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Coursera and Udemy are two radically different platforms.

Udemy has a very standard pricing model. You pay what you use (=courses), so I don't see any way this can significantly change either way. The teachers are private and not institutions, so it would likely be unprofitable to adopt a "significantly-free" freemium model.

Coursera, Edx and so on apply instead the freemium model, which could be under theoretical threat (eg. reduce availability of free material, introduce ads, etc.). However, I've been using them for a while, and I didn't really experience any impact due to this supposed monetization orientation - the courses are still free, and there's no pressure to pay for them. I actually pay each course.

To be honest, I'm much more annoyed by the terrible, terrible UX of their products. There are also certainly some dark patterns, which I find dishonest, but at the end of the day, courses are free, and one can take them without interruption.

A personal note: I actually find negative the association between well-known institutions and learning platforms. For example, Harward and EdX- the certificates are stamped as HarvadX, which is an intentional disassociation. This is fair, however, customers/students tend to associate prestige with the MOOC, which is misleading. There's a lot of people around who think that MOOC certificate have formal value.




Yes I use Udemy a lot but I never even thought to compare it to online MOOC platforms. Udemy is great for short how to series on a particular technology, not for broad academic topics.




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