And good old BSU has a team of administrative staff that have nothing else to do than worry about BSU's brand. That said, the Coursera Android App has become consistently worse. It wants to run at startup and once entered, never release the camera even after the app is stopped. To get rid of the camera-in-use toast, the app has to be uninstalled or the device rebooted. I came to the conclusion that unfortunately Coursera is headed down the road to finding the optimum between suck and income as a business model. Basically, it's given up on platform growth via innovation and is optimizing for Venture Capital fund liquidation timelines. MOOC's are a model that can live off of exhaust fumes (in the words of Spolsky) but turning them into part of the people tracking infrastructure is simply more consistent with conventional wisdom and ten year investment fund timelines. [edit:] On the 50% for a certificate comment, that's what Jeff Ullman does for his Finite Automata course and for me, it was non-trivial and required a lot of learning. There have been other courses where 90% and distinction was far easier.

andyidsinga 11y ago
nice touch with the blub reference :) (thinking to myself: how can put blub state on my linkedin profile) more seriously though, to your points about Coursera and VC liquidation timelines: We need coursera like moocs that are "B-Corps" or similar http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx . I made some comments along similar lines in the comment section of this post : http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-capital http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-capita... - ironically a VC's blog, but don't prejudge - he's also a philosopher of sorts and has some good ides.

ajays 11y ago

Certificates lose their meaning if they are doled out willy-nilly. Hence, Coursera has to implement (or at least try to) some sophisticated verification technology. This stuff doesn't come cheap; who's going to pay for it? Me, personally, I don't care about certificates. I want the knowledge; and that is still free. Methinks the OP is making a big deal about a piece of paper.

vdaniuk 11y ago
>sophisticated verification technology Haha. Coursera's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the worst cases of cheating. >Me, personally, I don't care about certificates What's fine for you is fine for others, right?
- current_call 11y ago
  Haha. Coursera's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the worst cases of cheating. It really is terrible. It can't recognize me, so I stopped caring about verification.

pmorici 11y ago

I don't see the problem here. The important part, the actual knowledge being communicated by the class is still being given for free.

aheilbut 11y ago
For now.
- penprogg 11y ago
  And then all of the universities submitting courses to coursera would stop...
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Yeah it is free for now, there are no guarantees about the future (death and taxes excepted and then I am not even sure about death), but why would you make that comment? The MOOCs don't owe you anything, they are providing the equivalent of a university degree for no cost, so why so negative?
  - aheilbut 11y ago
    I think there are conflicting incentives, and we've seen how these things tend to play out. It's really the universities and the professors teaching the classes who are providing the courses, and they need to be careful that they don't inadvertently put all this material into a walled garden under the assumption that they're giving it away to the world.
    - smsm42 11y ago
      So far, there's no wall. There's just a gardener that can sell you a certificate that you indeed visited the garden, but you can still visit it anytime whether you pay or not.

kevinpet 11y ago

I seem to remember that my certificate for Functional Programming with Scala had a shareable link code, whereas now it is only available to me. It's not anything I ever wanted to show someone, but it's slightly alarming from a company trust perspective that they would retroactively change the value of the free certificate.

nickbauman 11y ago

MOOCs ultimately face the same problem that the old Chinese Imperial Exam had that (albeit circuitously) led to the holocaust of the Taiping Rebellion of 1850. You cannot create a true meritocracy for a number of reasons, gatekeeping being one of the biggest ones. http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html

ColinWright 11y ago

People in other comments are saying the certificates are pointless, or useless, or never needed. In contrast to their claims, recently when applying for a job I was asked for proof that I really do have a PhD. I have no idea where the certificate is, and pointed out in an email that certificates can, these days, easily be faked. To provide a certificate merely gives them grounds later, if they find I don't have a PhD after all, to claim that I actively misled them. Instead I referred them to the British Library thesis lookup service[0] and pointed out that there's no way I could fake that. It was accepted (much to my relief!) but others may not have that option. So sometimes some sort of documentary evidence of a qualification is going to be necessary. [0] http://ethos.bl.uk http://ethos.bl.uk

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mkozlows 11y ago
It's not the case that all credentials are worthless -- but it is the case that a Coursersa "statement of accomplishment" is. If you take a Coursera course, it should be for the interest of learning something, not for the credentials, because nobody will ever care about those credentials. (I suspect the point of what they're doing here is to make it so people will care about them -- if you can't get the credentials for free, it makes them rarer and therefore more valuable maybe eventually.)
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penprogg 11y ago
When people are saying the certificate is worthless they mean that when applying for a job, employers do not care if you have completed a mooc or not. A Mooc's value doesn't come from the fact that you finish the course, it comes from the fact that you've learned something new from great teachers. With the knowledge from that mooc you should then do something which you can then show to whomever.
jeffwass 11y ago

ChristianGeek 11y ago

Interesting article (and responses) on Coursera's actions, but am I the only one who objects to the clickbait title? This has nothing at all to do with the loss of free MOOCs, even with respect to Coursera itself.

Soloquay 11y ago

All of these MOOCs lack true verification of knowledge. Ultimately I think that the certification test should be done in person, at a cost to the person taking the test, since they are the ones who benefit most from the legitimacy of the certificate. Also the signed certificate should include a clear photo of the person who took the test.

webhat 11y ago

“The Statements of Accomplishment (free) and Verified Certificates (signature track) will be provided to all those who achieve 50% or higher grade, and will be released within 1-2 weeks after the final submission deadline closes. Everyone will be notified by email when they are ready. You will be able to download the certificate from your course records after they are released.” 50% as a passing grade?

recursive 11y ago
According to the excerpt you included, yes it is.
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randomnumber53 11y ago
Usually the grading scale is the same as is used in the iteration of the college class that the MOOC is based off of.
- webhat 11y ago
  You might be right, although a 50% grade to pass The Clinical Psychology of Children and Young People still seems a little on the low side to me.

alexashka 11y ago

Well that's what happens when you are trying to do charity AND make money - it doesn't make sense. Either it is free, or it is for profit. You have to choose which. Khan Academy is free. MIT Courses on youtube are free. These websites that want you to sign up, only be able to view courses at certain times, etc etc. Please, just give me youtube links and pdf/slides and have a forum for discussion. This is not hard, youtube is free, pdf/slides are very cheap to host, as is a forum. Why does Coursera even exist, what's the differentiating factor?

rocha 11y ago
Learning is more than watching videos. Coursera, edX and other providers provide automatic graded exercises, discussion forums, peer-grading assessments, etc.
rhc2104 11y ago
edX is a nonprofit, and they also charge for certificates. https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate There are labor costs involved in grading assignments and "making sure that you're the one taking the class".
- drhodes 11y ago
  There are two tiers of certification at edx. The unverified certificate is free.
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jeffreyrogers 11y ago

I don't see the problem with charging for providing a valuable service. If Coursera is valuable then of course the people who contribute their time to making it so deserve to profit from their efforts. If it isn't valuable, then why does it matter what they charge?

g_delgado14 11y ago
I totally agree with what you're saying. However, I'd like to point out that the initial intention with MOOCs was to lower barriers to entry for low income learners around the world. Adding a fee to certificates may have increased barriers to entry in jobs that require certificates now. This, too, may prove to be a trend for increasing charges in MOOCs ... who knows maybe in a few years you'll be paying a massive sum of money to take a course course.
- ninebrows 11y ago
  > "trend for increasing charges in MOOCs" Exactly.
brudgers 11y ago
The change is not in charging for value, it's in removing the value from the alternative. It's got some equivalence to a company with dual licensing open source software crippling the community edition in order to sell more of the commercial edition.

snambi 11y ago

Do we really need coursera? Most universities are uploading their lectures into youtube anyway.

smsm42 11y ago
Depends on your preferred learning model. If you can learn by just absorbing the narrative lectures, fine, but not everybody prefers it. For some, like myself, a degree of structure and interactivity provided by Coursera, helps a lot.
aikah 11y ago
Well a lot of coursera courses come with : - a community where you can discuss courses like in a real class - exercises,source,... that are often reviewed by real teachers or peer-review which absolutely invaluable at least for me . I learned a whole lot because of this. So it's way more than a youtube channel with a bunch of videos. Course are shot specifically for coursera.

jordigh 11y ago

Y'know, back when I actually read the legalese, I feared some day Coursera would take their ball home and nobody would be allowed to play anymore: http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-tp4470602p4470781.html http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-Prob... Granted, my fears at the time were about the materials vanishing, not the diplomas, but I still fear that the entire thing will some day become completely closed up.

ChuckMcM 11y ago
It isn't an unreasonable fear. The interesting thing though is that the university system (actually all post secondary education) has a vested interest in having this sort of moat. Of course 'subjects' is only one of many things you learn by going off to college, but as a new 'tradesman' class of job emerges in technology it is struggling with its own accreditation and evaluation crisis. In my youth I was a mason part time and I was required to join the union (although as I was just starting and doing odd jobs it really was more of temporary membership rather than entering as an apprentice with the goal of making masonry my profession). What struck me was how very much the masonry union was, in large part, a educational facility which dedicated a big chunk of its resources to both training new recruits, and ensuring the skills of existing members. And as software has gone from being something just a few people understood or worked on, to something every nerdy secondary school child can do the basics of, I realized that perhaps one way to solve both the 'tuition debt' and employee shortage is to just create a coders union. Something you can walk into at 15 if you want and start apprenticing, and structured so that once you were a master in good standing you could be relied upon by any employer to tackle what ever coding task they threw at you. The conditions are ripe for this transformation of the software industry, but it is going to be painful for the entrenched players.

jwr 11y ago

Who cares? I don't think it matters in the slightest whether you got a certificate or not. These online courses provide a tremendous value by letting people learn. They are especially valuable for expanding your knowledge later on in life, when you already work. As an employer, I don't care about certificates of any kind. I care about the person I'm hiring — and it isn't difficult for me to get a feel for his/her knowledge in a particular area.

shmerl 11y ago

I prefer edX, it's more open in general.

ipsin 11y ago

The shame for me is that I occasionally used the "with distinction" grading to push myself where I might otherwise think I've done a "good enough" job understanding the content. It really helped push me over the line when taking the "Mathematical Biostats Boot Camp" series, which I enjoyed. https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game.

SloopJon 11y ago
> It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning, and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game. Absolutely. Even if I'm the only person in the world who even knows I took the class, grades and deadlines, and (to a lesser extent) certificates are part of the added value of an online class, compared to self study.

alok-g 11y ago

I am very happy to pay to get a certificate for a course that I actually get an opportunity (i.e. time) to finish. With a full-time job, a family, and side projects, it is generally hard for me to predict during sign-up if I'll be able to give enough time for course completion. It is also clear that if I do spent enough time on a course, the monetary value of my time spent and knowledge gained is much more than the cost of the certificate (I am based in the US). Additionally, while I care for the knowledge as the main thing, I do feel "why not" for the certificate too. However, I do mind getting a certificate showing say a score of 51% when my score is 51% (instead of say 97%) just because I was unable to find time to finish. Does anyone else feel this way? Is my concern real? Assuming so, I would like to pay to get the certificate after I finish the course, not when I start it.

lizardhands 11y ago

I work for one of the large MOOC providers. We "sell" "certificates" as a means to enable us to keep on providing education for free for those who would otherwise not have access to it. Certificate sales enable us to function (e.g. pay for staff and infrastructure) and work with our university partners in putting on courses for free. Every day we get email from learners complaining that we charge for certification. Everyday we also get email from learners thanking us for providing free education. It's a tough balance.

lizardhands 11y ago

I work for one of the large MOOC providers. We "sell" "certificates" as a means to enable us to keep on providing education for free for those who would otherwise not have access to it. Certificate sales enable us to function (e.g. pay for staff and infrastructure) and work with our university partners in putting on courses for free. Every day we get email from learners decrying us and complaining that we charge for certification. Everyday we also get email from learners thanking us for providing free education. We don't differentiate the experience at all between these groups: one might be seen as subsidising the other. It's a tough balance.

wolfgke 11y ago

I accept that Coursera wants to earn money. But if paid, verified certificates can't fulfill this wish to Coursera (others on this discussion page already have argued, why it is not that easy to offer additional value for verified certificates), why doesn't Coursera try a completely different way to earn money: It is often discussed on HN that there is a lack of qualified, say, programmers, data science experts etc. The "typical graduate" of Coursera courses is an ideal candidate to fulfill this role: Why doesn't Coursera instead let employers pay for access to their user database so that they can find high-potential candidates for their open jobs (a little bit similar to Stack Overflow Careers, but with a different focus). Why don't startups that look for underestimated, say, Python programmers search the Coursera database for good graduates of some Python programming course on Coursera. I can imagine that there could be money to be made if the often argued shortage of qualified programmers etc. is true.

eccstartup 11y ago

You have my support. PS: MOOCs(massive, online ordered courses)

retali8 11y ago

I'm quite surprised there isn't a general "sigh of relief" that this is happening... HN is a tech news community, where many if not most of you who are working have tech salaries that can easily pay for the new Coursera pricing... everyone knows the tech industry is volatile in the way that every few months, a new technology comes out that sends IT professionals scrambling to learn it in order to, not stay ahead of the pack, but just to keep up with the pack. the enormous amount of free tech/programming/CS theory/knowledge from Coursera and others have created more competition in terms of tech jobs. By principle, all members of our society deserves access to quality education, especially in the STEM areas. But let's face it -- this is good news for existing professionals in IT...for the most part ;-)

HannahCoursera 11y ago

Thank you all for the discussion. I am on the support team at Coursera and wanted to share the official response we posted on the Coursera Junkie blog below. +++ Hi Kathryn and readers, My name is Hannah, and I’m on the support team here at Coursera. We’re glad that you raised this concern, and we sincerely apologize for any confusion around our policies. We are fully committed to our mission of providing universal access to the world's best education. As such, we continue to offer free and open access to all courses. We also offer learners the option to earn Verified Certificates, which provide official recognition from Coursera and the partner institution offering the course and formally showcases their achievements. Our robust financial aid program offers full support to learners who can demonstrate that the registration fee for a Verified Certificate is beyond their financial means. Coursera's free certificates, also called Statements of Accomplishment, were designed before we made Verified Certificates available. Over time, we noticed confusion regarding the relative significance of the free certificate and the Verified Certificate. The latter is an official document, while the former is an unofficial, unverified memento of the course. We chose to phase out Statements of Accomplishment in order to better distinguish the official status of the Verified Certificate. Last November, we published a blog post (http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-certificates-ensure-academic-integrity http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-certific...) explaining the value of Verified Certificates and describing how most courses would no longer provide Statements of Accomplishment. Still, some older courses continue to offer Statements of Accomplishment, including the Child Psychology course you’ve referenced above. Understandably, that inconsistency has proven somewhat confusing. We do our best to communicate changes clearly and will strive to be more transparent in our communication around such changes moving forward. If you have any further questions about Coursera’s certificates, I encourage you to visit this page in our learner help center: https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/201212139-Certificates-and-Course-Credit https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-us/articles/201212139-Ce....