Coursera. Good quality courses or a waste of time?

In this article, we discuss the pros and cons of the Coursera platform and massive online courses in general

Although there is a growing global interest in education, formal university education with diplomas is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain due to high costs and competition. In this environment, various educational projects outside the walls of universities are flourishing. Among them are large platforms such as Coursera.

We start a series of materials about the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of online education by talking about the largest educational platform in the world.

Coursera is the best known brand in the online education market. This type of course is known as a MOOC, or Massive Open Online Course. The scale of the project is truly impressive. When you visit the website, you will see thousands of courses from the world's top universities. On the surface, it appears that you can become a student of Yale or Stanford without leaving your room, and often for free. This is true, but only partially.

Coursera is trying to reach students all over the world. The platform has more than 120 million registered users from over 200 countries. The platform, like many other online projects, experienced its most significant growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Universities were transitioning to online learning, and popular MOOC platforms were gaining traction. Coursera's user base nearly doubled from 37 million in 2018 to 76 million in 2020. The course catalog is also very extensive, with Coursera offering more than 7,000 courses and training modules from more than 250 universities and private companies around the world. Prestigious universities and companies contribute content, highlighting Coursera's global reach in education.

Challenges of Massive Online Education

As the name of this type of course (MOOC) already makes clear, they have an ambition to become available across the globe and radically expand access to education. Coursera can definitely be called a global platform. The largest segment of users is in North America (about 31 million), but Europe, Asia and Latin America yield comparable numbers of about 25 million each. India alone has more than 24 million Coursera users. Regions such as the Middle East and Africa, despite having fewer users in absolute terms, are expanding rapidly as internet access spreads across the region.

When it comes to the goal of including different social groups in education, you can look at the numbers reported by the company. For example, in different years, approximately half of Coursera students are female. Some countries have achieved gender parity in online learning - Mexico has 51% female enrollment and Colombia has 50% female enrollment. Students on the platform range in age and socioeconomic status, from college students to mid-career professionals and retirees.

Coursera considers how the platform's courses affect learners' lives and investigates this question in a variety of ways. According to Coursera's own global surveys, students report the positive impact of courses on their lives. 77% of students say courses have been beneficial to their careers, including finding a job, getting a promotion, or gaining valuable job skills. This figure is even higher in developing countries. In addition, the vast majority of learners around the world report positive changes in personal attributes, according to Coursera. Users say the courses have helped them with self-confidence and a number of other psychological traits.

What does Coursera offer?

The platform primarily offers courses in English, but it also provides subtitles and translations in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and other languages. We sent a search query with a Russian language filter on the Coursera website and found more than five thousand(!) courses in Russian. But what exactly is meant? In fact, almost all of the courses on this extensive list are created by instructors who speak other languages. Russian-speaking students are given an automatic online translation of the materials, which is inferior in quality to a full course translation. If we talk about courses with original content in Russian (option “taught in Russian”), there are several dozens of such courses. Almost all of them are focused on economics, finance, and business.

Coursera has occupied such a huge niche and provides services not only to individual listeners, but also B2B products. “Coursera for Business “ offers customized solutions for employee development. “Coursera for Campus “ provides educational institutions access to courses for students and employees. "Coursera for Government" collaborates with governments in various countries to develop training and retraining programs for public-sector employees.

Coursera can work as a bridge to move into new in-demand industries in the labor market. During the pandemic, many workers in affected industries (e.g. hospitality or retail) turned to Coursera to retrain for occupations in the digital economy. Coursera's value has been recognized not only by individual users and companies, but also by government organizations looking to upskill their workforce. In recent years, government programs around the world have partnered with Coursera for large workforce development and reskilling initiatives. A prime example is a Coursera initiative, which was launched in early 2020 in response to the increase in unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this program, governments in over 25 US states and 100 countries provided free access to Coursera courses to affected workers.

Internationally, Colombia, Egypt, India, and Singapore have collaborated with Coursera to improve the skills of their workforce. For example, the Colombian government has collaborated with Coursera to train English teachers and foster bilingualism among its citizens, while the Egyptian government has provided Coursera courses to hundreds of thousands of young people as part of a national digital development campaign.

The flexibility of online courses allows working adults to attend classes on their own schedule, combining learning with work. Many professional certificate programs are created in collaboration with industry leaders (Google, IBM, Meta, etc.) to prepare students for entry-level positions in fields such as information technology and user experience design. According to Coursera, such certifications can open new doors for motivated employees - the platform reports that one in four learners of those who earned an entry-level certificate eventually found a new job.

Coursera and Higher Education

Coursera has also made significant inroads into higher education, supplementing traditional college programs and expanding access for students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend became even more noticeable. At the time, Coursera even launched new initiatives to directly support students - for example, for a few months in 2020, any university student with a college email account could access thousands of courses for free and receive a certificate at the end. This program included, among other things, courses from prestigious Western universities.

If we look at the big picture, we can say that Coursera is becoming an important part of higher education systems in the world. Universities collaborate with the platform in a variety of ways, the most obvious of which is the integration of Coursera online courses into university or college curricula. Through this collaboration, more than 6,000 institutions around the world have incorporated Coursera modules into the formal curriculum. It occasionally allows students to listen to courses from other universities as part of their curriculum. In some cases, universities grant official academic points (credits) under the Bologna system for completing Coursera modules.

For the average student, the value of Coursera may be found in the ability to gain labor market-relevant skills and credentials in addition to academic education. Traditional curricula can be theoretical, so students use Coursera to gain practical skills (for example, a computer science student might take a cloud computing specialization on Coursera to gain skills employers need). Coursera surveys show that students see this as a career benefit. Universities are responding by incorporating these certifications into degree programs. For example, a business school may partner with Coursera to earn an IBM Data Analyst certificate while enrolled in a BBA program. Coursera is influencing higher education to become more career-oriented.

While there are still relatively few such online courses for official credit, the very fact that they exist is rather indicative of the growing acceptance of massive online courses in academia. Coursera now offers full online degree programs (undergraduate and graduate).

Do employers really value online course certificates?

The question is complicated. On the one hand, employers always encourage additional education, which shows initiative and commitment from candidates. Coursera certificates, on the other hand, do not require any entrance exams, are widely available, and thus cannot be considered an analogy to a real university qualification.

Not all employers are confident in the quality of online certificates. Academic studies of employer attitudes give mixed results. In one study, the authors state that while many MOOC learners self-report career benefits, the evidence in the hiring process is "thin and ambiguous," implying that not all employers value online courses when making decisions. There is also the issue of authentication and quality assurance - although Coursera offers credentialing certificates, employers may not know how rigorous a particular online course is.

In practice, employers seem to look at this holistically. A Coursera certificate can tip the scales in a candidate's favor, especially entry-level ones, by showing that they can actively learn. In theory, a certificate can also help career mobility within the same company. Many managers value this initiative and see it as a sign of a willingness to constantly learn. The Coursera certificate does not guarantee a job, but it can be viewed positively by employers. But still the main thing for applicants is to show skills and work experience.

Huge disadvantages of the platform

Despite its success, Coursera and the growing trend of massive online courses face a number of challenges. Much of the criticism is focused on the effectiveness of these courses. One of the most commonly cited problems is the low completion rate of MOOC courses. Because the courses are open and the threshold of entry is low, a significant portion of students do not complete them. Different studies show that the average completion rate of online courses on such platforms usually ranges around 7% to 10%. Critics also claim that people lose motivation when courses lack the structure of traditional classroom instruction (even if they are online) and real-time interaction with the instructor and other students. Coursera is attempting to solve this problem by experimenting with course formats.

Another challenge is how to ensure quality and academic rigor for thousands of courses at once? They vary widely in complexity and depth as they are created by different universities and instructors. Some courses have been praised for their high quality, but others have been criticized for obvious problems with universal assessment criteria for thousands of students. There are also concerns about a lack of personalized attention and support. In massive online courses, students typically do not have one-on-one interaction with instructors (beyond forum posts). Coursera has tried to mitigate this problem with forums, mentoring programs, and even partnerships with companies to offer project-based learning, but these opportunities are still very limited.

Equal access to education? Not so fast

In terms of achieving educational equality, critics argue that MOOCs do not reach the most vulnerable populations on a significant scale. Early studies showed that most MOOC participants were already well-educated and well-off people, often from developed countries. Meaning that those most in need of free education (e.g. people without access to adequate schooling and people from the poorest regions of the world) were underrepresented on the platform. Studies have noted that students who are most likely to succeed in MOOCs tend to be “educationally privileged”-that is, they already have a university degree and are familiar with mainstream teaching methods.

This means that Coursera may mistakenly serve more as a continuing education tool for the already educated than as a revolutionary means of access for the disadvantaged. In response, Coursera has launched social programs targeting refugees, students in schools in impoverished regions, and others. By 2021, Coursera had partnered with nonprofits to reach more than 70,000 students from low-income groups such as refugees and veterans. However, barriers such as language, internet connectivity, and awareness still limit MOOC use among some populations.

Coursera's financial model has also drawn criticism from some education professionals. Coursera was initially praised for its free education, but it gradually introduced new monetization models. Now, if you go to the homepage of the Coursera website, the first thing you see are offers to subscribe to paid courses. While most courses are free to listen to, students must pay for a certificate or access to assessments. Critics argue that this creates a "pay wall" that can exclude those who most need a certificate, effectively transforming a free educational resource into something more akin to a "freemium service." Coursera is now a public company attempting to balance what it declares to be its mission and profitability; this contradiction is occasionally criticized.

In conclusion, the Coursera model has shown to be effective in terms of growth in the education market, but actually measuring the quality of the platform is a very complex and ambiguous issue that depends on the perspective of who is doing the analysis. Among the obvious limitations of the platform are: low completion rates, issues with course quality and universal assessments, unequal access in different regions of the world, and mixed perceptions of the platform by employers. On the one hand, the platform attempts to address the issues through new formats. On the other hand, it is simultaneously introducing more and more paid elements.

From an academic point of view, universities often treat MOOCs with caution, worrying about academic transparency. Despite the growing partnership with Coursera, not all professionals agree that external courses should count toward university degrees. Some critics also fear that MOOCs could undermine traditional higher education if implemented without caution. It could create a two-tier hierarchy in education. A small number of students from affluent families will still be able to afford expensive on-campus education, and mass education will shift toward online courses and certificates of very different quality and standards. Still, Coursera's mission was to position itself as a complement, not a competitor to universities. Nonetheless, the debate over the role of online platforms in education persists.