Coursera, the online education company connecting Internet users with free and paid college classes from world-renowned universities, has just added 10 new state and public university systems to its roster.
The announcement could help to improve graduation rates by placing some introductory classes - often limited due to the physical size of classrooms - online in order to reach some 1.25 million students across the U.S.
The 10 new members include the State University of New York (SUNY), the University of Kentucky, the University of Nebraska, the University of New Mexico, West Virginia University, the University System of Georgia, the University of Huston System, The Tennessee Board of Regents, the University of Tennessee Systems and the University of Colorado System.
The announcement also signals a new direction for Coursera, The New York Times notes, by allowing student who enroll in the platform's courses to take classes which can carry credit. To do this, some colleges and universities will marry online classes with on-campus work and exams, which would lessen the classroom load while increasing student enrollment.
Professors and lecturers will be able to adopt courses created by elite universities, like Yale, or craft their own material for the platform and its users.
And as the Babson Survey Research Group notes, those online offerings couldn't come soon enough: some 6.7 million students are currently taking at least one massive open online course, despite the slow adoption rate by most universities.
"We think the coming decade will see a transformation in the way education is delivered, where teachers and online content come together to better serve students on campus and beyond. With this announcement, we take a step further in our goal to expand quality education to all," said Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, Co-CEOs of Coursera, in a prepared statement.
But Coursera isn't the Internet's only online class option. Udacity also offers free, and paid, online classes. The online learning platform recently partnered with San Jose Sate University to launch a pilot program for paid online courses.
But not all university professors are excited about the prospect of online courses. In late May, 58 Harvard professors signed a letter expressing their concern with EdX, a not-for-profit educational partnership between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The letter expressed concern with faculty oversight of the EdX program and how online courses will impact the higher education system as a whole.
