COURSERA

Competition and Globalization

Group C6
Aayush Sharma- B14126
Karan Chhabra- B14149
Pratik Chandak- B14163
Sarang Kedia- B14172
Siddharth Sharad- B14175

Changes in the Higher

Education Industry
Increase in price of higher education ( tuition
fees) due to decrease in revenue support for
institutions.
The average tuition fees at public four year
institutions has increased by 66% between 201213 and 2002-03
The value of higher education was questioned as
it has not improved with the increase in price.
The number of student loans and balance of
average borrower both increased by 70%

Introduction of Online
Courses
Online education began in the late 1970s and
1980s.
By 2011, 30% of all U.S. higher education
students were estimated to take one online course
during a term.
The number of students taking online course
surpassed 6 million
Unlike traditional online courses which charged
fees and limited access, MOOC is supposed to be
free and can be accessed by any number of people

Introduction of MOOC
Initial MOOC
platforms
Udacity
(Sebastian
Thrun)

Coursera
(Andrew Neg,
Daphne
Koller)

New York Times

dubbed 2012 as the
Year of the MOOC

edX
MIT Technology Review
hailed it as The Most
Important Education
Technology in 200 Years

COURSERA Early
Success
Raised $65 million in
funding
4.2 million registered
students
415+ courses on the
platform
Core product technology
platform

Coursera: An Introduction
Launched in April 2012 by 2
professors at the Stanford
University Koller and Ng

As of July 2013, it had over

75 partner institutes and
universities

As of July 2013, it had raised

$65 million in funding and
had 4.2 million registered
students

Competitors included eDX

and Udacity

Mission statement aimed to

increase access to quality
education throughout the
globe and bring about a level
playing field. The founder
looks at this which
supplements higher
education rather than
replace it

Offered over 415+ courses in

areas such as humanities,
mathematics, science, social
sciences, computer sciences,
business etc
Internal forums made the
learning interactive and
round-the-clock

Business Model

Technology
Technology was developed in-house in order to provide enhanced
services such as providing intermittent quizzes during the
streaming of a video
The focus was on making it able to support high-volume traffic,
seamlessly delivering video lectures and quizzes and automating
assessment grading
They leveraged many open source and paid-for services and uses
Amazon Web Services for needs such as web storage, server
infrastructure and search functionality
The sheer volume of data based on students made analytics,
personalization and real-time analysis possible. Machine learning
used to design personalization and identify the areas where
students struggle to help them
The aim for build apps based on mobile platforms to provide
round-the-clock access

Operations
Marketing: Apart from a company blog, they spent no money
on marketing and relied on word-of-mouth to grow organically

Drop-out rate: For normal courses, 70% of the registered

students actually begun the course and overall completion rate
was 7-9%. However, 70% of those who undertook the Signature
Track course completed it.
Human Resources: It had only 49 employees excluding its cofounders. The largest teams were engineering, course
operations and business development with 26,15 and 9
employees respectively. They also hired interns and unpaid
volunteers to help build the course wiki or help as a teaching
assistant/community tutor.

Partnerships
Number of partners: 83 across 16 countries
The calibre of Courseras partners gave its credibility and respect in the
higher education circles and university presidents fretted that it would
reflect badly on them if they failed to sign on
Universities designed and produced the content and owned the IP while
Coursera provided the platform to host and stream it
After an issue with the quality of delivery with the Fundamentals of online
learning course there was more emphasis on a collaborative review of
the course material and design
Each course took about $50,000 to create and a professor spent around 100
hours on the MOOC prior to the launch and 8-10 hours/week after it was
launched
They also partnered with non-profits and universities to translate the courses
into languages and partnered with various publishers to provide digital
textbooks

Revenue Streams
Signature Track: Optional fee-based electronic certificate
provided for $30-100. It was available for courses and increasing
Some courses offered college transfer credit at institutes that
chose to accept validation by the American Council on Education
(ACE). Coursera charge an additional $60-90 on top of Signature
Track for the proctored exam
Career services was launched in Dec 2012 to provide recruiting
services. It developed a mean through which companies such as
Facebook, Twitter, etc were paired with high performing
students using analytics. Coursera received a flat fee
Company Gear: T-shirts, mugs and other company branded
gear was sold online
Coursera shared around 6 to 15% of gross revenues from the
course to the partner university. Revenue sharing with the
professor was left to the university

Potential Revenue Models

Investors usually hoped for 10x returns on investment but
crucially showed patience with this project. They, however,
hinted at an important direction while stating that Coursera
should accumulate high-quality content which could be licensed
out
The future revenue models could be categorized into 3 major
groups:
1. Charging for content delivery: Either through collecting
license fees for providing courses to non-partners institutes OR
giving a free demo followed by fee. Also, they could partner with
corporate to train employees
2. Charging for premium services: Increase scope of the
Signature Track and transferrable credit. Also, look into
services such as human-provided tutorials or manual grading
3. Charging for access to student data/traffic: The high
amount of student related data and traffic could be monetized
through career services, textbook referrals or advertising (like
Google and Facebook)

Current Status and

Future Plans
Over 13 million users, 2 million completed courses, 1793 courses and 138

partners
Expanding in China and India, by understanding local requirements
Leading MOOC platform Coursera has announced it will begin charging
students to submit assignments for grading in certain courses
Increased usage of Coursera by universities to teach remedial courses to
give professors more time to focus on research
In 2014, Coursera then launched its Specialization programmes which
package three to nine courses that each range in cost between $29-$99
with prices adjusted for different locales. Eg Corporate Finance covers 7
electives covering various areas of Corporate Finance. Specialization
course fees are split 50-50 between the platform and the partner university.
Elsewhere, Specialization models have been developed to encourage full
time enrolment toward a degree. Last May, the University of Illinois
launched the iMBA. The plan lays out six Specializations that can qualify
students to enrol in six for-credit courses at the university which result in
an MBA costing around$20,000.
Funding status if $146.1 million in 6 rounds from 12 investors

COMPETITOR
ANALYSIS

UDACITY

Founded by: Sebastian Thrun (for-profit)

Instead of putting up courses with defined timeline, it offered courses on

demand with suggested completion times.

Focused on technology courses

International student translate the lectures into different languages using

Amara (platform for translation)

Technology like Artificial Intelligence could allow the platform to understand

each students learning
- Personalized educational content

Revenue Models :
- Providing accredited courses with degree-granting institutions for a fee
- Udacitys Career Placement Program connected qualified students directly
to these partner employers (paid for hire)

Funding: $ 21.1 Million from Charles River Ventures, Steve Blank,

Andreessen Horowitz

Active doing vs. Passive listening

Round-the-clock mentors that were trained to support and encourage
students to complete the courses, via chat rooms, a helpline,

eDX
The X University is a group of university partners

developed content for courses offered on edX

Non-profit Organization with 900,000+ students
Start and end dates for courses
Consortium of 27 global partners
Alternative partnerships with Non-Consortium
organizations or Non-University partners (IMF, Chicago,)
Only MOOC open-source platform
- Available for use and modification by the public
Revenue Models :
- University self-service model : just use the plateform
but non assistance to produce
- EdX-supported model : assistance in producing the
courses

Competitive Landscape
Coursera

Udacity

edX

Status

For-Profit

For-Profit

Non-Profit

Funding

$65 million

$21.1 million

$60 million

Students

5+ million

1.8 million

1.65 million

No. of
courses

532
(Broad range)

33
(Technical fields)

125
(Broad Range)

Languages

63+

Verified
certification

Available for
$30-100

Proctored
exam
certificates

Only physical
exam
certificates

Accreditaion

5 courses for
ACE credit

5 courses

Only via
licensing insti