Re:Ask HN: Which of the major MOOCs provide better credentia...
by pmulv on Thursday August 31, 2017 @08:58AM
(#15139920)
>>(How much would you care if someone told you they'd sat in on Stanford classes without enrolling? Not very much, right?)
Although this person didn't get accepted into an elite college, I think they're showing an immense amount of initiative and drive. They are aware of the quality of the education that Stanford students receive, and they want that same learning opportunities as those students even though they cannot attend for one reason or another. I think this signals a really strong desire to learn, which is something I imagine some people in recruiting "care" about.
Credentials are all about signaling. But what is it exactly credentials communicate? Is it, "person X learned about topic Y"? I'd argue it's a lot more than that. If you have a degree from Stanford, then the information "this is a person who was admitted to Stanford" has a lot of value in addition to just "this is a person who took Stanford classes". (How much would you care if someone told you they'd sat in on Stanford classes without enrolling? Not very much, right?)
There was an Econtalk episode on this:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.htm...
I think MOOCs are not particularly good as credentials in their own, but the projects you do in them can be very useful in getting a job. (This is kind of the "human capital" model discussed in the podcast.) Maybe their lack of exclusivity is part of the reason they're not more positive signals on their own.
Think about the projects you'll do and what you'll be able to say you did after the course is done.
Don't count on the credential itself to say too much.