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.
美国的高等教育体系似乎已经很成熟，可以抵御技术产业对教育的影响。但另一方面我们发现，在高等教育体系下，学生贷款高得失控，毕业率特别低，大学生接受的教育仍然不能使他们适应日后的职场需求。
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.
在这种情况下，在线教育就登场了。与低效率、刻板、费用渐长的高等教育体系相比较，大规模在线开放课程（MOOC）可谓那些处于劣势的学生的救星。毫无疑问，在线教育有诸多优势，例如录制在线课程成本相对低，而且可以同时容纳数千名身处各地的学生共同听课等等。
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."
在线教育还能创造巨大的社会效益。MOOC巨头Coursera的创立者吴恩达日前在接受《财富》周刊采访时指出，在线课堂具有灵活性、实际性和需求主导性，他希望免费在线教育的发展，能帮助树立“优质教育是一项基本人权” 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.
迄今为止，很多人都对大规模在线开放课程表现出了兴趣。Coursera的网络课程平台上已经有80多家大学和院校机构提供的课程，向数以百万的学生们开放。在线开放课程三大品牌——Coursera、Udacity和EdX，都极力推荐学校机构向他们的课程平台提供可计入学分的在线课程。也有许多文章都声称，我们所熟知的传统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.
但是所有这些喧嚣都显得有些不够成熟：大规模在线开放课程产业缺少自主研发的内容。举例来说，在日前一个由波士顿福尔达咨询公司举办的比赛中，来自麻省理工学院、波士顿大学、达特茅斯学院和美国西北大学的学生们和在线教育领域诸多知名品牌代表进行了一场“演习”，能制定出最佳的高等教育发展未来计划的团队获胜，并能获得5千美元的奖金。Coursera 虽然是比赛中最被看好的队伍，却未能抱奖而归。
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.
问题的症结在于商业模式。Fuld & Co.公司创始人莱纳德·福尔达说，“如何将MOOC课程转换成利润，这是一个大问题。”Fuld & Co.的建议是，为学生们提供一系列的在线课程，通过向校方收费来盈利。该公司已经和网飞公司Netflix联手，构建一个有大量用户来预定课程的网络课程平台，在这个平台上提供数量较少、品质较高的专业课程。
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 计划向院校征收网络授权费（一些利润会返回到提供在线课程的院校）。但就目前情况来看，Coursera公司的大部分利润还来自出售各种资格证明。这项名为“节奏轨”的项目，允许用户只要付费就可以获得资格认证。Coursera 在9月份的时候宣布，自从9个月前开始提供资格证明服务以来，公司已经获得了超过一百万美元的利润。
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