Providers of Free MOOCs Now Charge Employers For Access To Student Data

An anonymous reader writes "Coursera announced its 'career services' feature yesterday for students who opt in. The company that works with elite colleges to offer free courses is sharing more than just academic scores — showing potential employers evidence of 'soft skills,' like how helpful students were in class discussion forums. 'Udacity, another company that provides free online courses, offers a similar service. ... Udacity's founder, Sebastian Thrun, said in an interview that 350 partner companies had signed up for its job program. While Mr. Thrun would not say how much employers pay, he characterized the fee as "significantly less than you'd pay for a headhunter, but significantly more than what you'd pay for access to LinkedIn," a popular social network for job hunters.'"

IOW...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like everyone else, they can't come up with a better business model than selling personal data.

Acronym usage

[Attila Dimedici]

I was unfamiliar with the acronym "MOOC". From the summary I concluded it was some kind of online course, but was unable to discern what the rest of the acronym stood for. However, Google is your friend (well, not really but I will save that for a rant another day) and I was able to discover that MOOC stands for "Massive Open Online Course". From what I can see that makes "Free MOOCs" a redundant phrase that belongs in the same bin with "ATM Machines" and "PIN Numbers".