Human Learning #26 — One subscription to rule them all and Edtech for the many not the few

Hi all

A short issue this week. Coursera are going the whole hog (at least in trial form) and trying out single subscription for their platform. The big question this should answer is whether learners are prepared to see MOOC platforms as ‘Education as a Service’. For Coursera, to use the slightly hackneyed phrase, this is the litmus test for whether they can be the ‘Netflix of Education’. If successful the benefits are considerable, not least for providing the more consistent revenue stream that subscriptions are linked with ahead of an anticipated IPO.

Can Edtech help those without degrees? — My article on how Edtech could aid workforce development for those without and not looking for a degree

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State of the MOOCS

One subscription to pay for them all — Coursera are trialling a single $49 per month subscription for all of their content instead of per Specialization subscription of $39–89. Their B2B pricing (per employee) will be $400 per employee per year. I can think of a few reasons they are doing this (with more revenue being chief among those reasons).

1. $49 is the optimal subscription price — Coursera data has shown that $49 is optimal for revenue maximisation in terms acquisition and retention (i.e. overall consumption)
2. Simplifies pricing and the overall value proposition — which may be especially useful for users changing Specialization (e.g. may be less likely to pay for a higher priced one if your entry point was lower)
3. Raises consumption of non-Specialization content (most likely repeat consumption rather than first time) e.g. “Oh it took me 5 weeks to finish that 4 week course, might as well take another…”
4. Learning Paths — it could be a sign of them taking Learning Paths more seriously, if you push learners across multiple providers that’s incompatible with differing payment models (purchase vs subscription) and differing subscription

As interesting, is how Coursera intend to finance their partners, I would assume a Spotify equivalent such as they payout when a learner achieves x% completion of a course but there could be alternatives or bonuses for ‘gateway’ courses that help pull learners onto the platform. Of equal interest is how happy will partners be who see a revenue drop? That said, the move is less radical than it seems, Pluralsight, TreeHouse, CodeAcademy, Kadenze are all subscription based and it is a logical pivot for a platform that wants to make itself its users lifelong platform for education. Furthermore, investors tend to like subscription with its predictable revenues a boon for a company looking to IPO — here

Udacity CMO, Shernaz Daver steps down after 4 years — Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun credits Daver with masterminding their pivot to demand-driven, Silicon Valley courses as well as signing up their impressive roster of company course providers (51) including Google, Lyft and Facebook. It is also personally gratifying to hear Thrun give credit where it was clearly due. Udacity currently have 53K students enrolled in their Nanodegrees.

Separately it turns out Udacity’s job placement service has less than 1% placement rate, Udacity have been subtly de-prioritising it, now we know why — here

Ed’s Tech

Monash University launch a gamified recruitment platform — The platform will help students communicate their talents better and match them with employers. Ultimately the aim is to raise the graduate employability of Monash students (a key metric especially for foreign students who’ll pay higher fees). It may be foreign students for whom it is most useful, helping them to communicate their strengths in terms most amenable to Australian employers. If successful they can commoditise it to other Australian universities, although presumably not to Universities in the local labour market — here

Salesforce open up their training Platform, Trailhead — Trailhead is Salesforce’s internal training platform, not only can staff train up within their area but staff wishing to switch can use it to reskill. Some Salesforce staff have reskilled from sales to be software engineers using the platform to learn the basics and company specific applications. Salesforce are now looking to open it up as a business in of itself, both to train people in Salesforce itself but as a training platform companies can customise to insert their own content in. Salesforce have form in learning platforms and were on Eduventures ‘Edtech companies to watch’ for 2017, they also trialled an LMS for University of Texas. Nor are they alone in turning in-house platforms into business e.g. IBM. There are questions as to how useful a platform built originally for internal use will be to other providers and how much Salesforce are willing to adapt it if not — here

The business of Edtech

Can Edtech help those without degrees? — Edtech to date has tended to focus on either providing degree level courses to people or providing courses for those who already have a degree (e.g. professional development for the degree educated). As has been increasingly apparent those without degrees are being left stranded by economic development. This is my take on where Edtech can help and why it will likely require a public and private sectors to work in tandem.

Team Human vs Machine

The momentum is with Microcredentials, universities take note — Professor Sean Gallagher of Northeastern University argues that corporations are embracing microlearning and with it microcredentials. The basis of his argument is a Deloitte Bersin report, who argue employees get on average 1% of their time for training. As a result employees need their learning in small chunks — microlearning — such as those provided by platforms like Degreed and Edcast and which will in turn require Microcredentials.Gallagher makes a few leaps of logic which aren’t really justified, most online players from Udemy to Coursera use short video chunks but as a part of a larger course — it’s not obvious employers wish to hyper customise their own content a la Edcast (perhaps he’s not a subscriber and isn’t aware of the others :) ). He does quite Lori Bradley a head of Talent Acquisition who says “Academic credit is not always the selling point that universities think it is”. That chimes with recent evidence from Coursera where 800 people wanted Coursera’s iMBA ($22K) but only 150 wanted to use it for credit ($1k). Credit is an academic currency that makes little sense for professionals out of academia — here

Global higher Education

New US International Education enrolments are down 7% — Total enrolments (including those already enrolled in the US) rose 3.4% but new enrolments — effectively a lead indicator of enrolments — hints that the US may be peaking. Some important caveats; the drops were predominantly in the mid-western states and it was the lower ranked universities that suffered the most.

The top issues appear to be visas (denial or difficulty) and cost. It’s hard not to conclude however that Trump may also be having an adverse effect especially for those who may see study in the US as a prelude to working there and who are put off by his stridently anti-immigrant rhetoric. Additionally but not mentioned, it’s likely the declines reflect rising competition from countries such as China and Australia who can retain more top students and act particularly as regional hubs. That would help explain why top US institutions saw no decline but the mid-level ones do. It is likely the latter increasingly matches up poorly with a similarly ranked and often considerably cheaper alternative abroad — here

Tangents

None this week :(