Coursera Offers New Fee System To Scale Online Degree Programs

To support various universities and colleges in growing their online degree programs, Coursera has announced a new pricing system on their platform. Founded in 2012, Coursera is an online learning platform that offers low fees for different online courses, certifications, and degrees.

Based on the new structured pricing, Coursera will offer universities and colleges a service fee that will gradually decrease the total tuition from 40% to 25% if they expand their offerings on the online platform. The company’s new pricing system will be first implemented in North America and Europe, followed by other areas.

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According to the company’s statement, some schools availing the new fee are the University of Colorado Boulder and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Coursera Offers New Fee System

The pandemic has affected the way schools think about online degrees, said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. Online learning’s flexibility is what students seek, and schools match that need by expanding online degree programs, he added.

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Schools that wish to offer more online programs will benefit from Coursera’s new pricing scheme. Moreover, the online platform provides schools with Coursera Labs courses, reusable material, structured teaching and grading, and stacking certificates.

Several Coursera's universities and college partners raised questions on how they could quickly grow their degree courses online and reach many students worldwide, said Betty Vandenbosch, Coursera’s Chief Content Officer.

With the new fee system, the schools will be able to use the platform to grow their degree program offerings, she stated.

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Jeffrey Brown, Gies College of Business Dean at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, said that the university currently has 4 degrees available on Coursera. And because of the platform, they were able to get 12,000 students in 90 countries.

Brown noted that this is particularly important nowadays since more colleges launch online courses, and their goals and needs are far unique compared before.

According to Robert McDonald, Online and Extended Education’s  Senior Vice Provost at the University of Colorado Boulder, they can serve more students due to the new price structure since students have leaned toward flexible degree programs because of the pandemic.

Many schools have expressed a growing interest in adding their courses to Coursera in recent months. The degree programs provided by schools on the platform have increased by 55% as of June 30.

As per Coursera, owing to the platform's over 87 million users, the courses have hit 81% additional students than the year before.

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