Online learning continues to attract attention from the
media and investors. Just days after Google announced it was creating an online certification program in Android development with
Udacity, the online course marketplace Udemy said it raised $65 million to fund international expansion.
Udemy already offers courses in 80 languages and half
of the company’s existing revenue comes from students outside the United
States, according to CEO Dennis Yang. The new funding will help expand its
course libraries and enterprise products that companies use for employee
training and education.
The Udemy platform provides tools that allow experts to
create and sell courses on any topic, or provide them to students for free. Since
none of the company’s courses currently offer college credit, most students
take them to improve job-related skills.
“We find that the value of formal degrees is going
down,” Yang said in an article for Fortune.