
Coursera is phasing out free certificates - joegreen
https://courserajunkie.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/courseras-free-statements-of-accomplisments-die-a-quiet-death/
======
kiloreux
While what the OP mentioned is True , what i really think is that the real
value of MOOCs is not in the certificate (it not that much important
especially from MOOC providers) but the opportunity that it creates for people
to gain knowledge , and personally speaking , MOOCs have changed my life , i
live in 3rd world country where the quality of education is worse than you can
imagine, but thanks to Coursera, Edx and Udacity , i managed to learn so many
things , so what we should focus on , is that the opportunity it provides for
people around the world to learn new things and change their lives in one way
or another is the true factor that should be considered in the MOOC revolution
.

~~~
Sven7
How did learning new things change your life?

~~~
kiloreux
Although that it's not important how MOOCs changed my life , but i will tell
you how , i was raised in a poor family (like really poor) , i got my first
computer when i was 16 years old , and saw the internet for the first time
when i was 18 years old , i always had hunger for knowledge and learning new
things but never could go further than reading some old books from the high
school library , when i first got the internet access it was just the
beginning of the MOOCs and i was amazed by the opportunity it gives , given
that i always loved computers and the "magic" behind it , i started my first
MOOC at that time which was CS50 by David Malan in HarvardX (Edx) , and never
stopped MOOCing from the the three platforms , now thanks to MOOCs and of
course practicing on my free time i am a 20 years old full stack developer, i
am still a junior developer ,but i gained enough money to change the situation
of my family from worse to the better, while most of my peers still studying
in our system (I am studying too and graduating this year from electrical
engineering) , the real difference is between our education system and the
MOOCs , i have to emphasize that there is no way to compare the quality , and
of course the price (which is free) , i really encourage everyone to never
stop learning from MOOCs because knowledge and new skills can create a
completely change a life .

~~~
pigscantfly
That's really awesome to hear! I work on the Stanford edX team, but we don't
see a lot of feedback from our off-campus users (even though there are lots of
them). It's great to know that MOOCs are actually helping people out. In case
anyone hasn't heard of our site (it's a little smaller than the more well
known ones), we run a public edX instance at lagunita.stanford.edu and
maintain forks of the edX repositories at github.com/StanfordOnline.

~~~
SiVal
Kiloreux and others who have benefited in similar ways, PLEASE email your
stories to Coursera, edX, MIT OCW, or any other sites whose MOOCs have helped
you. Sometimes, they are sitting in a meeting room discussing whether to
discontinue some free aspect of the service, and your story will be enough to
convince them to keep it going a little longer.

You might feel insignificant off in some far corner of the world, but when the
creators hear your voice, they REALLY care what you think.

------
brudgers
In my experience over about a dozen completed courses and many more with less
attentive participation, Certificate policies vary from course to course. Some
of it is due to policies of the sponsoring institution, some is due to the
business transaction between the institution or the instructor and Coursera.
There's a whole host of branding issues that come with putting _Blub State
University_ on a course description. And good old BSU has a team of
administrative staff that have nothing else to do than worry about BSU's
brand.

That said, the Coursera Android App has become consistently worse. It wants to
run at startup and once entered, never release the camera even after the app
is stopped. To get rid of the camera-in-use toast, the app has to be
uninstalled or the device rebooted. I came to the conclusion that
unfortunately Coursera is headed down the road to finding the optimum between
suck and income as a business model. Basically, it's given up on platform
growth via innovation and is optimizing for Venture Capital fund liquidation
timelines.

MOOC's are a model that can live off of exhaust fumes (in the words of
Spolsky) but turning them into part of the people tracking infrastructure is
simply more consistent with conventional wisdom and ten year investment fund
timelines.

[edit:] On the 50% for a certificate comment, that's what Jeff Ullman does for
his _Finite Automata_ course and for me, it was non-trivial and required a lot
of learning. There have been other courses where 90% and distinction was far
easier.

~~~
andyidsinga
nice touch with the blub reference :)

(thinking to myself: how can put blub state on my linkedin profile)

more seriously though, to your points about Coursera and VC liquidation
timelines: We need coursera like moocs that are "B-Corps" or similar
[http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-
company.aspx](http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx) .

I made some comments along similar lines in the comment section of this post :
[http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-
capita...](http://continuations.com/post/119930478310/going-past-capital) \-
ironically a VC's blog, but don't prejudge - he's also a philosopher of sorts
and has some good ides.

------
joelgrus
Honestly, if someone's resume tells me they took (say) the Coursera Natural
Language Processing course, never in a million years would it occur to me to
ask to see the certificate, any more than I'd ask to see their transcript to
verify that they took specific classes in college.

And vice versa, I have lots of Coursera courses on my resume, no one has ever
asked to see my certificates either.

~~~
jlarocco
Putting Coursera on a resume had never occurred to me.

Do you use it to bolster other experience and education? Or would you be
comfortable applying for a position where your only relevant experience was
from Coursera?

~~~
joelgrus
I have no non-Coursera CS training, so I use it as the "CS training" part of
my resume. (I also have relevant work experience and a math degree.)

I would be comfortable _hiring_ someone entry-level most of whose relevant
experience was from Coursera, assuming they convinced me they would be a good
hire.

If you are a quick learner, IMO you should feel comfortable applying for any
job you think you can get hired for, even if it's a stretch based on your
experience.

------
ColinWright
People in other comments are saying the certificates are pointless, or
useless, or never needed. In contrast to their claims, recently when applying
for a job I was asked for proof that I really do have a PhD. I have no idea
where the certificate is, and pointed out in an email that certificates can,
these days, easily be faked. To provide a certificate merely gives them
grounds later, if they find I don't have a PhD after all, to claim that I
actively misled them.

Instead I referred them to the British Library thesis lookup service[0] and
pointed out that there's no way I could fake that. It was accepted (much to my
relief!) but others may not have that option.

So sometimes some sort of documentary evidence of a qualification is going to
be necessary.

[0] [http://ethos.bl.uk](http://ethos.bl.uk)

~~~
jeffwass
For the proof of your PhD, doesn't an official transcript mailed from your
school suffice?

I've been at my job for the past 7 yrs, but has hiring changed so much in this
time that most jobs DON'T ask for academic transcripts anymore?

~~~
ColinWright
That then means contacting my school and getting them to sort out a
transcript, which means involving a third party. Easier just to point them at
a URL. Done.

------
vdaniuk
"Free MOOC certificates for most platforms? Forget about it" would be a more
accurate title.

Nevertheless, the post content is quite accurate. I was immensely disappointed
with Coursera's decision to remove free statement of accomplishment
certificates.

On the bright side, It seems that edX won't be implementing a policy change.
The reason is quite simple: coursera is a for-profit and edx is a non-profit.

The largest and most popular MOOC platforms are nearly universally for-profit
orgs: Udacity, Iversity, Coursera, Futurelearn. Same with programming
education platforms: Codecademy, Codeschool, Treehouse, Lynda, Pluralsight.

Putting it in UN terms: This is a reason for grave concern.

Platforms like Treehouse and Codeschool have superior learning UX and require
monthly payment of $25-50. While this is certainly not much, the majority
users of worldwide internet users won't be able to afford this price tag.

Dangers to public benefit will become more pronounced as soon as M&A commence
and online education will become an oligopoly. Pluralsight has already
acquired Codeschool for $x0 MM.

As Gibson's quote goes: "The future is already here — it's just not very
evenly distributed."

If this massive disparity in access to knowledge persists we will find
ourselves in the world predicted by cyberpunk authors.

Are we able to change this?

------
lukaslalinsky
I honestly don't understand this. The article talks about revolutionizing the
world of education and yet expects the online courses to give out
certifications, like classical schools do. The free online courses exist so
that you have free access to education, not that you have a piece of something
that you can show to people. That might be an added benefit, and I see nothing
wrong with strict requirements and charging money for it, but the primary
purpose is the education, not the certificate.

~~~
joepie91_
While that is correct from a purely educational point of view, it's
unfortunately not currently true from a social point of view.

There _are_ expectations of certification in many industries, and the
assumption _is_ often made that without a certificate, you do not have the
knowledge. In the IT world, this isn't really a thing, but outside it, it
often is.

It's therefore completely reasonable to expect a 'replacement for classical
schooling' to also provide similar certifications. Because that's what you
need from a social point of view.

~~~
runn1ng
Yes, but frankly, does anyone ever accept MOOC certificates? All the employers
I have met usually skip the MOOC part of my resume entirely.

~~~
wolfgke
You might have the impression that they skipped it. I, in opposite, claim that
it showed the employer that you are very willing to upgrade your education on
your own.

~~~
runn1ng
But that, again, has nothing to do with the final certificate.

~~~
wolfgke
No, the certificate _certifies_ that you indeed invested time to upgrade your
education on your own to the employer.

~~~
lukaslalinsky
Did an employer ever ask you to show them your university degree after you
mentioned that you attended an university on your resume? I'm asking because
it never happened to me and I don't think it's a common practice. Just
mentioning that you have done some online courses on your resume and being
able to talk about them seems enough to me. If the course is relevant to the
job you are applying to, I expect the interviewer to be able to verify that
you indeed took the course in a quick conversation.

~~~
wolfgke
> Did an employer ever ask you to show them your university degree after you
> mentioned that you attended an university on your resume?Did an employer
> ever ask you to show them your university degree after you mentioned that
> you attended an university on your resume?

I live in Germany, so I can just answer this question for Germany and Austria
(in the latter country the situation is even a little bit more expressed). But
handing in a copy (often even a witnessed copy) of your university degree is
nearly always required when making an application even to get an interview.

------
ipsin
The shame for me is that I occasionally used the "with distinction" grading to
push myself where I might otherwise think I've done a "good enough" job
understanding the content. It really helped push me over the line when taking
the "Mathematical Biostats Boot Camp" series, which I enjoyed.
[https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats](https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats)

It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning,
and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game.

~~~
SloopJon
> It's silly, I know, but free certificates were the gamification of learning,
> and I'll miss that particular aspect of the game.

Absolutely. Even if I'm the only person in the world who even knows I took the
class, grades and deadlines, and (to a lesser extent) certificates are part of
the added value of an online class, compared to self study.

------
ajays
Certificates lose their meaning if they are doled out willy-nilly. Hence,
Coursera has to implement (or at least try to) some sophisticated verification
technology. This stuff doesn't come cheap; who's going to pay for it?

Me, personally, I don't care about certificates. I want the knowledge; and
that is still free. Methinks the OP is making a big deal about a piece of
paper.

~~~
vdaniuk
>sophisticated verification technology

Haha. Coursera's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the worst
cases of cheating.

>Me, personally, I don't care about certificates

What's fine for you is fine for others, right?

~~~
current_call
_Haha. Coursera 's verification technology is a joke and prevents only the
worst cases of cheating._

It really is terrible. It can't recognize me, so I stopped caring about
verification.

------
dmart
Does this really demonstrate Coursera "giving up on the dream [of eliminating
barriers to education]?"

IMO, the important thing about MOOCs has never been accreditation (show me an
employer who actually cares about potential candidates' MOOC certifications,
anyway), but simply making university-level courses available without the
overhead of actually attending school. And in that regard, nothing's changed.

~~~
munin
part of what makes a course "university level" is the assessment, though.
there is way more to a course than just sitting in on the lectures - you do
the projects and the homework and that is where the real learning happens.
courseras assessment story is weak for projects and homework, so those areas
of their classes are ridiculously watered down from what is offered at a
university, to scale.

------
jordigh
Y'know, back when I actually read the legalese, I feared some day Coursera
would take their ball home and nobody would be allowed to play anymore:

[http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-
Prob...](http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Stanford-University-
Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-tp4470602p4470781.html)

Granted, my fears at the time were about the materials vanishing, not the
diplomas, but I still fear that the entire thing will some day become
completely closed up.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It isn't an unreasonable fear. The interesting thing though is that the
university system (actually all post secondary education) has a vested
interest in having this sort of moat.

Of course 'subjects' is only one of many things you learn by going off to
college, but as a new 'tradesman' class of job emerges in technology it is
struggling with its own accreditation and evaluation crisis. In my youth I was
a mason part time and I was required to join the union (although as I was just
starting and doing odd jobs it really was more of temporary membership rather
than entering as an apprentice with the goal of making masonry my profession).
What struck me was how very much the masonry union was, in large part, a
educational facility which dedicated a big chunk of its resources to both
training new recruits, and ensuring the skills of existing members. And as
software has gone from being something just a few people understood or worked
on, to something every nerdy secondary school child can do the basics of, I
realized that perhaps one way to solve both the 'tuition debt' and employee
shortage is to just create a coders union. Something you can walk into at 15
if you want and start apprenticing, and structured so that once you were a
master in good standing you could be relied upon by any employer to tackle
what ever coding task they threw at you.

The conditions are ripe for this transformation of the software industry, but
it is going to be painful for the entrenched players.

------
alexashka
Well that's what happens when you are trying to do charity AND make money - it
doesn't make sense. Either it is free, or it is for profit. You have to choose
which.

Khan Academy is free. MIT Courses on youtube are free.

These websites that want you to sign up, only be able to view courses at
certain times, etc etc. Please, just give me youtube links and pdf/slides and
have a forum for discussion.

This is not hard, youtube is free, pdf/slides are very cheap to host, as is a
forum.

Why does Coursera even exist, what's the differentiating factor?

~~~
rhc2104
edX is a nonprofit, and they also charge for certificates.

[https://www.edx.org/verified-certificate](https://www.edx.org/verified-
certificate)

There are labor costs involved in grading assignments and "making sure that
you're the one taking the class".

~~~
drhodes
There are two tiers of certification at edx. The unverified certificate is
free.

------
pmorici
I don't see the problem here. The important part, the actual knowledge being
communicated by the class is still being given for free.

~~~
aheilbut
For now.

~~~
tomjen3
Yeah it is free for now, there are no guarantees about the future (death and
taxes excepted and then I am not even sure about death), but why would you
make that comment? The MOOCs don't owe you anything, they are providing the
equivalent of a university degree for no cost, so why so negative?

~~~
aheilbut
I think there are conflicting incentives, and we've seen how these things tend
to play out. It's really the universities and the professors teaching the
classes who are providing the courses, and they need to be careful that they
don't inadvertently put all this material into a walled garden under the
assumption that they're giving it away to the world.

~~~
smsm42
So far, there's no wall. There's just a gardener that can sell you a
certificate that you indeed visited the garden, but you can still visit it
anytime whether you pay or not.

------
kmax12
One thing I'd add is another comparison to edX. edX is a non-profit, while
Coursera is for-profit.

Considering that point, I view the "bait-and-switch" slightly differently, but
I agree more transparency is necessary.

------
kevinpet
I seem to remember that my certificate for Functional Programming with Scala
had a shareable link code, whereas now it is only available to me. It's not
anything I ever wanted to show someone, but it's slightly alarming from a
company trust perspective that they would retroactively change the value of
the free certificate.

------
jeffreyrogers
I don't see the problem with charging for providing a valuable service. If
Coursera is valuable then of course the people who contribute their time to
making it so deserve to profit from their efforts. If it isn't valuable, then
why does it matter what they charge?

~~~
g_delgado14
I totally agree with what you're saying. However, I'd like to point out that
the initial intention with MOOCs was to lower barriers to entry for low income
learners around the world. Adding a fee to certificates may have increased
barriers to entry in jobs that require certificates now. This, too, may prove
to be a trend for increasing charges in MOOCs ... who knows maybe in a few
years you'll be paying a massive sum of money to take a course course.

~~~
ninebrows
> "trend for increasing charges in MOOCs"

Exactly.

------
lizardhands
I work for one of the large MOOC providers. We "sell" "certificates" as a
means to enable us to keep on providing education for free for those who would
otherwise not have access to it. Certificate sales enable us to function (e.g.
pay for staff and infrastructure) and work with our university partners in
putting on courses for free.

Every day we get email from learners complaining that we charge for
certification. Everyday we also get email from learners thanking us for
providing free education. It's a tough balance.

------
wolfgke
I accept that Coursera wants to earn money. But if paid, verified certificates
can't fulfill this wish to Coursera (others on this discussion page already
have argued, why it is not that easy to offer additional value for verified
certificates), why doesn't Coursera try a completely different way to earn
money:

It is often discussed on HN that there is a lack of qualified, say,
programmers, data science experts etc. The "typical graduate" of Coursera
courses is an ideal candidate to fulfill this role: Why doesn't Coursera
instead let employers pay for access to their user database so that they can
find high-potential candidates for their open jobs (a little bit similar to
Stack Overflow Careers, but with a different focus). Why don't startups that
look for underestimated, say, Python programmers search the Coursera database
for good graduates of some Python programming course on Coursera. I can
imagine that there could be money to be made if the often argued shortage of
qualified programmers etc. is true.

------
nickbauman
MOOCs ultimately face the same problem that the old Chinese Imperial Exam had
that (albeit circuitously) led to the holocaust of the Taiping Rebellion of
1850. You cannot create a true meritocracy for a number of reasons,
gatekeeping being one of the biggest ones.

[http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html](http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html)

------
alok-g
I am very happy to pay to get a certificate for a course that I actually get
an opportunity (i.e. time) to finish. With a full-time job, a family, and side
projects, it is generally hard for me to predict during sign-up if I'll be
able to give enough time for course completion. It is also clear that if I do
spent enough time on a course, the monetary value of my time spent and
knowledge gained is much more than the cost of the certificate (I am based in
the US). Additionally, while I care for the knowledge as the main thing, I do
feel "why not" for the certificate too.

However, I do mind getting a certificate showing say a score of 51% when my
score is 51% (instead of say 97%) just because I was unable to find time to
finish. Does anyone else feel this way? Is my concern real? Assuming so, I
would like to pay to get the certificate after I finish the course, not when I
start it.

------
Soloquay
All of these MOOCs lack true verification of knowledge. Ultimately I think
that the certification test should be done in person, at a cost to the person
taking the test, since they are the ones who benefit most from the legitimacy
of the certificate.

Also the signed certificate should include a clear photo of the person who
took the test.

------
jwr
Who cares?

I don't think it matters in the slightest whether you got a certificate or
not. These online courses provide a tremendous value by letting people
_learn_. They are especially valuable for expanding your knowledge later on in
life, when you already work.

As an employer, I don't care about certificates of any kind. I care about the
person I'm hiring — and it isn't difficult for me to get a feel for his/her
knowledge in a particular area.

------
smsm42
I have take a lot of Coursera courses, and I guess this news is a bit of a
downer, but not too much. For me, SOA is more of a memorabilia peace than any
value, though I admit it is convenient to have an externally visible list of
courses. But if any employer ever cared, I could just print out the profile
page listing them anyway :)

OTOH, they have to make money somehow, and the fact that I still can learn so
much without paying anything is plain awesome.

------
HannahCoursera
Thank you all for the discussion. I am on the support team at Coursera and
wanted to share the official response we posted on the Coursera Junkie blog
below.

+++

Hi Kathryn and readers,

My name is Hannah, and I’m on the support team here at Coursera. We’re glad
that you raised this concern, and we sincerely apologize for any confusion
around our policies.

We are fully committed to our mission of providing universal access to the
world's best education. As such, we continue to offer free and open access to
all courses. We also offer learners the option to earn Verified Certificates,
which provide official recognition from Coursera and the partner institution
offering the course and formally showcases their achievements. Our robust
financial aid program offers full support to learners who can demonstrate that
the registration fee for a Verified Certificate is beyond their financial
means.

Coursera's free certificates, also called Statements of Accomplishment, were
designed before we made Verified Certificates available. Over time, we noticed
confusion regarding the relative significance of the free certificate and the
Verified Certificate. The latter is an official document, while the former is
an unofficial, unverified memento of the course. We chose to phase out
Statements of Accomplishment in order to better distinguish the official
status of the Verified Certificate.

Last November, we published a blog post
([http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-
certific...](http://blog.coursera.org/post/102036391812/verified-certificates-
ensure-academic-integrity)) explaining the value of Verified Certificates and
describing how most courses would no longer provide Statements of
Accomplishment. Still, some older courses continue to offer Statements of
Accomplishment, including the Child Psychology course you’ve referenced above.
Understandably, that inconsistency has proven somewhat confusing.

We do our best to communicate changes clearly and will strive to be more
transparent in our communication around such changes moving forward. If you
have any further questions about Coursera’s certificates, I encourage you to
visit this page in our learner help center:
[https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-
us/articles/201212139-Ce...](https://learner.coursera.help/hc/en-
us/articles/201212139-Certificates-and-Course-Credit).

------
ChristianGeek
Interesting article (and responses) on Coursera's actions, but am I the only
one who objects to the clickbait title? This has nothing at all to do with the
loss of free MOOCs, even with respect to Coursera itself.

------
retali8
I'm quite surprised there isn't a general "sigh of relief" that this is
happening...

HN is a tech news community, where many if not most of you who are working
have tech salaries that can easily pay for the new Coursera pricing...

everyone knows the tech industry is volatile in the way that every few months,
a new technology comes out that sends IT professionals scrambling to learn it
in order to, not stay ahead of the pack, but just to keep up with the pack.

the enormous amount of free tech/programming/CS theory/knowledge from Coursera
and others have created more competition in terms of tech jobs.

By principle, all members of our society deserves access to quality education,
especially in the STEM areas. But let's face it -- this is good news for
existing professionals in IT...for the most part ;-)

------
shmerl
I prefer edX, it's more open in general.

------
webhat

        “The Statements of Accomplishment (free) and Verified
        Certificates (signature track) will be provided to all
        those who achieve 50% or higher grade, and will be released 
        within 1-2 weeks after the final submission deadline closes. 
        Everyone will be notified by email when they are ready. You
        will be able to download the certificate from your course
        records after they are released.”
    

50% as a passing grade?

~~~
randomnumber53
Usually the grading scale is the same as is used in the iteration of the
college class that the MOOC is based off of.

~~~
webhat
You might be right, although a 50% grade to pass The Clinical Psychology of
Children and Young People still seems a little on the low side to me.

------
snambi
Do we really need coursera? Most universities are uploading their lectures
into youtube anyway.

~~~
aikah
Well a lot of coursera courses come with :

\- a community where you can discuss courses like in a real class

\- exercises,source,... that are often reviewed by real teachers or peer-
review which absolutely invaluable at least for me . I learned a whole lot
because of this.

So it's way more than a youtube channel with a bunch of videos. Course are
shot specifically for coursera.

------
eccstartup
You have my support.

PS: MOOCs(massive, online ordered courses)

