The co-founders, computer science professors at Stanford University near here, watched with amazement as enrollment passed two million in December, with 70,000 new students a week signing up for over 200 courses, including Human-Computer Interaction, Songwriting and Gamification, taught by faculty members at the company’s partners, 33 elite universities.
這兩位創辦人是此間（加州山景市）附近史丹福大學的電腦科學教授。出乎他倆預料的是，去年12月Coursera註冊人數突破了200萬人，平均每星期吸引七萬人上網註冊選讀。提供的課程超過200種，包括「人與電腦的互動」、「譜寫歌曲」與「遊戲化」，師資來自與該公司締結夥伴關係的33所精英大學。

In less than a year, Coursera has attracted $22 million in venture capital and has created so much buzz that some universities sound a bit defensive about not doing the same.
短短不到一年，Coursera不僅吸引2200萬美元的創投資金，而且在教育界引起轟動。部分大學甚至因為不曾跟進而必須為自己辯解。

Universities across the United States are increasing their online offerings, hoping to attract students around the world. New ventures like Udemy help individual professors put their courses online. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each provided $30 million to create edX. Another Stanford spinoff, Udacity, has attracted more than a million students to its massive open online courses, or MOOCs, along with $15 million in financing.
全美各地大學已開始在網路上延伸觸角，希望吸引全球各地的學生。包括Udemy在內的一些新事業可以協助教授把他們的課程放到網路上。哈佛大學與麻省理工學院已經各出資3000萬美元設立edX。史丹福大學的另一個衍生機構Udacity開辦包羅萬象的開放式網路課程MOOCs，至今已經吸引逾100萬名學生，另外還吸引了1500萬美元資金。

All of this could well add up to the future of higher education – if anyone can figure out how to make money.
這一切都足以開拓高等教育的未來，前提是，必須讓它能賺錢。

Coursera has emerge as the current leader, striving to support its business by creating revenue streams through licensing, certification fees and recruitment data provided to employers, among other efforts. But there is no guarantee that it will keep its position in the exploding education technology marketplace.
Coursera已經成為個中翹楚。它正設法自各種管道開拓收入，包括核發許可證、收取檢定費，以及為企業老闆提供進用人力的相關資訊等。然而這不保證Coursera可以在爆炸性教育科技市場上保持它的地位。

“No one’s got the model that’s going to work yet,” said James Grimmelmann, a New York Law School professor who specializes in computer and Internet law. “I expect all the current ventures to fail, because the expectations are too high. People think something will catch on like wildfire. But more likely, it’s maybe a decade later that somebody figures out how to do it and make money.”
專攻電腦與網路法律的紐約大學法學院教授葛林梅爾曼說：「至今還沒有人找到一定可以奏效的模式。我認為，現有的一切嘗試終將失敗，因為人們的期望太高。他們認為，某些事物一定會像野火燎原般大行其道。然而更可能的發展卻是，要到10年後才會有人想出如何做到這一點並且賺到錢。」

Ms. Koller and Mr. Ng proclaim a desire to keep courses freely available to poor students worldwide. Education, they have said repeatedly, should be a right, not a privilege. And even their venture backers say profits can wait.
柯勒與安德魯‧吳表示，他們希望能夠繼續為全球各地的清寒學生提供免費課程。兩人並多次強調，教育應該是一種權利而不是特權。就連出資支持他們的人都表示不必急著賺錢。

“Monetization is not the most important objective for this business at this point,” said Scott Sandell, a Coursera financier who is a general partner at New Enterprise Associates. “What is important is that Coursera is rapidly accumulating a body of high-quality content that could be very attractive to universities that want to license it for their own use.”
身為恩頤投資公司責任夥伴的Coursera金主桑德爾說：「對這種事業而言，建立付費機制（變現）不是現階段首要目標。重要的是Coursera正迅速累積高品質的內容。這可能對許多大學極具吸引力，使它們樂於申請使用。」

But with the first trickles of revenue now coming in, Coursera’s university partners expect to see some revenue sooner.
第一批收入正陸續進來，Coursera的大學夥伴期望能更快獲得收益。

“We’ll make money when Coursera makes money,” said Peter Lange, the provost of Duke University in North Carolina, one of Coursera’s partners. “I don’t think it will be too long down the road. We don’t want to make the mistake the newspaper industry did, of giving our product away free online for too long.”
北卡羅來納州杜克大學是Coursera的夥伴之一，教務長朗格說：「如果Coursera開始賺錢，我們也會隨之賺錢。我認為不會等太久。我們不想重蹈報紙業免費提供網路產品太久的覆轍。」

Right now, the most promising source of revenue for Coursera is the payment of licensing fees from other educational institutions that want to use the Coursera classes, either as a ready-made course or as video lectures students can watch before going to class to work with a faculty member.
目前，Coursera最看好的收入來源是有意採用其課程的其他教育機構。這些機構可能打算原課程照搬，或者利用它們製作錄影教學課程，供學生上課前收看及預習。

Ms. Koller is planning to charge $20, or maybe $50, for certificates of completion. And her company, like Udacity, has begun to charge corporate employers, including Facebook and Twitter, for access to high-performing students.
柯勒打算收取20或50美元的修課合格檢定費。而且Coursera也和Udacity一樣，開始向包括臉書、推特在內的一些企業雇主收取優秀學生的引介費。

Under Coursera’s contracts, the company gets most of the revenue; the universities keep 6 percent to 15 percent of the revenue, and 20 percent of gross profits. Other possibilities including charging a subscription fee, after a class is over, to continue the discussion forum as a Web community, or perhaps offering follow-up courses, again for a fee. And advertising sponsorships remain a possibility.
按Coursera訂定的合約，它可以留下多數的收入，各大學保留6%到15%，還有20%的毛利。其他可能的安排包括，一門課程結束後，收取訂閱費，據以延續討論，同時使它成為一種網路社群，或許也會提供收費的後續課程。廣告贊助也是另一種可能。

Some Coursera partners say they are in no hurry to cash in.
Coursera的部分夥伴說，它們不急於賺錢。

The Coursera co-founders have become oracles of higher education, spreading their message of massive open online courses at the World Economic Forum in Abu Dhabi, the Web Summit in Dublin and the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.
柯勒與安德魯‧吳已經成為高等教育的神使，相繼在阿布達比舉行的全球經濟論壇、都柏林網路高峰會及科羅拉多州亞斯班概念節活動中，宣揚他們的大眾開放式網路課程理念。

They describe how free online courses can open access to higher education to anyone with an Internet connection; liberate professors from repeating the same tired lectures semester after semester; and generate data, because the computers capture every answer right or wrong, that can provide new understanding of how students learn best.
他們表示，網路課程優點多多，包括使任何能夠上網的人都有機會接受高等教育、使教授不再必須重複講授枯燥乏味的相同教材，以及衍生資訊，因為電腦可以辨別對與錯的回答，據以瞭解如何提升學生的學習效果。

But Ms. Koller is unsure about the future of MOOCs – and her company. “A year ago, I could not have imagined that we would be where we are now,” she said. “Who knows where we’ll be in five more years?”
然而柯勒對MOOCs與Coursera的未來並不篤定。她說：「一年前，我不曾料到我們會發展到今天的程度。誰知道五年後我們的處境又會如何？」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/education/massive-open-online-courses-prove-popular-if-not-lucrative-yet.html

延伸閱讀：
http://cn.nytimes.com/article/opinion/2013/02/01/c01friedman/zh-hk/ 

2013-01-29聯合報/G9版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報八版右