Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Market To Grow At 33.1% CAGR During 2021-2026, Cost-Effective Distance Education Remains A Key Driver

February, 04, 2021, New York, USA – MOOCs continue to march on to their disruptive journey in the field of higher education. President Obama had cited during the early years of MOOCs development that they had the potential to bring down costs of higher education, which remains a key concern among all stakeholders. MOOCs promise an alternative future to traditional education with course content remaining essential free, but fees being levied on assets like certifications. The rising demand for cost-effective education, and overburdened population of students due to loans remain a key driver of growth in the massive open online course market.

The MOOC market is expected to rise at 33.1% during 2021-2026 period, as demand for education remains high, and growing demand for becoming a life-long learners also drives more, and more corporate training program to online academies. For example, IBM reported that through collaboration with online academies for its corporate training, it was able to witness vast improvements in learning, while bringing down costs by 30% for its corporate training program, saving over $200 million for the company.

Flexible Models for Education to Remain Promising Driver of Growth

The competitive online academic programs remain essentially a very flexible model for learners and teachers alike. Today, program platforms like Udemy provide a mass online platform to interact with millions of students, and course creators usually keep 70% to 85% of their course fees. Moreover, the course trainers also maintain rights on their course material through intellectual property rights. Furthermore, students also face more choices as a result. Online academies are collaborating with traditional universities to offer prestigious degrees, certificates, and transfer credits. Additionally, academies like Coursera promise a higher potential for earnings for teachers. The academy found in its internal study that students who pay between $30 to $90 for a course, improved their course completion rates, delivering more value to students.

Covid-19 Pandemic Pushes Demand for Distance Education

According to the UNESCO, the covid-19 pandemic forced 70% of global student population to distance themselves from traditional education. Moreover, this isn’t a new beginning for the MOOC industry. As the founder of Udemy noted in 2012, “we are growing faster than Facebook” which added more than 1.7 million within a couple of months. The demand for online education through massive open online courses has also converged with traditional education. For example, in 2014, Georgia Institute of Technology offered a $7000 program in computer science, a masters by partnering with Udacity. The development also merely isn’t limited to prestigious universities. Small, and Large universities like San Jose state university signed a MOU with AT&T, and partnered with Udacity in 2013 to expand its offerings in the global education sphere.  

The Expansion of Courses in New Languages Promise Lucrative Growth

Native English speakers are a small minority in the global education sphere. However, the growth of tech giants, rising demand for low-cost alternatives in countries like the US, and major initiatives by native content developers has driven tremendous growth for players in the massive open online course market. It is estimated that over 75% of today’s online course work is in the English language. Furthermore, this has limited the ability of non-native speakers of English to develop content, and has limited growth of players in the MOOC market in emerging nations like India, and China. The large population of these countries, and rising expansion of coursework in different languages will provide a major impetus for growth for players in the massive open online course market.  

Rising Positive Adoption Among Students Remains A Key Driver in the MOOC Market

The high-costs of higher education remain a key concern in the United States. Perhaps, this is why over 30% American students are enrolled into at least one online course in 2020. Furthermore, collaborative learning opportunities are already bringing up big names like Hardvard, Brown, Duke, and Columbia in the sphere of online education. This has forced the hand of tech-giants like Google, which launched a MOOC-building online tool in 2013. Apart from costs, the learn at your own pace concept also seems appealing to most students. College education, and its high-cost usually mean students are left with very little external resources to fall back on. Hence, the ability of video-based learning allows students to pause, reflect, and relearn concepts at their own schedule is a major positive for students, and professors alike. Moreover, this method is ideal for highly in-demand courses like engineering, computer sciences, and other technical subjects, which inhibit a higher degree of complexity.

Collaboration with Public Figures Likely to Add Prestige to Drive Growth

Rising digitalization has provided the common citizens around the world access to public figures, industry leaders, and extraordinary professionals like never before. For example, Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple has opened ‘WoZ U’, an online computer science training academy. The founder witnessed that learning computer science skills remained challenging for many students. Moreover, it was a costly proposition for most, and there was a high-risk of failure, and subsequent life-long debts. This forced the founder to enter the education business himself, with a vision to keep future tech workers stay out of the rabbit hole of debt. Such developments are visible across industries, as leading actors in Hollywood freely offer acting lessons to young ones at handsome prices. This rising influx of industry leaders in the MOOC industry will help add quality, and prestige to online education. Apart from adding versatility to online education, these courses also promise to solve a conventional challenge in online education. Various studies show that drop-out rates for online programs remain high. The addition of higher prices, prestige, and quality will likely make future generation students think twice before dropping out. The rising association of online courses with quality offerings, and tremendous conventional demand due to low-costs will remain key drivers to growth in the massive open online course market.

Massive Open Online Course Market Report is segmented as below:

MOOC Market,

By Component

• Platforms
• Services

 By Course

• Humanities
• Computer Science and Programming
• Business Managemen
• Science
• Health and Medicine
• Education and Training
• Engineering
• Others

 Market, By User Type

• High School
• Undergraduate
• Postgraduate
• Corporate

 MOOC Market, By Region

• North America
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East and Africa

Competitive Landscape

The landscape in the MOOC market remains innovative, and competitive, thanks to rising investments in online platforms globally. Some key players in the MOOC market are Coursera Inc., edX Inc., Coursera Inc., iversity Learning Solutions GmbH, FutureLearn Ltd., Pearson Plc, New Oriental Education and Technology Group Inc..