Class Central, one of the world’s largest search engines for digital course offerings, recently released its end-of-year industry analysis to track the impact of global MOOCs.
The report found that global MOOC enrolments grew to 110 million learners in 2019, excluding numbers from China. On top of this, Class Central’s research found that education institutes launched more than 2,500 courses, 11 online degrees and 170 microcredentials.
| Learners | Courses | Microcredentials | Degrees | |
| Coursera | 45 million | 3,800 | 420 | 16 |
| edX | 24 million | 2,640 | 292 | 10 |
| Udacity | 11.5 million | 200 | 40 | 1 |
| FutureLearn | 10 million | 880 | 49 | 23 |
| Swayam | 10 million | 1,000 | 0 | 0 |
By the end of 2019, 13.5k MOOCs had been announced or launched by over 900 universities worldwide. The report notes that in 2019 alone, approximately 2.5k online courses were launched by 450 universities.
Online degrees
Only 11 new digital degrees were launched last year, mostly by Coursera and FutureLearn, down from the 30 programmes that were launched in 2018. This brings the total number of global MOOC degrees to 50 – again, excluding China. This figure includes Georgia Tech’s online master’s in computer science (OM CS), which is provided by Udacity and has over 9,000 students.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
| Coursera | 4 | 11 | 16 |
| edX | 1 | 9 | 10 |
| FutureLearn | 4 | 18 | 23 |
Microcredentials
The analysis also highlights that the total number of MOOC-based microcredentials has now broken through the 800 mark. Last year, more than 170 new microcredentials of 10 different types were launched, compared to just 120 microcredntials that were added in 2018.
| Type | Provider | 2018 | 2019 |
| Specialisations | Coursera | 310 | 400 |
| Professional Certificate | Coursera | 0 | 13 |
| MasterTrack | Coursera | 3 | 6 |
| Professional Certificate | edX | 89 | 123 |
| MicroMasters | edX | 51 | 56 |
| XSeries | edX | 29 | 40 |
| Professional Education | edX | 62 | 73 |
| Nanodegrees | Udacity | 35 | 40 |
| Programmes | FutureLearn | 23 | 32 |
| Academic Certificates | FutureLearn | 14 | 17 |
| Programmes | Kadneze | 19 | 20 |
Subjects
According to the data, the distribution of courses across subjects last year remained fairly similar to 2018. Approximately 40% of courses sit within the categories that are deemed the easiest to monetise: business and technology.
“When we compiled the numbers for our 2019 end-of-year analysis, we realised that online degrees weren’t doing as well as in prior years. In 2019, there were only one third as many new degrees as in 2018. Considering the significant hype MOOC-based degrees had generated, we were surprised to see them showing signs of a slow down so early,” said Dhawal Shah, CEO of Class Central.
“So, 2020 may be a pivotal year for online degrees,” adds Shah. “It will be interesting to see how many new degrees are announced and how those that already launched perform – and to see whether MOOC-based degrees will follow the same trend as MOOCs: generating a lot of hype in the beginning, but not as drastic short-term changes as some would expect.”