[piyushpr134]

Universities are not going anywhere MOOC are a dead end

[Blackthorn]

Dead end for what? Quality recordings of real lectures have been amazing for self improvement. I've never gone into it expecting a meaningful certificate, just meaning for me living my life.

[ghaff]

You're probably in the small minority at least when it comes to forking over material dollars. Most people spending money, at least beyond trade paperback range, are probably looking for something that has at least a plausible connection to real income.

[f6v]

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.

[GuestFAUniverse]

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 ...)

[jsdwarf]

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.

[ghaff]

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.

[hexagonsuns]

Just wait until you find out that real degrees also aren't worth anything anymore

[vmilner]

My alma mater (University of Nottingham UK) has just stopped all music and modern language teaching, which (for a very popular, respected, large campus institution) seems a bad sign for universities generally.

[walthamstow]

And that's with all the foreign student bonanza money. My inlaws live in Notts and all they see getting built is student blocks. Imagine what'll happen when the next government drastically limits student visas.

[torginus]

Honestly years out of college, I really want to refresh my engineering education, and perhaps get academically rigorous education on topics I missed out on back then.

While these Udemy is fine for building up CV bullet point skills, I have never felt that these tutorial based job training courses, designed to teach you framework N+1 were as useful as more fundamentaly and in depth courses that lead you to understand how things really work.

[BeetleB]

> While these Udemy is fine for building up CV bullet point skills, I have never felt that these tutorial based job training courses, designed to teach you framework N+1 were as useful as more fundamentaly and in depth courses that lead you to understand how things really work.

That's what Udemy was from the start. If you want depth, it was always Coursera.

https://www.coursera.org/browse/physical-science-and-enginee...