

Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/education/massive-open-online-courses-prove-popular-if-not-lucrative-yet.html

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tinco
I think asking money for certificates of completion is disingenious, as is
charging for textbooks.

It says in the article that the founders see education as a right, that means
it should be absolutely free. 'exploit-the-students' kind of money can be an
arbitrarily low amount, depending on the circumstances of the students, who
could be in fugitive camps in somalia for all anyone knows.

Instead, the obvious way to make money is to make it where the money is, the
industry. This is how student organisations in The Netherlands make money, and
I bet it's like that elsewhere too.

Why not sell information about what student has what capabilities, or even
contact with the student in the form of job adverts or whatever? I can see
that as a nearly unbounded source of revenue, and in the process hurting noone
and helping everyone.

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prostoalex
"... has begun to charge corporate employers, including Facebook and Twitter,
for access to high-performing students, starting with those studying software
engineering."

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ivan_ah
How about making money from textbooks?

I don't mean exploit-the-students kind of money, but still make money none the
less. The teacher could sell the lecture notes++ as a printed book for 5$ per
100 pages.

A small textbook could cost 15$.

Imagine yourself taking the course -- I mean //really// taking it: spending
lots of time watching the lectures, doing the exercises and trying to get into
the subject.

If you want to print out the lecture notes and slides for the course (think
SELECT _.pdf FROM /course/name | print | bind) it would cost you about 300
pages_ 5c/page = $15 to get this printed at a local copy shop + $5 for spiral
binding.

For the same price, you get a perfect-bound soft-cover textbook delivered to
your front door (an extra $5 for S/H).

I am telling you guys, this P-o-D stuff is crazy!

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prostoalex
It mentions they're already making some money from the Amazon affiliate links
to textbooks. For a lot of courses the material is not confined to one single
textbook, but supplemented with other books, video materials and papers one
has to get online.

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mjmahone17
I would pay for access to course notes that have guarunteed permanence.
Because if I ever want to look up an algorithm I learned, and I remember "oh,
I remember that from that one class," I typically look back through my course
notes. It'd be awesome to have those notes permanently, without my having to
write them up. I know for my school's intro sequence, we post the notes
online, but each year the notes change a little, and, if the course is in
progress, or just about to start, then only the notes for the course up to the
point it's at are available.

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samuel
I may be dumb, but why not try to charge for the courses upfront? You offer a
preview for free and charge a small fee for the full course(15$ for example).
Once the videos are recorded, the costs for coursera and the professor should
be very low, and the number attendees of every class are in the thousands.
Couldn't be profitable that way?

If 15$ is still too much for some(someone who already has access to a decent
computer and broadband internet), they could create a system of grants. Most
people wouldn't lie just for saving such a small quantity.

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halo
They could ask for donations at the end of the course. Set it at a reasonable
level and people who could afford it would feel obligated to do so but it
would still allow access for low-income users.

I suspect with the right message they could get very high conversion rate.

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mikle
I remember a time where "donation" wasn't a synonym to "pay for a job I did
for free". The teachers offer their valuable time and knowledge, they
shouldn't ask for "donation", they should ask for rightful pay for their time
and the amount of value they create their students.

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coopdog
They do also get the recognition from teaching the class. Andrew Ng is now
universally renowned as a machine learning expert (I imagine the consulting
fees he could charge to businesses could be immense). Martin Odersky's
excellent class on functional programming graduated 10,000 new Scala
programmers, which can only help his company Typesafe.

Come to think of it though I actually would send a donation if a large portion
of it went to the professor, although 'to advance the field' and 'because it's
my passion' as reasons for teaching do make for better classes.

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mikle
Your points are of course valid. I was just saying there are many things one
can offer the teacher, and donations shouldn't be one of them.

