Coursera Reduces Its Fees to Partners to Trigger More Online Degrees

IBL News | New York

Coursera (NYSE: COUR) announced this week a new tiered fee structure in an attempt to encourage university partners to produce more online degrees.

With the new arrangement, Coursera will progressively reduce its service fee from 40% to 25%.

To date, Coursera was splitting its revenues with university partners in a sharing model of 60% – 40%.

Now universities that produce more online degrees might get 75% of the revenue in the highest tier of activity.

The new structure will first roll out in North America and Europe.

“Our new fee structure better supports universities that want to offer more degrees online,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO at Coursera.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — which offers four degrees on the platform — and the University of Colorado Boulder — with two performance-based degrees — are reportedly among the first to embrace the new structure.

With a global audience of 87 million learners, Coursera claimed that the number of degrees universities offer on its platform has grown by 55%.

The new tiered arrangement might affect the direct competitor, edX, a property of 2U.