Coursera supports the corrupt system it was meant to disrupt - Anonymous employee Coursera Employee Review

1.0
5 Mar 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You have great bragging right of working at company the once of had a mission, but just know you're selling your soul to the devil working there.

Cons

The good people I met at Coursera joined to make a difference in the world. They, like me, wanted to provide affordable, high quality education at scale. Degrees from universities were not designed to be affordable or even a useful credential in the market. Chose the wrong degree, the wrong university or some combination of the two and you're stuck with a worthless degree and a ton of student loans. Coursera started off disrupting the university degree system, but, under the reign of the CEO Rick and now Jeff, Coursera embraces the very system it was designed to disrupt. Why? Because of the MONEY. Coursera can offer 5x or more university expensive degrees than a university could. For example, under the original co-founders Daphne and Andrew, Coursera launched was University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC)'s Masters of Data Science, a top 5 ranked Computer Science degree program, priced at very affordably $20,000. Coursera is now pressuring UIUC to increase the price of their degree program, so that Coursera could increase its profit margins. If you love the mission of education, Coursera is not a good fit for you, because it tricks learners out of their hard earned money and flood the market with lower quality degrees (Remember University of Phoenix?). If you don't care about the mission and just want to make money, Coursera is not a good fit for you either. Don't think for a second any of that money Coursera is pocketing will end up your bank account. Coursera has a terrible leveling system designed to keep you in the lowest possible level and lowest pay. Working harder will NOT get you promoted, but your manager is happy to lie to you that it will. Every company has problems, but having worked in over a dozen big and small companies, Coursera is by far in the worse shape. The problems are so systemic, there will need to be a massive overhaul in leadership and management at all levels. I am planning my exit and so are most individual contributors. Heed my warning. Coursera survives by suckering good people into working for the company. You will either be brainwashed into a soulless minion or leave disgusted with the company you once loved.

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Coursera Response
7y
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback, we are sorry to hear that you are not happy at Coursera. Feedback like yours helps us continue to refine and improve. Appreciate you taking the time to write it out. If you have any further feedback to share please email us at HR@coursera.org.

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2.0
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