We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free.
What's the business model? I can see why Odersky might want to promote his own language but more generally, why would someone of his caliber devote the time? Philanthropy? Or do the universities pay?
I believe companies are paying them for access to the best students of specific courses (for recruiting).
For example, the Princeton Algorithms course says:
.. Coursera will maintain limited data regarding student progress and performance in this course and, with your permission, provide authorized third parties with access to such data.
Given what recruiting fees are, I'd imagine this could work quite well. It is unclear how well it will scale, but if they can keep their costs low enough it may not need to.
"The founders said they were not ready to announce a strategy for profitability, but noted that the investment gave them time to develop new ways to generate revenue."
So I think letting universities pay for the data or students paying for certificates.
What's the business model? I can see why Odersky might want to promote his own language but more generally, why would someone of his caliber devote the time? Philanthropy? Or do the universities pay?