Coursera’s billion-dollar launch signals a thirst for online degrees

The digital education company’s billion-dollar launch shows it is heading towards its goal of global reach.

About 150 different universities around the world offer courses through digital education company Coursera.

Shares in Coursera, the digital education company which partners with universities all over the world to offer online courses, closed at $US49.61 on Monday in the US, after a float last Wednesday with a maximum initial public offering price of $US33 a share.

Monday’s closing price values the company, founded by Stanford University academics Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller in 2012, at $US8.4bn ($11bn).

Several Australian universities — Macquarie, Melbourne, Sydney, Monash, UNSW and the University of Western Australia — partner with Coursera to offer online courses. Macquarie offers its fully online global MBA degree through Coursera. Australian employment and education company Seek made a $50m investment in Coursera in 2019.

READ MORE: Pandemic? What pandemic? | Were the unis crying wolf? | Unis flout rules on English expertise | Plan to return 10,000 foreign students | CareerTrackers builds Indigenous skills | Freedom for entrepreneurs!

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted demand for digital learning as students and teachers switched to remote classwork and millions of employees did their jobs from their homes.

The Mountain View, California-based company had 77 million people registered on its platform as of the end of last year, and distributed learning materials and credentials to more than 6000 businesses, academic institutions and governments, according to the prospectus.

Globally about 150 universities, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of London and Peking University, offered courses through the company as of the end of December 2020.

Coursera chief executive Jeffrey Maggioncalda said the company’s ability to reach a global audience and offer users access to quality coursework and credentials made it stand out.

“That’s probably our biggest differentiator — just the quality and size of the catalogue from top brands and the credentials,” he said.

Coursera had $US293.5m in revenue last year, up from $US184.4m in 2019. Its loss for 2020 was $US66.8m.

“We are pretty much still in growth mode, but we expect the overall financial model to serve us well in the coming years,” Mr Maggioncalda said, adding that the company aspires to serve billions of people globally.