"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

"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?