<p>UC Online Courses Fails To Attract More Than A Few Students</p>
<p>The University of California spent millions creating UC Online and launched the first classes a year ago, offering UC quality courses to current students and anyone else outside the university system. According to the Associated Press, about 1,700 UC students have signed up for one of the 14 courses offered, but they've attracted a grand total of five non-UC students, despite $4.3 million spent on marketing. </p>
<p>UC Online was supposed to generate revenue for the cash-strapped but highly reputable state university system. The program borrowed $6.9 million from UC with a plan to repay it by enrolling 7,000 non-UC students who would pay $1,400 to $2,400 per class. With just five students so far, that means they're somewhere near $10,000 in revenue or 0.0014 percent of what they must repay within seven years.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the free online courses have attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Coursera, a MOOC startup created by two Stanford University professors, has drawn 1.7 million users. </p>
<p>I didn’t even catch this happening. But, you know, Xiggi, few OOSers, especailly in states not right on the CA borders apply to UCs. They just aren’t on most people’s radars.</p>
<p>Yes and no. While the UC should not be a great destination for OOS students, especially the full-paying ones the system wants to attract, it remains that the UC is spending a small fortune (what they do best) to attract such students via extensive marketing campaigns. And the numbers of applicants has grown steadily in answer to the sirens’ songs. </p>
<p>However, the story here is really about why the marketers thought they could sell a product that, as Hunt noticed, is available for free from more “prestigious” sources – a small shootout to Mr. H’ prestigiosity index and a suggestion to start the MOOC Prestigiosity Index!</p>
<p>As an addendum to above, here are some numbers for OOS applications. They went up from 11,624 to 19,128 in two years. International doubled to 13,873. </p>