MOOC已經到能代替大學教育的時候了嗎？
The country's higher education system seems ripe for tech industry disruption. Student debt is out of control. Graduation rates are unacceptably low. And employers still can't find enough new recruits with the training they're looking for.
美國的高等教育體系似乎已經很成熟，可以抵禦技術產業對教育的影響。但另一方面我們發現，在高等教育體系下，學生貸款高得失控，畢業率特別低，大學生接受的教育仍然不能使他們適應日後的職場需求。
Enter online learning. Specifically, Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have been heralded as a savior for students disadvantaged by an inefficient, often rigid, and increasingly pricey higher ed system. The cost advantage of recording one lecture and broadcasting it to thousands of students regardless of location is undeniable.
在這種情況下，在線教育就登場了。與低效率、刻板、費用漸長的高等教育體系相比較，大規模在線開放課程（MOOC）可謂那些處於劣勢的學生的救星。毫無疑問，在線教育有諸多優勢，例如錄製在線課程成本相對低，而且可以同時容納數千名身處各地的學生共同聽課等等。
And the potential social benefits are huge. Andrew Ng, founder of leading MOOC-maker Coursera, said in a recent interview with Fortune he hopes the flexibility and practicality of free courses on-demand will make "a great education a fundamental human right."
在線教育還能創造巨大的社會效益。MOOC巨頭Coursera的創立者吳恩達日前在接受《財富》週刊採訪時指出，在線課堂具有靈活性、實際性和需求主導性，他希望免費在線教育的發展，能幫助樹立“優質教育是一項基本人權” 概念。
There's plenty of interest so far: Coursera has more than 80 universities and other institutions offering courses on its platform, broadcasting to millions of students. The top three MOOC-makers -- Coursera, Udacity, and EdX -- all appear on the cusp of convincing major institutions to offer some of their courses for credit. Cue many, many articles expressing deep angst that the traditional on-campus learning environment as we know it could cease to exist.
迄今爲止，很多人都對大規模在線開放課程表現出了興趣。Coursera的網絡課程平臺上已經有80多家大學和院校機構提供的課程，向數以百萬的學生們開放。在線開放課程三大品牌——Coursera、Udacity和EdX，都極力推薦學校機構向他們的課程平臺提供可計入學分的在線課程。也有許多文章都聲稱，我們所熟知的傳統在校教育可以偃旗息鼓了。
But all that fretting may be premature: The MOOC business model seems to have a few issues of its own. Take, for example, a recent competition put on by Boston consultancy Fuld & Company, in which business school students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Dartmouth College, and Northwestern University staged a "war game" between the education world's power-players du jour. The winner of the $5,000 grand prize was the team that presented the best plan for the future of higher education, and the best strategy to make money from it. Coursera, despite being easily the sexiest company at the competition, did not take home the grand prize.
但是所有這些喧囂都顯得有些不夠成熟：大規模在線開放課程產業缺少自主研發的內容。舉例來說，在日前一個由波士頓福爾達諮詢公司舉辦的比賽中，來自麻省理工學院、波士頓大學、達特茅斯學院和美國西北大學的學生們和在線教育領域諸多知名品牌代表進行了一場“演習”，能制定出最佳的高等教育發展未來計劃的團隊獲勝，並能獲得5千美元的獎金。Coursera 雖然是比賽中最被看好的隊伍，卻未能抱獎而歸。
The problem: the business model. "Wondering how they could monetize this technology, that was a big concern," says Fuld & Co. founder and president Leonard Fuld. The team proposed providing a variety of online courses, and then making money by charging universities. They likened themselves to Netflix, spreading a small amount of high-quality, specialized content to a large subscriber base.
問題的癥結在於商業模式。Fuld & Co.公司創始人萊納德·福爾達說，“如何將MOOC課程轉換成利潤，這是一個大問題。”Fuld & Co.的建議是，爲學生們提供一系列的在線課程，通過向校方收費來盈利。該公司已經和網飛公司Netflix聯手，構建一個有大量用戶來預定課程的網絡課程平臺，在這個平臺上提供數量較少、品質較高的專業課程。
Coursera is planning to charge universities licensing fees (with some of the revenue going back to the original school that created the content). Right now, though, the bulk of the company's revenue comes through selling verified completion certificates. The program, called Signature Track, allows users to pay a fee in order to verify their identities. The company announced in September that it brought in more than $1 million since starting to offer the service nine months earlier.
Coursera 計劃向院校徵收網絡授權費（一些利潤會返回到提供在線課程的院校）。但就目前情況來看，Coursera公司的大部分利潤還來自出售各種資格證明。這項名爲“節奏軌”的項目，允許用戶只要付費就可以獲得資格認證。Coursera 在9月份的時候宣佈，自從9個月前開始提供資格證明服務以來，公司已經獲得了超過一百萬美元的利潤。
