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Providers of Free MOOCs Now Charge Employers For Access To Student Data
An anonymous reader writes "Coursera announced its 'career services' feature yesterday for students who opt in. The company that works with elite colleges to offer free courses is sharing more than just academic scores — showing potential employers evidence of 'soft skills,' like how helpful students were in class discussion forums. 'Udacity, another company that provides free online courses, offers a similar service. ... Udacity's founder, Sebastian Thrun, said in an interview that 350 partner companies had signed up for its job program. While Mr. Thrun would not say how much employers pay, he characterized the fee as "significantly less than you'd pay for a headhunter, but significantly more than what you'd pay for access to LinkedIn," a popular social network for job hunters.'"
Just like everyone else, they can't come up with a better business model than selling personal data.
A bit of privacy is sacrificed here, but I think it would be worth it in the long run: free education and possible job prospects? Sounds good, and it's a good way for MOOCs to make some money. The article said there would soon be charges for certificates, though the course will remain free. I can't see anyone paying for a certificate of completion for a non-accredited course. Is there any benefit to these certificates? Overall though, I love MOOCs.
I was unfamiliar with the acronym "MOOC". From the summary I concluded it was some kind of online course, but was unable to discern what the rest of the acronym stood for. However, Google is your friend (well, not really but I will save that for a rant another day) and I was able to discover that MOOC stands for "Massive Open Online Course". From what I can see that makes "Free MOOCs" a redundant phrase that belongs in the same bin with "ATM Machines" and "PIN Numbers".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
skills versus a "degree." is a issue in Education.
Degrees are tied to systems of the past and are in big fixed blocks of time.
Not all skills fit that well into a degree setting and other stuff needs more hands on learning that is a very poor fit in to a degree class setting.
That's fine for vocational skills, but vocational training is not the sole purpose of our education system, nor should it be. A free society needs people who are educated in more than just their immediate vocation; we need people to learn philosophy and ethics, history, politics, etc. People need to be educated enough to call out their politicians on obvious lies, which means they need to be educated in economics, foreign affairs, and the various other things that politicians are supposed to manage for us.
We should not try to create a society where only the wealthy are sophisticated enough to be leaders, and where the poor only learn enough to do what the wealthy tell them. We should be working to break the aristocracy, not further cement it.
Palm trees and 8