alt Hacker NewsTurns out that an online certificate isn't worth anything when layoffs happen and the market is oversaturated with people who have real degrees. MOOCs have their place, but it's a very narrow set of disciplines.
Replies
I wouldn't be so tough on the online certificates. The key value I get out of Coursera is an unbeatable "time to knowledge" and some proof it was me who attended the course through the id verification. Compare that to traditional in-person education, where you are bound to fixed course dates, long approval timelines etc. Until you get feedback from HR that you are eligible for a course/training, i've probably already completed it via my Coursera complete subscription.
I'm not sure offline certificates mean a whole lot when layoffs matter either.
But MOOCs and other purely online options just didn't result in any meaningful certification especially outside of a connection to established universities. And, given that, people/companies weren't interested in paying significant bucks for them.
It was probably a useful experiment. Just not a very successful one. And once the experiment faltered, schools/professors became less interested in putting money and energy into it.
All the evidence is that most of the students/potential students who weren't already motivated to pursuing independent learning didn't really connect to all this online material.
Just wait until you find out that real degrees also aren't worth anything anymore
I work at a university and half of the coursework seems worse than the good MOOCs. Esp. the more practical ones.
(Might be a problem of that university, still ...)