Amid the fanfare surrounding the nascent massive open online course (Mooc) movement have been looming questions concerning their economic viability. Leading platforms, including Coursera and edX, have committed themselves to providing higher education content online for free.
Until now, the costs of developing Moocs have been shouldered by the platforms themselves and the universities supplying courses, rather than consumers of the content.
Coursera, a for-profit Mooc platform that has more than 2.8m students, has raised venture capital to cover development costs. A $16m injection from Silicon Valley-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – an early investor in Amazon and Google – has been the most notable. Udacity, a for-profit platform that does not partner with universities, has raised more than $21m in venture capital.