Dive Brief:
- Most MOOC users are well-educated young men looking for new career skills, a study of Coursera students finds.
- More than 80% of the U.S. students, for example, already had a college degree, compared with about 30% of the general U.S. population.
- In Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, about 80% of students came from the richest 6% of the population.
Dive Insight:
Helping college-educated Americans get more education isn't exactly how MOOCs have generally pitched themselves in the past. It does, however, seem to echo part of what Udacity's Sebastian Thrun sees as the future for his MOOC startup: teaching workers new skills. It also seems to be a surer path to profit.