Recently, I ran across a white paper by Coursera, the massive open online course provider. The paper discussed the courses and study subjects in highest demand for 2024, based on the site’s current course enrollments. Looking at the study data and comparing it to what’s available at WCC makes it easy to understand why places like Coursera have garnered so much interest.
According to Coursera, in North America, the most in-demand study subjects right now include:
-
Business Skills
- E-commerce
- Auditing
- Customer Success
- Search Engine Optimization
- Customer Relationship Management
- Power BI
- Reinforcement Learning
- SAS
- Data Visualization
- Microsoft Excel
- System Security
- Security Software
- Computer Security Incident Management
- Cyberattacks
- Web Development Tools
Data Science Skills
Tech Skills
According to the WCC catalog, about two-thirds of these skills aren’t available as part of a course. That supports the notion that people choose “independent education” options like Coursera, Udemy, MasterClass or another online course provider precisely because they cannot find what they’re looking for at their local community colleges. It reinforces the idea that community colleges are slow to adapt and don’t really meet workforce needs.
The skills I listed above are specific to North American learners. Overall – regardless of region – the ten fastest growing job skills are:
- E-Commerce
- Media Strategy & Planning
- System Security
- Search Engine Optimization
- Customer Success
- Power BI
- Linux
- Systems Design
- Auditing
- Marketing Management
The problem with students choosing Coursera (or Udemy or MasterClass or whatever) over their local community college or a university is that these online learning options don’t provide the accredited learning environment that a traditional post-secondary institution does. The course content comes from a variety of different providers, and the course quality is variable.
Online course provider may be more responsive, less rigorous
Stanford University founded Coursera in 2012, and its course collection comes from a variety of sources. Contributors include Stanford, Harvard, Yale, most of the Big 10 schools, and many other accredited post-secondary institutions. Other contributors include corporations like IBM and Google, and other somewhat opaque sources like “the Coursera Network.” The courses and programs aren’t validated in the same way they are at traditional post-secondary schools.
But those who sign up for the courses don’t really care. They want course content, and they don’t really care where it comes from because they’re not trying to apply it to a degree program or receive credit for it. (Coursera does offer the opportunity to earn degrees from accredited institutions, but the majority of its content is non-credit.)
The value of an online course provider like it is that it develops a very good handle on what skills, classes, and programs people are most interested in currently. In that regard, they provide a high degree of responsiveness that traditional education institutions don’t. But tracking the demand for skills through an online course provider can help traditional post-secondary institutions become more current in their course offerings and possibly more competitive in their search for more students.
Photo Credit: Focal Foto, via Flickr
