Certificates for MOOCs? Faculty Panel Suggests Nonprofit Option But No Big Investment in Online Classes

Published Jan. 21, 2016

Less than two years after Princeton joined Coursera, a for-profit consortium that offers free online classes, a faculty committee is recommending that the University consider partnering with a not-for-profit alternative.

“Some members of the faculty have expressed to us that they were uneasy about having as their only option a for-profit company” whose commercial concerns may be inimical to Princeton’s mission, said philosophy professor Gideon Rosen, who served as chair of the committee. The partnership with Coursera is not exclusive, he pointed out.

President Eisgruber ’83 has said Princeton is not seeking to make money from its involvement with Coursera, but to improve teaching and reach people worldwide. The committee also raised the idea of Princeton creating its own platform for hosting online courses. “I must say that developing our own proprietary platform gives me nightmares along the lines of healthcare.gov,” said Eisgruber, who left Coursera’s advisory board Jan. 1 to focus on his presidency. The University offered nine Coursera courses in the first year and a similar number this year, on subjects ranging from computer science to world history.

In a report, the committee said it is hard to know what role online courses will play in higher education in the future, and “it would be premature to devote substantial additional resources to this effort.” The committee also suggested a pilot program to offer certificates of accomplishment for completion of courses, though these would be letters signed by the instructor that do not bear Princeton’s name or logo. Unlike students taking online courses offered by most other universities, students in Princeton’s courses receive no certificate.

The committee’s recommendations may lead to action by the faculty or the trustees down the road, according to Eisgruber.

Published in the Jan. 8, 2014, Issue

1 Response

Jane Hatterer ’83

8 Years Ago

As someone who has worked in the field of online education in higher education and K-12 since 1998 — in an administrative capacity at Columbia University, as a policy adviser to the New York City Department of Education, and as a consultant to universities as well as faculty — I was surprised by the faculty committee’s comments that questioned the future of online education in higher education (On the Campus, Jan. 8).

Although MOOCs are a recent phenomenon and generally not representative of the state of the art in online education, online education in higher education has existed for close to 20 years in the United States. In fact, in a 2012 College Board survey of 2,800 higher-education institutions, nearly 70 percent of chief academic officers polled identified online education as an essential part of their long-term strategy. Peer institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Penn, and Columbia have offered credit-bearing programs online for many years, and the president of the United States is promoting 21st-century learning modalities, including online education, as critical to the education of our youth and future success of our country. What more evidence does the committee need?

If Princeton is to remain one of the leading academic institutions in the country and the world, it will have to look forward and beyond the gates, so as to clearly envision the future.