I'm not a big fan of this argument, which I see here too often. Really, truly motivated people don't need the Internet either. For any obstacle to learning, you can always say that it's not a problem because somebody, somewhere makes through.
I took exactly one Coursera course, Odersky's Scala course. But it was a great experience. Going through the material on a schedule with a bunch of other people got me to work harder than I would have on my own. I learned way more than I would have without the structure. Does that mean I wasn't "really motivated"? Sure, I guess. But the point of having educational institutions, rather than just giving everybody library cards and turning them loose, is to make it easy for a large number of people to learn.
So if it's suddenly harder for people to learn, even if they aren't judged truly worthy, I'm willing to call that a bad thing.
I've successfully learned quite a few difficult things without Coursera etc that I was highly motivated to learn. And I've learned more things via Coursera that I was less motivated to learn (or didn't even know I wanted to learn).
I know this, because I am in the second (you may be too). I'll dig around looking for the information because I am using it right at that moment and NEED to understand it.
I did a Coursera Machine Learning course, my first University level class after being out of school since the early 90s. I learned how about matrices (had very little math experience before), I learned about transforms, I tried to figure out what all the cryptic symbols meant, but MOSTLY, I learned how to answer the test questions.
I don't feel I really have any more understanding of machine learning today than I did before the course. Different strokes...
I believe we offer an awesome alternative for learning DS with a 'learn by doing' approach.
Edit: to add to my comment and agree with others in this thread "MOOC" confuses people. Sometimes I have to remind myself and say free online courses (even though some are not free).
I have to say it's super quick and I like the interface (just signed up), what does the stack look like if you don't mind?
Edit: Now that I think about it, I have tons of questions, I'll stick to "Will you monetize it / Will it remain free"
2nd Edit: I realize now that my google kungfu is weak.
2. Rails/mysql
3. yes will remain free.
4. Monetization and an other questions just email me [email protected]
What we do that is different than others is examine each course we list. We then classify it by assigning it a subject and number that roughly reflects what level it would be at a US university . Is it a first year 101 course then say for intro to micro economics it is Econ 101. This is incredibly time consuming but we think it enables us to give users results that are more informative and they can see like choices clustered together.
The other major benefit is we can offer the CourseBuffet Degree Paths (https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree) that replicated a Bachelor's degree using free MOOCs. These paths are platform independent so one is not locked in to Coursera, edX, etc. We also now have Minors that replicate academic minors for Econ and Philosophy.
I guess they rely on donations, and advertising on Youtube?
"The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,[8] now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, Google, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations."
But that's just my second point. MOOCs are a substantial service built on top of the free internet. Surely that costs money? And surely the fact that MOOCs are increasingly charging for stuff (and taking measures to make sure users pay) is not a sign that "social fairness" is deteriorating, but simply the usual costs of building anything at all?
But it certainly makes it more accessible!
Myself for example, as a CS degree holder and IT consultant, over the last few years I received quite an education in anatomy, physiology, statistics (focus on medicine, biology and public health), chemistry, org. chemistry, medicinal chemistry (drug development), neuroscience, etc. Several hundreds of hours of lectures. Plus lots of others like history of architecture, "first nights" from Harvard (classical music, several courses), equine care, equine nutrition, Apacher Spark (Berkeley courses), and a lot more.
There is no way on earth I could have learned much esp. about the medical subjects any other way. You have to be really, really dedicated to try to put the pieces together just from random sites Google gives you - that's more for when you already are deep(er) into a subject and need something specific. You can of course, but since I have a life effort/benefit analysis would prevent one from doing so.
Why does the percentage matter? If 100 million people take MOOCs, and only 1% of them are poor and actually need them, then they still helped a million people! That's nothing to sneer at.
Second, what is your source, because I'm skeptical of that. And just because someone is "privileged" doesn't necessarily mean the courses have no value to them. They may have an education, but probably not in the thing they are studying on MOOCs. A bunch of people have learned about machine learning through MOOCs, for example.
It seems to me that it's actually the internet that improves accessibility and fairness, through which curated collections of study materials are then delivered as MOOCs. Which is terrific, but then it's hardly shocking that they'd eventually have to monetize themselves. We've seen worse attempts to crack down on the internet.