Coursera expands its offering of programs; launches six new online degrees

MUMBAI: Expanding its offering of programs, online education platform Coursera has announced the launch of six new online degrees with global universities to cater to the educational needs of a workforce keen on getting cost-effective yet quality education without having to take a break from work.

The new programs that are likely to be launched this year or in 2019 include Arizona State University's Master of Computer Science, Imperial College London's Global Master of Public Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne's master of computer science, University of Michigan's master of applied data science as well as its master's in Public Health, along with the platform's first undergraduate degree offering by the University of London in computer science.

The new launches will take the total degrees offered by Coursera on its platform to ten.

“We are realising that the vast reach of MOOCs makes them a powerful gateway to degrees,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. “We are working with our university partners to build degrees on top of our open online learning platform that are high quality, modular, affordable, and scalable," Maggioncalda said.

According to a study by Georgetown Public Policy Institute, 65% of all jobs will require post secondary education and training by the year 2020. This statistic coupled with the high cost of education has more and more working people pursuing a degree through an online medium. Additionally, some leading universities are also looking for flexible and affordable ways to expand their reach in terms of the degrees they offer.

“We need to design degrees that provide modular credentials to students at all stages of the learning process,” said Nikhil Sinha, chief content officer of Coursera. “Over 50% of students who apply for degrees on Coursera first enroll in one of the open online courses from our university partners. They love that they can explore the open courses first and then decide whether to go on to get a full degree while earning valuable credentials along the way," Sinha added.