How low is low enough? That was the question threading through comments to Coursera's official blog post earlier this month announcing their "Signature Track" option for certain classes they offer. Signature Track courses will use keystroke analysis to verify that the person completing coursework is actually the person registered for the course. Coursera will issue a special certificate to people who complete courses using Signature Track. This will boost the legitimacy of online learning, since there will be a way to ensure that a learner didn't cheat and ask his computer scientist friend to complete an artificial intelligence class for him, in an attempt to score a good job.
The rub came with the sticker price: $30 to $100 per course to use Signature Track. You still have the option of taking the same course for free, without Signature Track, but verification will cost you.
I initially thought this was a great deal. $30 to $100 seemed a reasonable amount to charge for access to great courses from prestigious universities. I still think its a great deal. But one commenter noted, "$30 to $100 may seem small, but it is still a lot for many people," touching off a wave of similar sentiments:
"i agree, especially considering that there are people taking these courses from countries where $30 might be a month's income"
"100$ is more than one semester fee in central government university in India. (not private ones)."
"Totally agree. Specially when you consider the price of education in
some countries, in Spain I paid less than $700 per year for a degree,
and a masters goes for about $1600 per year. $100 for a Coursera
non-creadit bearing course is a rip-off if you compare."
In some ways, these comments are spot on. It's absolutely true that there are people in various parts of the world for whom $30, especially given some exchange rates, is a huge sum. There are even people in the U.S. for whom $30 is not something their budget can accommodate without sacrificing food or electricity. But we need to be clear about what problem we want companies like Coursera and Udacity to solve. Do we want them to solve the problem of global poverty and income inequality, or do we want them to solve the problem of skyrocketing higher education costs in the United States? These are two separate problems.
The two are often conflated because they are interrelated. Many people are poor because they don't have education (among other reasons, including oppression, discrimination, corruption, poor choices, etc). Similarly, rising educational costs are contributing to poverty in so far as they cut people off from the knowledge they need to earn a decent income. But even if we were to get educational costs under control, we would still have the problem of people being too poor to access reasonably priced education, just as there are people too poor to buy a reasonably priced used car, like a Corolla.
We can thus either expect companies like Coursera to offer top-notch, verified (i.e. Signature Track) online instruction for free, or we can search for an economic or political solution. The former option is unrealistic. Just like traditional schools, online schools have costs, such as server capacity, office space, staff, technology, etc. They can't offer their service for free indefinitely (right now they're funded by venture capital). The bills have to be paid. It is reasonable that they should be paid by the consumer. So it makes sense that students should be charged a moderate fee. It doesn't make sense that they should be charged $40,000 per year, which is of course what some traditional universities charge.
Poverty, therefore, is a separate issue, and this needs to be addressed along with the cost issue. Even if we found a way to make higher education free - maybe by deciding as a society that we want to pay for it collectively through government (which I think is a great idea), or by some kind of ad supported model (like Google's advertizing which funds its many free services) - education alone wouldn't lift people out of poverty. Public corruption, discrimination, and mental health problems also contribute. We need to systematically address these issues as well. In other words, political and economic solutions are needed to fix income inequality. Free or low cost higher education is not a silver bullet.
How does this relate to Coursera's Signature Track? It relates in that it shows how the criticism of its pricing misses the mark. Yes, $30 is a lot to some people. But the problem is not that Coursera is charging $30; the problem is that some people live in places or in circumstances in which they can't afford that sum. The problem is with the governments, economics, and social systems of those places. Sometimes the problem is with people who make poor decisions. But it's not with Coursera. Reducing the price of a college class from $1500 to $30, or $100, or $150 is a hell of an accomplishment.
Finally, I'd like to address the comment from the person from Spain, who said that paying $100 for a Coursera course is a ripoff, since and undergraduate degree can be had in Spain for $700 per year. This is absolutely right. It makes no sense to pay $100 to Coursera when you could go to a traditional university for a full year for quite little. Many European countries have quite sensibly decided that higher education is so important that the government should vigorously subsidize it, like we do for primary education in the U.S. I wish the U.S. would do this. But I'm not holding my breath. This comment illustrates my point exactly. Spain doesn't have a problem with higher education costs; the U.S. does. So Coursera, Udacity and the like may not solve a problem in Spain, though they will in the U.S. Spain has different problems, such as an incredibly high unemployment rate. Also, Spain made a political decision about how it wants to fund higher education. We need to do the same in the U.S. Absent that, however - and who among us is hopeful that such a progressive policy on education will come out of our government? - Coursera and Udacity are doing important work bringing the cost of education down. They shouldn't be faulted because they have to pass costs on to students. The fault lies with our politics and government for not investing in making higher education affordable. The fault lies with us, as citizens.
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