Meritable MOOCs for the Mature Crowd

[Commentary] The only thing surprising about the majority of massive open online course (MOOC) students already having a college degree is that anyone was surprised by this.

Taking a look at the numbers, there are clearly more people in the post-college age bracket of 23-100+ than there are 18-22 year olds. But just as younger MOOCers fall into multiple categories, so too older learners need to be thought of as more than just a bunch of pajama-clad grads taking advantage of free courses in Python or Pynchon.

For example, the vast majority of students taking HarvardX’s Improving Global Health course are not college-age kids but healthcare professionals working around the world to implement or improve programs that in one way or another save lives. And if someone returning to the workforce or changing careers late in life participates in one of Udacity re-skilling programs to find work or transition to a new career, this benefits not just the student but all of us who might otherwise have to underwrite his or her ongoing unemployment.

Even we lifelong learners not participating in MOOCs in a professional capacity look at massive open courses as offering more than just recreational learning. If MOOCs are ever going to generate the kind of revenue they need to survive, the people footing the bill are likely to come from the demographic making up the majority of current MOOC students. So rather than fret over some kind of zero-sum competition between younger and older learners, those thinking about the future of massive open education should instead try to figure out how to ask those of us who can afford to underwrite some or all of MOOC experiment to start doing so.