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.'"

Vocational skills

[betterunixthanunix]

That's fine for vocational skills, but vocational training is not the sole purpose of our education system, nor should it be. A free society needs people who are educated in more than just their immediate vocation; we need people to learn philosophy and ethics, history, politics, etc. People need to be educated enough to call out their politicians on obvious lies, which means they need to be educated in economics, foreign affairs, and the various other things that politicians are supposed to manage for us.

We should not try to create a society where only the wealthy are sophisticated enough to be leaders, and where the poor only learn enough to do what the wealthy tell them. We should be working to break the aristocracy, not further cement it.