Coursera and the uncertain future of higher education

Coursera is blurring the lines between itself and institutions. The implications for the future of college education are profound.

https://fortune-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/fortune.com/2021/10/25/coursera-uncertain-future-of-higher-education/amp/

The future of higher education is being led by a publicly traded company in California that is growing like gangbusters. Its online platform has a portfolio of thousands of courses from the world’s leading universities, corporations, and nonprofits.

Coursera, which since the spring has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is valued at 7 billion dollars and seems to be making all the right moves.

While college and university enrollments have been declining during the pandemic, Coursera’s enrollment rose from 53 million to 78 million students this spring—an increase greater than total U.S. higher education enrollment.

Coursera is only the tip of the iceberg of an explosion of non-collegiate higher education providers. They range from libraries and museums to media companies and software makers, not to mention a burgeoning number of online providers just like Coursera. Microsoft and Google are both offering more than 75 certificate programs.

As our society becomes more fragmented and divided, we have reason to worry that higher education’s transformation will further fragment us. 

Equally important, we need to reintroduce a common curriculum to strengthen social bonds. General education should focus on the shared human experience—linking our past with our present and future, our heritage with the realities that will confront us today and tomorrow.

In the new Coursera world that will be increasingly corporatized, we need to ensure that we don’t lose our core values, our ethics, and our ability to tell fact from fiction.

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more on Coursera in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=coursera