MOOCs Are Largely Reaching Privileged Learners, Survey Finds – Wired Campus - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Most people who take massive open online courses already hold a degree from a traditional institution, according to a new paper from the University of Pennsylvania. The paper is based on a survey of 34,779 students worldwide who took 24 courses offered by Penn professors on the Coursera platform. The findings—among the first from outside researchers, rather than MOOC providers—reinforce the truism that most people who take MOOCs are already well educated. The Penn researchers sent the survey to students who had registered for a MOOC and viewed at least one video lecture. More than 80 percent of the respondents had a two- or four-year degree, and 44 percent had some graduate education. The pattern was true not only of MOOC students in the United States but also learners in other countries. In some foreign countries where MOOCs are popular, such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa, '80 percent of MOOC students come from the wealthiest and most well educated 6 percent of the population,' according to the paper. In other developing countries, about 80 percent of the MOOC students surveyed already held college degrees—a number staggeringly out of proportion with the share of degree holders in the general population ..."