
Coursera valued at $2.5B after a finance round of additional $130M - rglullis
https://iblnews.org/coursera-valued-at-2-5-billion-after-a-finance-round-of-additional-130-million/
======
dhawalhs
If anybody is interested, last year I wrote a detailed report [1] on
Coursera's monetization journey. I describe the steps and experiments the
company did to go from zero to $100+ million in revenues (and potentially over
$200 million this year).

In my opinion, of all the online education providers Coursera grew the most
during the pandemic. They also reacted well by offering free certificates and
giving free access to their catalog to college students [2].

My company Class Central [3], a Tripadvisor for online education grew a lot
during the pandemic. In the second half of March, we received 5 million
visitors, almost a 20x increase. Though no longer the peak, we are still at
2.5X of what we were before.

1\. [https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-monetization-
re...](https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-monetization-revenues/)

2\. [https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-providers-
response-...](https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-providers-response-to-
the-pandemic/)

3\. [https://www.classcentral.com/](https://www.classcentral.com/)

~~~
crb002
Not a huge fan of ads, but I would accept non-obtrusive ads in lieu of paying
the certification fee if they wanted a traditional publisher revenue stream.

~~~
chrisseaton
I wonder if you could support a traditional in-person university education
with employer and vendor adverts at the start of each lecture!

~~~
kilroy_jones
The idea of watching ads in order to get an education seems like the start of
some dystopia nightmare. Seeing kids in school buses emblazoned with McDonalds
ads is bad enough.

Can you imagine wanting to check your answers to the work you just did and
having to watch a commercial to do that. Probably reach a point where they'll
require camera access to track your eyes to make sure you're paying attention.

~~~
Karishma1234
It all depends on alternative. $100 is a lot of money for a kid in India, if
the same kid can earn the degree while watching ads I think it does a great
service to poor people because the alternative is not learning.

Alternative to a problematic suboptimal (according to you) school experience
is not a perfect school experience but no-school experience.

American public schooling system has become a jobs program for adults.

~~~
MrRiddle
If $100 is a lot for someone then they surely won’t be valued much as ad
audience.

------
Blackthorn
Coursera was once a great place to watch University lectures and do University
classwork. Great professors would put their material on it.

Then they had to monetize. All those amazing courses are now gone (or "legacy"
and nigh unreachable). Coursera is a sad shadow of its previous self.

~~~
Gunax
There is edX, although I haven't found their selection as good. It seems they
rooted from academic courses to more like tech certificate type courses.

~~~
enkid
All the edx courses I've taken are basically text books in video form.
Coursera has a very strong formula of short videos with frequent questions,
often a question every two to five minutes to make sure you understand the
material

------
MattGaiser
Does anyone know of a company that accepts any of their certificates as
valuable? I am curious to see if they are actually making a difference in the
employment markets.

~~~
TinyBig
I've taken a few courses on Coursera, including the deep learning
specialization, and I thought the material was great. However, I noticed that
in courses with ~5 hours of video, quizzes, and a project, the average
completion times were measured in minutes. Based on this, I assume most people
who received certificates cheated and didn't take the course, though I'm very
much open to alternate hypotheses.

~~~
sva_
I heard that there is a 'trick' to getting a certificate for free ($) on
Coursera: First you just review the course which is free of charge, and then
after you're done with it all you start the free trial. Now you have 7 days to
finish up the courses which shouldn't be a problem due to the reviewing.

So that could in part explain the short completion times, although I'm not
sure how many people use this 'trick'. Coincidentally though, I've learnt
about this trick in relation to the exact course you mentioned (deep
learning.)

~~~
akb960
From Coursera Terms and Conditions[1]:

"If you complete a course during the free trial period, Coursera reserves the
right to require you to pay for a one-month subscription in order to receive a
Course and/or Specialization Certificate."

[1]
[https://www.coursera.org/about/terms](https://www.coursera.org/about/terms)

------
zebrastripes
Had a really terrible experience with Coursera lately. Signed up for the free
trial, started the class and it recommended signing up for another class as a
prerequisite. I signed up for that one as well but it required a bunch of
materials I didn’t have on hand. Then I got busy and lost track of time. I
never got an e-mail from them about starting the trial, nor did I realize the
billing was $50/month for _each class_. Anyway I was checking my bank later
and they were just silent charging me- $300 dollars so far.

They don’t offer refunds or even have customer support.

I remember taking Andrew Ng’s ML course several years ago and being so
grateful and excited for the new possibilities, and now I just feel like
Coursera is a scam, using dark patterns to make money instead of trying to
make a great experience for students.

------
mrfusion
I’d do way better if I could take these courses with a group with people who
could motivate me and hold me accountable. Especially if it was in person.

Is anyone working on something like that? When I do a course by myself it’s
too easy to let other parts of life take priority.

~~~
codingdave
I believe post-secondary education offered both both in-person and with online
options is commonly referred to as "college"

If you aren't seeking the higher expense full-blown 4 year experience,
community colleges often are a decent route to explore.

------
netcan
The education market is such a conundrum.

On one hand it's enormous, clearly suboptimal, and clearly in need of change.

OTOH, anything outside of institutional norms is relegated to extremely small
niches... with self learning being the most vibrant. Very hard to innovate
within the box. Very hard to access the market, in money terms, outside of it.

Your online education product can be 10X better than a college course. It can
costs 10X less. That's still not going to mean you compete with the college
course, even if the college course is mostly online.

~~~
gavribirnbaum
previous EdTech founder here. can only agree. It is a weird business. I think
it boils down to this: most students don't care about learning. They educate
themselves for other reasons.

So if you make a good learning tool, it only will be liked by the small niche
of high performance self learners / students.

~~~
netcan
The self learning market is completely disconnected from the formal parts of
the market. There's very little substitution between them, in terms of money

------
zelphirkalt
To me Coursera has become worthless. It started by giving me a chance to learn
about machine learning and some data science. I did 3 courses and was happy
with the result. Then they had to screw up their login. It is now impossible
to even log in for me, as it depends completely on Google Shittylytics. I
simply refuse to use it. There is utter disregard for users built into the
login, the very first thing you need.

What's more is, that without logging in, you apparently cannot deactivate the
newsletter which keeps spamming me with their incessant "learning how to
learn", which I really do not need. Not even sure it is legal to require login
for unsubscribing to a newsletter instead of providing me a magic link.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Not even sure it is legal to require login for unsubscribing to a newsletter
> instead of providing me a magic link.

I had this problem with italki and solved it by asking for the email of their
General Counsel and informing them that they were breaking the CAN SPAM act,
which depending on interpretation requires either one click or two click
unsubscribe but definitely doesn’t allow them to force you to log in.

------
spacephysics
2.5 billion? This is just part of the investor bubble of these startups. I
agree coursera is a high value company, but 2.5 billion seems a bit inflated.

~~~
nabaraz
Why is everything with B a bubble?

Its revenue went from $60M(2016) to $170M(2019) [1]. In 2019, it reported over
45 million learners on its platform. It is adding enterprise customers at a
steady pace [2].

A conservative estimate of 250 million revenue in 2020 puts it at 10x revenue.
This is pretty normal for a SAAS company that is growing 50% y/y.

1\. [https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-2019-year-
revie...](https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-2019-year-review/) 2\.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/04/25/online-
ed...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/04/25/online-education-
provider-coursera-is-now-worth-more-than-1-billion/#3572d2ca30e1)

~~~
pottertheotter
Coursera isn't a SaaS business...

------
ken47
The vast majority are inflated by "traditional" (aka sane) valuation metrics.
It is literally ponzi economics dressed up in luxury clothing.

That being said, Coursera is doing a great service for humanity, and I hope
they succeed.

~~~
amelius
> That being said, Coursera is doing a great service for humanity, and I hope
> they succeed.

Better than the Wikimedia Foundation? Last time I checked, they were asking
for donations.

~~~
sincerely
The WMF has something like 150 million dollars in unrestricted cash reserves.
As a nonprofit their financial reports are public

------
crb002
I would pay $$$ if Coursera partnered with LinkedIn to give you badges that HR
would accept as a gatekeeper to avoid tech prescreens like HackerRank.

~~~
cosmodisk
It may sound nice in theory but never works in practice. I've been doing
Salesforce administration/development for about 5 years. They almost invented
badge system followed by certification. On their trailhead platform,there are
so many of those that it could take a couple of years to complete. They also
have about 25 different certificates, varying from junior admin all the way to
architect level. There are so many people out there who have 10-15 certs
without even seeing the platform properly because they meemorised mock tests
and etc. That's why interviewers rarely rely on certification and they are
usually no more than a box ticking exercise.

Edit: Even though I'm sceptical about certificate value in recruitment
process,I strongly recommend spending some time poking around Salesforce
Trailhead website. They are pushing it very heavily, most collateral is very
slick, a lot of PR explaining that people can go out and learn how to use it.
Recently Microsoft started offering very similar platform by copying most of
it. It's an excellent example how company attracts people to learn, as opposed
to something like SAP,where you can't learn shit without having it at work.

------
sudhirkhanger
Don't you guys find lack of discussion/support peer to peer and mentor to peer
much lacking on Coursera.

~~~
juanuys
Some courses have peer feedback, but I have found it lacking. In the course
I'm doing, peers are expected to assess 2 other peers as a minimum, and they
do things like this:

\- just enter a "." or "-" to get pass the restriction of having to submit
_something_

\- a peer wouldn't give me full marks for an assignment, but then not leave
feedback as to why, usually just a "good job!"

This frustrates me to bits. Coursera could invest in some cleverer technology
here, e.g. if it sees a peer deducts points, then if sentiment analysis on the
related feedback is only positive, fail validation on the form.

I've ranted a tiny bit about this on one of my course notes blogs:

[https://juanuys.com/blog/2020/07/14/introduction-to-game-
des...](https://juanuys.com/blog/2020/07/14/introduction-to-game-design.html)

~~~
geomark
This kind of thing drove me away from MOOCs for certain subjects. There was
the Human Computer Interface course where your UI was graded by three peers.
On multiple assignments I would get a strong positive with comments, a strong
negative with comments contradicting the very things the other peer graded
positive, and then a "good job". It was utterly useless feedback on things
where feedback really was important for learning.

------
person_of_color
All I need to know is whether is possible.

> Get a Coursera certificate.

> Build something with that knowledge.

> Get a better paying job/better career opportunity.

Is it?

~~~
rasz
You can skip first step. Those certs are HR toilet paper. I used mine to
placate my mum, she in turn rubbed Stanford/UM diplomas into our overly
inquisitive aunts faces.

~~~
person_of_color
Disagree.

The "course" may be a facade, but intrinsic structure is helpful. If I'm
simply learning by myself, I find myself skipping all over the place and then
not completing the work due to being overwhelmed by the amount of material to
cover.

~~~
rasz
I might not been too clear. Courses were great, but certificates/diplomas are
worthless.

------
m0zg
I have actually learned useful stuff on Coursera that I use nearly daily in my
current work. That's more than can be said of a lot of the university courses
I've taken.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
Care to recommend anything?

~~~
Gunax
I did sedgwick's algorithm course 3 years ago.

It's definitely difficult, requires a lot of work, and from what I can tell is
equivalent to the princeton course in every way.

------
darepublic
Over the course of about two years I worked on and off on the Andrew Ng ML
course. I loved the site at first but was less enthused about all the
incremental changes made to the site over time as they tried to realize a
business model. Things like suggesting I pay for the free material in exchange
for a useless cert, or verifying my identity via typing analysis so verify I
was indeed myself etc

------
pyuser583
Wow! I really like Coursera’s product! I’m really happy they’re doing so well.

People talk about “purpose driven companies.” Few could do as much good as
Coursera.

------
mrfusion
How come coursera can’t get some kind of accreditation and offer degrees?
There must be some sort of process.

~~~
LudwigNagasena
It wouldn’t make much sense. Coursera is a platform for other institutions to
offer courses.

------
JumpCrisscross
How would one contrast Coursera, Udemy and Udacity? From a user perspective,
but also strategically?

~~~
cosmodisk
Can only comment on the first two. Coursera: most courses come from
universities.They are structured,aims are clear. Depending on the level and
the teacher,some can be dull or/and going 1000 miles an hour,so picking the
right level is important. Udemy: less formal,less academic. Some courses are
created by those who have no idea what they're talking about,while others are
well prepared, broad,and deliver high value.

------
foogazi
Taking an ML course there right now

------
alexashka
I wish I could comprehend what Coursera even does, other than handing out
worthless certificates and paywalling content you can find online, for free.

I guess these investors are hoping Coursera becomes the Harvard of online
education if they throw enough money at it. It may work, but good lord, what a
strange way to decide to spend your limited life, hoping to make money
(investors already _have_ money...) from status symbols. Why not, you know,
actually do something useful with your life?

This reminds me of people who bought bitcoin because, you know, other people
will buy bitcoin... Why not, you know, actually do something useful with your
life?

~~~
EsotericAlgo
[Note: I'm enrolled in the MCS program at UIUC which makes extensive use of
Coursera. Not a big fan of Coursera and most of the content for the courses is
available through other avenues.]

They have two paths they can follow:

1) "Worthless" certificates

2) Platform to purvey certification for universities or other trusted
credential organizations.

The certificates? They are what one makes of it. The problem of creating a
usable, online education platform however is a hard problem and one worthy of
investment. Academia is a tailspin trying to find an effective way to offer
courses online.

~~~
bruceb
Could you expand on why you don't like it? What do you think of the MCS?

~~~
EsotericAlgo
I'll qualify my critique in that it depends on how the class leverages
Coursera. I've taken five classes on Coursera two of which were through the
UIUC program (procrastinating a type inferencer assignment as I write this).

There are a handful of things Coursera gets right: _Videos_.Playback works. I
generally download them all immediately regardless.

 _Progress tracking_. Easy confirmation of what I've done already.

There are several problems it fails to solve:

 _Course Communication_. There's a discussion form. It's not used. These are
supplemented with other means of communication depending on the course that
all need to be checked (email, Piazza, Slack, dedicated forum, etc.)

 _Live Events_. Typically these are links to a Zoom instance with all the
attendant difficulties.

 _Integration_. Instructors often want to use outside tools for automated
graders and the like. Coursera has tools to integrate authentication to make
this first class, but it often means learning the idiosyncrasies for a new
tool for every class. Generally, the integration is slightly broken in some
way requiring some irritating workaround.

 _Quiz /Testing platform_. Difficult for instructors to get right. This
results in things like never seeing the correct answers to a final because
view rules aren't well understood by the instructor or free-form answers being
too picky.

 _Proctoring_. Coursera doesn't have a solve for this. Remote proctoring is
generally garbage and easily the most frustrating experience for me. UIUC uses
ProctorU which I despise, but that's another rabbit hole.

 _Content Navigation_. It's based on a week-by-week view. This can give a
false impression of progress. This can make navigating between thematically
similar content in week 4 and week 5 difficult.

In most instances, I would prefer an index page that mimics the the syllabus
with links to the content and discussion forum.

As for the MCS it's been a good investment thus far. I've taken two classes,
Data Mining and Programming Languages & Compilers. Like most things, you get
out of it what you put into it. It would be possible for me to learn most of
this on my own but the long term motivation wouldn't be there. This is
especially helpful for formalism I struggle to learn on my own. Most of the
classes have a project component which allows a significant amount of depth.

I'm taking Computational Photography this coming term which I'm excited to
lose my weekends to.
[https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs445/sp2020/](https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs445/sp2020/)

