The MOOC Market Takes Off
Josh Bersin
Global Industry Analyst, I study all aspects of HR, business leadership, corporate L&D, recruiting, and HR technology. ?
The MOOC market (Massive Open Online Courses) has exploded. Last week Coursera landed another $20M in funding, bringing their total investment to $63M (even more than edX's original $60M funding by MIT and Harvard). Why all the investment? Because this market opportunity is massive and building these online courses is expensive.
There are more than 2 billion potential learners around the world today, and more than 70% of these are unable to afford a college degree. And today a college degree is more important than ever: McKinsey believes college-educated workers will have a three-fold advantage in salaries and opportunities by 2020.
Adding to this hot market for college, there are hundreds of millions of post-secondary students and professionals who will flock to branded degree courses in a huge way. As the MOOC certification market matures these individuals will find online education more and more valuable every quarter (note below that LinkedIn is helping with this process).
While many people have commented on the low completion rates for MOOCs and even Sebastian Thrun of Udacity is unhappy with his courses's impact, this space is poised to grow very rapidly. Even Google has put their engineering team onto the edX platform.
There are more than two billion potential students around the world and more than 70% of them cannot afford higher education at all. These folks, coupled with all the post-secondary students and professionals out there, will flock to branded degree courses in a huge way. And the fidelity and quality of these programs is improving every day.
Not to be left out, LinkedIn is jumping in too. Two weeks ago LinkedIn announced partnerships with Coursera, EdX, lynda.com, Pearson, Skillsoft, Udacity and Udemy - creating a "Direct to Profile Certifications" beta program.
This new feature could be big: imagine your online LinkedIn Resume storing all the completed courses and certifications you've achieved. That's a way to really get credit for all the online education you've completed.
The corporate training marketplace is beginning to pick up MOOCs as well. We just surveyed our research members and more than 70% told us they are interested in exploring the use of MOOCs for corporate training. Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, and edX are all starting to license courses and their platforms to businesses and for-profit education companies, a trend which will continue to grow.
Bank of America partnered with Khan Academy to create BetterMoneyHabits.com, a cobranded MOOC to educate consumers on personal finance. SAP developed the openSAP MOOC platform to educate its ecosystem of developers and partners on SAP technologies.
Yahoo is reimbursing employees for the cost of verified course-completion certificates from Coursera. Online retailer 1-800-Flowersannounced it will create an online education portal on the Udemy platform for its network of independent florists. The portal offers a mix of general business courses and custom-developed coursers on topics specific to the floral industry. Tenaris, a $10 billion manufacturer of steel pipes, has licensed edX’s software platform and course materials for its employee learning program. The World Bank, International Money Fund, and several major government ministries are licensing MOOC content and technologies for their constituents.
Online training and education is certainly not new: we've been following this space since it started in 1998. Over the last 15 years billions of dollars have been spent on corporate e-learning, and much of it evolved into mandatory compliance training.
MOOCs, on the other hand, leverage world-class instructors and are taking advantage of video, collaboration, machine learning, and simulation from the start. Their platforms are focused on delivering a learning experience, not just a course catalog. While this is still a young market, the demand is there and we expect it to grow exponentially in the coming years.
Josh Bersin writes and researches corporate talent, learning, leadership, and HR best-practices around the world. He is Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. You can follow Josh here or on twitter josh_bersin or at www.bersin.com .
Other Recent Articles by Josh Bersin:
* Why we Do Need The HR Department
* Are Performance Appraisals Doomed?
* Employee Retention: The Time is Now
Photo: Image Source / Getty Images
Owner/CEO @ C2 Technologies, Inc. | Board of Visitors GMU, TIE Global Board, Investor, Mentor, Speaker
8 年As one who has grown up developing online learning for adults, my contention is that its time industry started respecting and recognizing online degrees, informal learning and social badging. There is a lot more informal learning taking place now than ever before, however, it has been difficult to measure it and reward it. Additionally, accreditation and degree granting bodies have still to catch up with open source learning and give credit.
Research and Development Scientist at BiophysicsLab.com
10 年I like your overview of MOOC corporate users. I see a lot of potential in partnerships and reusable open-source platforms. Perhaps your readers would also be interested in learning more about this LinkedIn MOOC uiser group: https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/MOOC-Massive-Open-Online-Courses-4652870