Benefits and costs of participation in MOOC-based alternative credentials: MicroMasters and Specializations

Higher education is often maligned for its inability to innovate. The advent, rapid adoption, and evolution of massive open online courses (MOOCs) have defied this characterization, albeit catalyzed by the establishment of entrepreneurial intermediary organizations such as Udacity, edX, and Coursera. Stanford University introduced what came to be known as the 'xMOOC' in 2011 (see Hollands and Tirthali, 2014, p. 34), and the concept spread like wildfire, especially among elite universities. This triggered the proliferation of both nonprofit and for-profit online platforms that offered learners across the world access to courses from many universities and other organizations. But innovation is only desirable if net benefits to society increase. Assessing the net societal value of these MOOC-based alternative credentials would be a complicated endeavor, requiring a consideration of the impact on universities and other organizations creating the content, the impact on learners participating in these credentials, and the benefits to the owners and employees of the newly established intermediaries. This report focuses on benefits to learners.

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