Coursera S-1 IPO
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Pretty sure everyone was up in arms when University of Phoenix and the like were bilking students of tens of thousands in student loans and then dumping them on the street with worthless degrees (or worse incomplete degree programs).
Sure the content of the Coursera programs may be better than anything you might have had access to with UoP, but the reality is that the degrees/certificates are just as useful right now as UoP's ever were. Until the rigor is there the degrees will continue to be worth nothing. Unfortunately, that means that Coursera's business model is probably fundamentally broken, as they have previously admitted that too many people drop out if the courses are too hard. Also, making the courses meaningful would certainly require hiring a lot of TAs to grade assignments, which would cost them a lot of money.
I agree that online education definitely has a role to play in the future... But I'm really struggling to see why everyone agrees that one for-profit school is unequivocally bad, but the other gets a free pass.
I used Udacity CS101, Google Python Class and loads of other free resources and changed my life. It was true when I said Coursers changed my life. What has been slightly sad as it took Coursera years to start seriously advertising with my face, and even when they interviewed me they were almost beyond recognition.
It makes me sad I just happened to learn CS and software development during the online education wild west. That's what I dreamed of for everyone. Top level education for everyone, for free. I didn't care about certificates. I had knowledge and projects I could prove.
It may not all be doom and gloom, but when people ask me for recommendations after seeing advert, I sigh a little, because situation isn't as great as it was.
I am deeply indebted to Coursera, but I always felt like they would struggle making money. People are only willing to pay for certs if they mean something, and unfortunately they don't. When I interviewed, every place I met with was impressed by the courses I had put myself through and the knowledge I had gained -- but not a single one even asked a question about any certificates. I always thought a sub model would probably fit them better, but it's obviously difficult-nigh-on-impossible to claw back free content. If they wanted the content to stay free, they really needed the strong backing of some sort of private entity.
And yes, some of the other platforms have been amazing too. I did the full databases course on Stanfords platform. That was priceless, and also free. Relational algebra was exactly the sort of theoretical knowledge that just learning from experience and docs doesn't teach.
Interestingly I also find most companies I have seen willing to pay for courses want some kind of certificate at the end. They don't seem to value abstract learning, even though that's the part that their team leverage to hopefully help their bottom line.
I want the platforms to make money, but I feel like universities who were not wanting to be left behind when the concept was emerging gave away far more for a short moment than they ever were going to continue to do.
Certificates and credentials and things distract from actual verifiable learning in so much of education. It is deeply ironic because that is their entire purpose.
I understand regulated industries like legal, medical and engineering need to have minimum standards that require certification, but yet the quality and reliability of practitioners varies wildly. I just feel like by turning education into a product, it is a necessary evil. Government funding is an avenue that lots of academic institutions go down. Perhaps governments should invest in more free and open education. Rather than for example funneling so much money to textbook companies.
Call me naïve and idealistic, I appreciate that there are problems and counter arguments, and as mentioned in many comments, competition does help to drive down prices. I certainly think we are still in a much better place now with it all. I'm still optimistic about all the amazing education opportunities online.
That's basically the LinkedIn model as I understand it--which has what used to be Lynda and maybe other things. I have it available as part of my company's continuing ed materials.
But what works as a professional resource paid for by companies doesn't necessarily work for individuals who will mostly only pay for a cert that employers are specifically looking at. Maybe some would pay a Netflix-range monthly fee but I suspect not enough.
It's unreasonable to expect one institution to provide all of the above for free and they just can't compete with the broad range of the internet.
The internet itself is the revolution in learning, not Coursera and not Udemy.
But you are still correct.
I did not take a single course in my profession (I'm a CS guy doing architecture work now). Most of it was in chemistry, org. chem, bio-chem., anatomy, physiology, medicinal chemistry (drug development), neuroscience, biology/genetics, clinical study design - plus a lot of statistics practical courses (using R to do stuff, there was a very good multi-course series on Coursera).
I would not have paid anything because 1) it was just for fun, I cannot make any money with what I learned, and 2) I was earning a pittance only because I was doing did for a few years while recovering my health.
I think I can generalize the second point at least a little bit - I could see a lot of people taking such courses exactly when they are not busy in their jobs. It takes waaayyyyy too much effort to do this on the side when you have an active job and especially a family on top. Therefore I think a lot of the people who would be interested are exactly those who may not have the budget to pay.
Even more so because there are plenty of alternatives (for me my learning marathon years started with 100 hours of physiology lectures in a Youtube channel, and if I had to pay anything for access there was no way I would have ever even found any for-pay courses in the first place since the whole thing was completely accidental, one thing leading to another), and also because those "certificates" don't mean a thing.
The FOR PAY model removes all the "play" part, only people with a plan andintent come to such a place in the first place. I think free education would be far better, attracting more "accidents" like myself who never planned for any of it.
Already when I took the courses I knew they were doomed to disappear (in that form) because there would be insufficient profit. I always thought some way to fund such sites so that they can provide FREE quality education would be better instead of forcing them into the usual profit constraints. Of course 99% would be "wasted" from the point of view of the monetary-minded people (for whom my own years-long for fun learning would be completely useless too), but even they might see that even just a tiny percentage of people who do benefit and who would never found the opportunity in a for-pay edu system would be worth it, globhal-economically speaking. The price is insignificant compared to any presence-based learning (and having created multimedia learning content I certainly don't undervalue the effort for even a single course, but it's a one-time effort, and the continued presence of TAs can be achieved from within the learning community, I did that too for some of the more technical courses, free support to other learners helped me learn that much more by having to research other people's questions).
And yet, paying for it didn't remove the "play" part you're talking about. In fact, I would feel awful if I used the very valuable services provided to me by these business and persons for free, exactly because I enjoyed them so much.
Oh and you ignored half my post, I repeat: Not only is there a big difference between me and you, you actually use the gained knowledge, I also made the point that you will only reach a small part of the population who 1) have a goal and 2) have money, which for most of the world is not true. Providing knowledge to significant parts of the world who have Internet access but not nearly enough free money for multiple courses (thousands of dollars before you learn anything, even at just $50 a course, many cost much more than that). You not only look at only yourself, even assuming a broader view you concentrate on the top 10% of people worldwide.
And when I first tried coding from a self-paced course much earlier on, I wouldn't have started casually with a paywall.
Also, I valued the fact people in economies where they would almost certainly not afford US / European prices could freely participate as long as internet was available.
For me it is sort of like if you had to pay for git. It is one of my most used and valued tools, but part of its inherent value is its ubiquity, which I do believe has only come to pass because of the fact it is free software in all senses.
There's a difference between something we all have, and something we could have if we are able/willing to pay and I think education overall needs a bit of both.
There are millions of kids and people of all ages going to extremes to access the internet to learn new stuff.
I met a kid in a remote village who would cycle for miles every weekend they were not working to seat in a public library to learn on the internet, for that kid a course costing 1 penny would be too expensive and no one in the family had a credit card to begin with.
Sal Khan deserves all the praise and more, Khan Academy is now in multiple languages, his videos are literally changing people’s lives.
MIT’s edX used to be free, they are now monetising the courses and will withdraw access after their self imposed artificial course time has run out if you don’t pay them, this also creates a second class of students, the ones with money get special privileges and get graded and the poor ones don’t and offering ‘financial aid’ doesn’t work if you really want to reach far and wide, how many will close the site when they see it costs thousands of dollars for a course? In a sense edX is way more disappointing than Coursera.
But just like I stopped recommending Coursera when they started restricting access to their courses I look forward to shorting their stock when they go public and donating the profits to educational nonprofits.
Start with free tell them you are doing novel thing -> Becomes Popular -> Start milking money
I am thankful to Khan Academy for this exact reason. Everyone is equal in their eyes and doesn't discriminate people based on how rich they are.
European and American people don't realize how much privileged they are.
Same story, now I recommend Freecodecamp & Khan Academy. Some of Stanford free courses are very good too.
It used to be "get this certificate to get 6x more LinkedIn views". Now, 50% of the ads I get are "support Coursera's mission to bring people education for free".
Jeeze, not everyone on HN has the same viewpoint!
These categories of schools just have different funding mechanisms and thus different incentive structures. Compared to private nonprofits, for-profits can crowdfund creation of the school, but give up some ownership. On the other hand, public nonprofits are controlled by politicians and the general public.
> why did [many people] think that one for-profit is bad, and the other gets a free pass
I suppose for most people it was a value judgement, rather than an ideological one. The same reason why someone might dislike McDonald’s, but still like Veganburg. Bang-per-buck, many Coursera classes are a better value than those at other schools, whether they are for-profit, private nonprofit, or public.
* economy of scale means it’s cheaper for the same quality
* egalitarian access means you don’t need X gpa to get the top classes
* online means the TAM / impact is way bigger
* lack of actual degree for most courses means you are spending your dollars on actual learning and not merely paying to signal middle-class membership
I’m not necessarily buying in to all of these but I think there’s clearly enough to justify the business on its surface. Haven’t dug into the biz metrics though.
Anecdotally a friend did Open University which is probably equivalent to the full degrees offered at Coursera, but less convenient. They spent years grinding out a degree after work. They are a data scientist now. So this path is valuable and increases access to (I’d argue overly) credentialed jobs.
For someone who did not take the traditional path to schooling, wanting to go back open access is amazing, but if the primary value of the credential is correlated with selectivity, I can’t help but feel off. It effectively feels like pay to play and to the average person who hasn’t heard of the school/program, does it signal more than a for-profit. I also couldn’t be sure, not being familiar with how UK programs are generally structured, but a lot of the programs looks extremely superficial, and wide, like what you would get from a low tier AS program at a bad community college. This is kinda the same feeling I had with certain degree options through Coursera as well.
The only time a certificate would be useful to me would be if I wanted to change career. Other than that, I just want the knowledge, and Coursera lets me blast through courses to get top quality information. I love it.
Flexible course curriculum but it seems they give you the stamp you need to get to the next level, and perhaps more importantly, the flexibility to do it at your own pace. It may be that as you say you can pick your curriculum to be shallow, I don’t know the details I’m afraid.
I think a lot of roles just care about box-ticking; degree in CS or related STEM field. The recruiter doesn’t care where from if you tick the box. In some sense it’s BS, and Coursera may be the cheapest way to hack the system here.
My friend found it really rewarding and empowering to get his degree even though he took a detour to get it, so i can at least provide a third-hand vouching for the quality of OU from an educational content perspective, as well as passing the bar for credentialism too.
Caveat Emptor, I don’t have any positive or negative testimonials on Coursera for getting a job. And I’d actually suggest in software that you can get into the field without a degree much more easily than other STEM fields. But if you’re not in a tech hub then the credential might help you to get a foot in the door if you are otherwise struggling to see a way to do so.
I also did a physics undergrad (in person) and can attest that most of the classes these days are theory-based. Lots of maths; Quantum Mechanics is all maths, Nuclear/Particle is all theoretical/computational (though at the point of masters/PhD you would get to fire lasers at real things, I never did though). I did have one experimental lab class where we practiced measurements of various sorts, but that was maybe 10-20% of the first couple years. You could take different electives that emphasize experimental physics more, but the theory is plenty deep to keep you busy without compromising. So if you want to learn quantum physics or stellar nuclear physics for example you don’t need a lab at all.
That's the root cause of the problem. I seriously doubt the integrity of any system can survive the injection of trillions of dollars into the market. Schools want to capture as much of it as possible and that means raising tuition, dumbing down classes to make sure students don't drop out as well as creating fun but useless courses. It actually makes no difference whether students are learning anything useful or even if they're learning anything at all. They just need them to be enrolled in order to get those loans.
I honestly don't know what makes universities work. Their "mission" to educate in the US has definitely crept towards for-profit. Seeing endowments grow multiple times over but their student body stay the same size. Over the past few decades they've teased by publishing course materials online, but have usually been very protective. I can't imagine this not changing over the next few decades.
Like you point out, entry level stuff scales really well. Maybe "graduate level" material costs a premium or its a loss-leader as a way add prestige? University undergrad often has "filter classes" which always seemed like a money grab because otherwise their admissions and onboarding departments aren't doing their job. Graduate classes were always much smaller and hard for people to afford.
Yet, I still believe coursera is amazing and I’ll buy some shares just to fund the idea. I guess that was the original intention of the market.
Many people thought it was anyway.
In practice, it ended up being mostly another source of lecture videos used by motivated professionals with generally solid fundamentals. For which, frankly, there were already a lot of resources out there.
Then about the audience? I personally was a student when Coursera became a thing and I got into my masters by taking the course on cryptography. I have many student friends at the time who learned a lot through other courses.
Honestly it's hard to complain, because all the stuff is still there. It's just not as utopian and revolutionary as it once seemed to be. Or maybe it is and I should stop complaining. I just wished it was like wikipedia.
So it just .. shouldn't be allowed? Free markets allow you to set your price for your abilities and have agency over your future. If I want to charge people something to teach them something, I don't want a group of hackers telling me I can't.
Yes, but the excess isn’t siphoned away to random people. It’s paid to the investors in exchange for creating the school.
Paying to take a single class has never been the problem with for-profit education.
Regarding for-profit education, does anyone here think that a government-backed education platform would have achieved what Coursera did in the last 10 years? Don't kid yourself. It wouldn't have been remotely close in quality and content and would have been a feeding trough for the political class. It wouldn't have even been granted funding.
Well you are on one of the hotbeds of the internet where the mantra is 'monetize everything and see what sticks' sooo
And, why would someone's negative impression of one particular for-profit education outfit – one whose abuses were strongly associated with a particular set of misguided incentive-misaligning government loan subsidies – turn them off against all for-profit educators?
Would either of the following formulations make sense:
"I thought we were all against for-profit investor Bernie Madoff, why do people like for-profit investor Warren Buffett?"
"I thought we were all against for-profit medical hype like Theranos, why do people like for-profit BioNTech's mRNA vaccine?"
You shouldn't erase all the other salient differences between people & projects under some broad, & assumed derogatory, "for-profit" label.
Competition is a good thing and the best way to drive prices down.
Just because bad actors defraud their clients, doesn't mean all business should be outlawed.
I ended up giving up and not bothering with deep learning and neural nets until the amazing, legendary, awesome CS231n was made available taught by Andrej Karpathy.
I don't know what it is about the way Andrej teaches but it's so good that I literally binge watched all of CS231n over a weekend and then went back to the start and watched again while working through the exercises.
Just goes to show that not every teaching style will fit every student and that's why online learning has a big future - teaching/learning style compatibility is a hugely under-appreciated issue.
I admire Geoff Hinton. I'm also proud of his accomplishments as a fellow Canadian. But I'm not in sync with the way he explains stuff though I'll always watch every lecture and presentation he puts out on video.
Random anecdote; I learned how to solve Rubik’s cube and get to sub 30 seconds by watching his YouTube channel ~10 years ago (He was a PhD student at Stanford at the time). I was always amazed by his teaching skills even back then.
Karpathy's CS231n was indeed another great course. We're really spoiled for choice these days.
Two years ago Geoff Hinton requested his course be removed because it was out of date.
At a university, at least at a post-graduate level, you are probably going to be taught by a deep learning researcher passionate about the subject, with the added advantage of support if you struggle with some concepts.
To reinforce our long-term commitment to providing global access to affordable and flexible world-class learning, on February 1, 2021, we amended our certificate of incorporation to become a Delaware public benefit corporation. Public benefit corporations are a relatively new class of corporations that are intended to produce a public benefit and to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. Under Delaware law, public benefit corporations are required to identify in their certificate of incorporation the public benefit or benefits they will promote, and their directors have a duty to manage the affairs of the corporation in a manner that balances the pecuniary interests of the stockholders, the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation’s conduct, and the specific public benefit identified in the public benefit corporation’s certificate of incorporation. See “Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Our Existence as a Public Benefit Corporation” and “Description of Capital Stock—Public Benefit Corporation Status.” The public benefit stated in our certificate of incorporation is to provide global access to flexible and affordable high-quality education that supports personal development, career advancement, and economic opportunity.
They definitely seemed to have benefitted from covid in terms of registered users which isn't a huge surprise. Registered users from 2019 to 2020 grew by 67%, averaging around 23-24% for the few prior years.
Revenue jumps at a similar rate from 2019 to 2020, from about $184m to 293m, 59% growth.
11,900 degree students at the end of 2020, with degree segment revenue doubling from $15m in 2019 to $30m in 2020.
Some stats from the filing:
year users revenue
2020 - 77m users / $293m
2019 - 46m users / $184m
2018 - 37m users / $141m
2017 - 30m users / $95m
Does anyone have some experiences with their degree programmes? Curious to hear if these are more promising...
But, yeah, every peer-reviewed assignment and use of discussion board was awful. This isn't a university where everyone is more or less on at least roughly the same footing with respect to language, educational level, and commitment. At least company certs have to maintain some quality floor if they're going to have some value for employers and therefore of interest to would-be employees. As soon as they become viewed as diploma mill trash they're done.
The peer reviews are definitely better in the degree program, but there's always a few people not even trying, of course. Nothing that's really impacted my own work.
The wealthy boys have so much money they don’t know where it park it. Ten year interest rate is up, celebrities are now guru SPAC wizards, hedge fund guys are acting like immature teens in order to manipulate stocks on Reddit.
Every time I’ve seen this exuberance; the Retail investor is left out to dry badly bloody, and completely broke.
I sure hope Warren get’s her rich boy tax passed. In my neighborhood the wealthy can’t buy enough junk off Amazon, and at the same time complain over the number of homeless camps popping up.
such is life
For example the neighbors whose homes are being bought probably make good money.
And if you are convinced it is a bad time for retail investors, don't invest.
What alternative do you propose? Government regulations on what everybody is allowed to own? Granted, they could stop printing money.
Currently I find Udacity model better than Coursera: I can get a course and take it in my own time without having to stick to a schedule. Also the fact that I pay for what I consume. I personally dont like subscription model for these things you may use once or twice every yesr
Yeah, I remember Dan Ariely's course on behavioral economics, and — my favorite — Yuval Harari's course on the human history from the early, pre-paid-certificate days of Coursera. That was fun! I have a feeling that as the site became more commercial it has also become less fun.
FY Ended December 31, in millions except percentage
| 2019 | 2020 | YoY
---------------|--------|--------|-------
revenue | $184 | $294 | 60%
gross profit | $95 | $155 | 63%
op ex | $143 | $221 | 55%
net (loss) | $(47) | $(67) | (43)%
(loss) ex SBC | $(31) | $(50) | (61)%
free cash flow | $(31) | $(27) | 15%
total users | 46 | 77 | 67%
net retention | 106% | 114% | -- In thousands, except percentage
| 2019 | 2020 | YoY
---------------------------|---------|----------|-----
research and development | $56,364 | $76,784 | 36%
sales and marketing | $57,042 | $107,249 | 88%
general and administrative | $29,810 | $37,215 | 25%Coursera's layout seems intentionally convoluted and anxiety inducing to me. Seems geared to guide you to a Certificate rather than any one good course that might meet your interest.
I recently took a course on Flutter from Udemy and was pretty disappointed. Not with the platform per se, but with the entire _idea_ of video courses on programmatic concepts. I only took it because for Flutter most of the resources are videos, and not books or articles.
I find that video courses do not invite the same level of interactivity I feel when I learn from, say, a textbook. There are also of course a horrible reference as one has to dig in to find a specific video, then find the time within that video to learn a concept, while with a book I can merely do a text search.
Videos also are frustrating in the fact that one cannot fluidly control the pace. One can pause and resume and increase from 1x to 2x and back again, sure, but with text I can merely... stop reading to code something up and then when I am ready to proceed I can... resume reading. I hate fiddling with a mouse or a keyboard to pause/resume/pause/resume/rewind, etc.
Needless to say I will not be taking a video course for anything programming related again.
Just took Intro to Mathematical Thinking from Stanford on coursera, it was fantastic.
Coursera -> Helped me to graduate
Udemy -> Helped me to get useful skills quicker and make money
Generally, looking at the number of students enrolled and the rating of a course gives a good idea on quality.
You also find the same in, for example, college. Where a tutor may be able to get you up to speed faster by 'debugging' your learning.
Udemy - professionals looking to make money outside of their day job by teaching, with varying levels of competency at either their profession or the ability to teach.
You'll get more "practical" or "current" topics out of Udemy, but better education out of Coursera.
Coursera is very bad at keeping their courses live though. Udemy is much better at this.
I would say the distribution is way wider. Yes, there are top courses by top universities but those are sadly a minority. There are lots upon lots of mediocre courses either by big or small universities and the worst offenders the programs created by vendors (Google, IBM, etc) which are nothing but a barely disguised way to push their platforms. Going directly to the university site and you will find the real deal, last term course which usually will be significantly better.
One bonus with the Google/Facebook/whatever approach is that you sometimes get academics who became in-house researchers to teach their courses. This was more common in the early days and pretty much what you get out of Udacity. It's true that they train to the platform but there really isn't another way to get e.g. Sebastian Thrun out there anymore. Another view may take that as a broken window, however.
2019 2020
Revenue. 184 293
Profi. -46 -66
Disclosure: IAN good at reading S-1s.
They lucked out with coronavirus, as that sent people scrambling for distance learning. That won't last.
edit: Apparently folks disagree. We don't all see the same things or interpret the future the same way. I think education as an industry is going to go into decline, but I don't see companies like Coursera as being able to thrive by feeding off the corpses.
People have been saying that for years and yet there is little data to back it up. If anything in economic downturns people are more likely to go back to school so as not to waste the time being unemployed. The fact that Coursera is doing so well during this downturn indicates to me that the industry is just going to transform, not necessarily decline. At least in # of people touched, although revenue might decrease in aggregate. People need the motivation that comes from organized education, whether it be Coursera or college.
Where's Coursera's moat here? Dozens of companies offer this, and from what I can gather, companies will want to spend the minimum amount of money they can get away with to cover the legal liabilities.
> using some ML library in the analytics stack
This was a fad. You don't teach your average software engineers how to do this. If you care, you hire data scientists and have your own ML team. Or you just carry on with business as usual.
edit: your downvotes flag my account and prevent me from interacting with the HN community. If that's how you'd like to do things, then fine. I'd rather this was an amicable discussion than a downvote party.
(I am not downvoting you, just commenting on why some people might be doing so...)
The thesis I've come to believe is that universities will be abandoned by the majority of Gen Z because of the high cost and student debt issue. Also the increased awareness of the low value of a college education and the lack of a guaranteed employment.
I think we'll see continued enrollment in fields like computer science, and I think the university and community college setting will continue to be popular.
Unless Coursera and other platforms can attach value and employability guarantees to the credentials they offer, they're not a 1:1 replacement for universities. They're more of a form of "continued learning" that many universities offer to adults and seniors. Learning for a small audience that actively seeks it out.
Which is why you heard so much howling when Udacity first "pivoted." Continuing education for mostly early to mid-career professionals, often with grad degrees is one thing. (And, yes, there are stories including in the comments here about Coursera being someone's big break but they're a small minority.) Which is great. But it was a real kick in the teeth to the people who saw MOOCs as this great opportunity for populations underserved by traditional higher ed.
I know this is a popular opinion on HN, but I think it's lazy and cynical and just plain wrong. Plenty of people go to university to learn, either because they felt that need or realised they had it in themselves when they got there.
University education has many problems, particularly right now, but it has also made a large contribution to making the world we have today. I think it's worth valuting that.
The university degrees offered through their platform aren’t.
Platform is pretty basic/poor. There’s bugs months old in some of the courses that haven’t been solved. I don’t think there’s much community/networking. They ask cringe questions at the end of a module to create discussions, very LinkedIn like “How will you use what you learned in the real world?”
The mobile app and the web app are out of sync. I’ve completed the course on the web but on the mobile app it says I still have 4hrs to complete.
I think all colleges will start to offer online degrees going forward. Lambda school seems to be taking off and it seems more like the future of education.
I’m a customer but won’t be an investor, nothing groundbreaking. Could easily be copied. They seriously need a better UX. Pluralsight & Datacamp UX is a lot better.
Content : 7/10
Platform : 4/10
I agree with this. My cynical take when I see someone with a Coursera certification is "so what?"... Not in a mean way. I just simply don't see the value of that certification.
But then I remember that the tech industry is not the same as other industries. There are other industries where there's still a strong cultural bias towards formalized and demonstrable education. So those certifications could indeed signal employers in other industries about competence in certain knowledge area. I strongly believe that those certifications don't prove anything but I guess there's some people that do believe in their value.
From the S1:
We incurred net losses of $46.7 million and $66.8 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, and we had an accumulated deficit of $343.6 million as of December 31, 2020. We expect to incur significant losses in the future. We will need to generate and sustain increased revenue levels in future periods to achieve profitability, and even if we achieve profitability, we may not be able to maintain or increase our level of profitability. We anticipate that our operating expenses will increase substantially for the foreseeable future as we continue to, among other things...
These expenditures will make it more difficult for us to achieve and maintain profitability. Our efforts to grow our business may be more costly than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue enough to offset our higher operating expenses. If we are forced to reduce our expenses, it could negatively impact our growth and growth strategy. As a result, we can provide no assurance as to whether or when we will achieve profitability. If we are not able to achieve and maintain profitability, the value of our company and our common stock could decline significantly, and you could lose some or all of your investment.
Coursera and other 'education' companies are mostly attempts to put themselves in-between government subsidized higher education and citizens who already fucking pay for higher education institutions through taxes.
This company is pure scum, let's be honest about what it is.
I think you should reframe what's being done here.
Coursera sees an opportunity to make money by creating a market for affordable educational content. Universities do not feel compelled to offer their educations for free or at reduced costs, because that's how they sell their expensive services to students and wealthy families.
You have many forces acting in a complex, multi-dimensional market. Don't assume evil. Different brains, different angles of attack. Lots of offenses, defenses, and interesting state space landscapes.
He’s following the rules and is opening up the discussion a bit earlier than others.
I’m happy to see it.
With edtech the name of the game has always been quality of the curriculum and how innovative your technology is in terms of being able to make learning more successful for the learner. The "interactive coding" in the browser model I think is perfect for learning how to code.
I've looked at coursera and personally I haven't seen anything significant in terms of innovation.