Turns out that an online certificate isn't worth anything when layoffs happen and the market is oversaturated with people who have real degrees. MOOCs have their place, but it's a very narrow set of disciplines.
Turns out that an online certificate isn't worth anything when layoffs happen and the market is oversaturated with people who have real degrees. MOOCs have their place, but it's a very narrow set of disciplines.
I work at a university and half of the coursework seems worse than the good MOOCs. Esp. the more practical ones.
(Might be a problem of that university, still ...)
It's probably not a uni specific issue. I went to a top EU uni, and there absolutely were courses that could've just been an ~~email~~ video. Admitedly not everything was bad, but the quality of education isn't as high as it should be.
We have a lot more students in university, and a lot more professors. Inevitably this means converging on "average."
More students _per course_ than a MOOC cohort? -- doubt. If you add up all courses of a while discipline, edu portals still serve way more students.
In our department, about 20% reach a master. Sure that's more well rounded than a random bunch of courses, but it should be possible to even surpass the rigid choices of a lot of universities. I have no numbers for MOOCs at hand. If I had to guess: more like a gym: a lot of members, an order of magnitude less finishers?
I personally prefer the interaction on campus. But I dislike the outdated content of a lot of professors -- I'm not arguing about basics that are still relevant, I mean their /SoTA/ from 5-15y ago.
Well, I work at a university too. At least in biomedicine, every MOOC is extremely shallow. The most advanced MOOC is an introductory-level when compared to the university courses.
I wouldn't be so tough on the online certificates. The key value I get out of Coursera is an unbeatable "time to knowledge" and some proof it was me who attended the course through the id verification. Compare that to traditional in-person education, where you are bound to fixed course dates, long approval timelines etc. Until you get feedback from HR that you are eligible for a course/training, i've probably already completed it via my Coursera complete subscription.
I'm not sure offline certificates mean a whole lot when layoffs matter either.
But MOOCs and other purely online options just didn't result in any meaningful certification especially outside of a connection to established universities. And, given that, people/companies weren't interested in paying significant bucks for them.
It was probably a useful experiment. Just not a very successful one. And once the experiment faltered, schools/professors became less interested in putting money and energy into it.
All the evidence is that most of the students/potential students who weren't already motivated to pursuing independent learning didn't really connect to all this online material.
Just wait until you find out that real degrees also aren't worth anything anymore
It's not a question whether they are or not worth something. It's just that it's a much more meaningful differentiator when there's an overabundance of talent. CVs are going to be filtered based on something. And people with no degree are going to have a much more difficult time getting through the automated screening. That will come as a surprise to people who were promised they'll get a job by paying $1000 for a "nano-degree".