How MOOCs Make Money
In 2011, when a few Stanford (CA) professors experimented with delivering three of the university’s most popular computer science courses online for free, Dhawal Shah signed up for “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.” The idea of Stanford opening up its top-caliber education to people who lacked access appealed to Shah. And besides, he needed a boost to get him through the technical interviews that might result in a job in northern California, where he wanted to land. He’d already earned a bachelor’s in electronics and telecommunications from Mumbai University and a master’s at Georgia Tech in computer science, enabling him to pick up work in Texas as a software developer. But to a young, ambitious programmer, Dallas wasn’t Silicon Valley.
