MOOCs
topic on 6 shows · 9 statements across 8 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
In Depth 
the Knowledge Project 
A Product Market Fit Show 
Top Founders 
the a16z Podcast
9 statements about MOOCs, every show
Kao: Completion rates for asynchronous video courses were only 3% to 6%
“I started digging into the completion rates of video courses and realized that they were abysmally low. I think three to six percent is completion rate.”
Vaillancourt: Elite universities prioritize full-tuition students over MOOC learners
“At the end of the day, their priority is their traditional business, which is the core university, the people that are going there, you know, spending 80,000 dollars a year to get a degree, undergraduate, whatever, like, that's really their core constituency.”
Rossmann: MOOCs have an industry standard completion rate of 2% to 5%
“And if you look at Courses that are kind of self-serve, like the MOOCs, you see that it's industry standard to have two, three, four, five percent completion rates, meaning that probably 95% of people are actually not a fit for the type of education that is au…”
Rossmann: Most potential top software engineers are not natural autodidacts
“I'm now certain that like the majority of people who could be a great software engineer at a really competitive and selective company the majority of those people are not by default autodidacts who could just go to a MOOC and get all the information they need.”
Rhyne: Traditional MOOCs Suffer Low Engagement Because of Format
“Typically like a WordPress, large MOOC with lots of units, and they had really bad engagement on those courses. Simply not because of how they built it, but because of The format.”
Boneh: MOOCs serve as 21st-century interactive textbooks rather than university replacements
“I now I've come to realize this MOOC is basically like a 21st century textbook. So if you take the MOOC online, you should be, it's almost the same as actually reading a textbook on crypto.”
Srinivasan: Education will shift from upfront fixed commitments to on-demand learning
“One of my candidates for an industry entering the end of ownership or that may eventually is education in the sense that, you know, you have a huge upfront commitment of K through 12 and then four years of college and then maybe grad school and so on. And you …”
Ralston: Standard MOOC completion rate is five percent
“Five percent. Five percent of the standard for MOOCs.”
Oakley: Second-Tier Universities Resist MOOCs Over Faculty Job Loss Fears
“The top tier universities are getting information out there with massive open online courses. It's the second tier Universities that often kind of go, oh no, we shouldn't have anything online because people will lose jobs. So we're not going to allow anything …”