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Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

I was an early user of Coursera. I really enjoyed and completed three classes and thought it was the future of education. Since then, they've tried to monetize and in the process thrown quality out the window and ignored their users. I think Koller leaving is just another sign that coursera is run by its investors, in it for money instead of making a great education platform. The site no longer has any value to me, and I haven't even browsed the course list in over a year. I'm sure Koller is making a good decision, moving on from it to something she can be passionate about again. Best of luck.

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So on point. I took Andrew Ng's first machine learning course, it was the future of learning!

In stead of building a framework for iterative improvements, and an online educational material, Coursera focused on building "classes" and "credentials" and trying to monetize. It isn't surprising that I learnt the most in college from Wikipedia. Which isn't even meant to be a teaching material.

Truly a shame.

Hopefully Khan Academy or even Wikipedia doesn't eventually disappoint.

Unless those credentials are accepted by employers and schools and count for a real degree, they are meaningless.

That's a bit like saying there's no point in reading a book because employers don't ask for the books you've read.

The courses are awesome just for you to learn things. It wouldn't even matter if you got nothing at the end. However they do provide a genuine way to show that you've taken a course. It shows willingness to learn above and beyond your degree. You can stick it on your Linked In profile and Stack Overflow profile, it's a way to differentiate yourself from the masses.

Also it's a way of finding better employers. If you're employer is open-minded enough to take your Coursera courses seriously then they're more likely to be a good employer.

As I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315373 coursera credentials show that you are willing to invest a lot of my free time to learn about new topics on your own, often under difficult circumstances (only help in the forum instead of having a tutor etc.).

This is probably something employers like.

From the article:

> Though both have now officially moved on to new challenges, Koller and Ng remain co-chair’s of the Coursera Board of Directors

They are clearly both still involved.

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