How can MOOC run by Universities earn money?
Traditional University runs courses, where few students study ie less than 100 for each course. The source of revenue is
1. Students pay fees.
2. Wealthy volunteers donate some money.
3. Government support.
In MOOC, the number of students runs to 100, 000 to 1000,000 depending on the popularity.
This resembles the business model of Software industries SAAS. ie Software As A Service using Cloud computing. You pay little User fee or Service fee and enjoy powerful service. Eg Google Business App, Quickbooks.
Similarly MOOC may charge few hundred dollors for their service from students ( for course content, digital certificates, online guidance etc).
Let us calculate for a popular physics course of students strength 100,000.
If University charges USD 100 for each student, then the Revenue is
100 x 100,000= USD 100,00000.
It is a huge money for single course. It is continuous revenue generation for years.
But there is a visible problem here. What about essential non popular courses.
Can the above revenue from popular courses takes care of non popular courses.
The decision will be in the hands of Management who are running the courses.
If they feel the course is essential, then they have to look for alternate mode of revenue generation .
Reference
Melissa (2013) The Wall Street Journal :Jan 2
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