Like dozens of other universities across the country,
the University of Washington, Seattle, has offered free massive open online
courses through companies such as Coursera and edX. The school is now experimenting
with a way to produce revenue by charging for more rigorous versions of the
free courses for credit.
University officials figure classes could pay for
themselves if just 30 to 40 students would be willing to pay for each for-credit
offering, which includes extra work and allows students to either attend the
class in person or participate through live video/audio. However, what seemed
like a good idea in theory has yet to work well in practice.
For instance, the university offered a computational finance
course through Coursera last quarter that had an enrollment of more than 30,000
people, but just two chose the for-credit option. A scientific computing class
attracted nearly 15,000 people, but none of them were willing to pay.
David Szatmary, vice provost of UW Educational
Outreach, told The Seattle Times that late sign-up and poor advertising for the course may have caused the low paid
participation rate.
“We’ll give it a year and then decide how many other
courses we want to put on,” he said. “Right now, we’re serving a lot of people
who would not otherwise be touched by the University of Washington.”
