The University of Colorado has reported that the certificates on their MOOCs offered through Coursera.com have generated roughly $110,000 since September 2015. “Conservatively, we estimate to generate $250,000 a year from courses offered on Coursera,” said Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Associate Vice President for Digital Education for the CU system.
“That’s been somewhat a welcome surprise, as CU did not necessarily expect to make money when it began offering the courses three years ago,” she explained at the Denver Post.
- “The courses help disseminate research funded by tax dollars and have the potential to introduce millions of people to CU”.
- “The courses are helping professors teach students differently and, in the case of one faculty member on the Colorado Springs campus, crowdsource research functions”.
The CU system (coursera.org/boulder and coursera.org/cusystem) has produced more than a dozen high-quality, video-based courses for Coursera and is offering several specializations, or multi-course units on one topic. These specializations end with a capstone project –at a price around of $300– that can allow to earn some transfer credit towards Master’s degrees. Coursera keeps half of that revenue.
