Coursera will charge a 15% fee to colleges and companies that use its online learning platform, starting in 2026. It’s a significant shift in universities’ relationship with third-party online program managers, or OPMs, following the scramble toward digital learning during the pandemic and the MOOC trend of the 2010s. “[Coursera] is not as dependent on their university relationships and is instead relying on industry partners and internal content,” says Brady Colby, head of market research at Validated Insights, a higher education research firm. The shift should alert higher education leaders that they could lose a share of the upskilling industry to other sectors, particularly in artificial intelligence, Colby adds.
