[dhawalhs]

The two degrees in the articles are examples of "MOOC-based degrees". These are launched by MOOC providers like Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn.

In all 50+ such degrees have been announced [1]. ~30 of these were announced in 2018, but there was a slow down in 2019 with only 11 announced [2].

A majority of degrees tend to be Master's, but there are few bachelors. Most recently Coursera announced that their Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of London had 2,000+ students enrolled. It was announced last year and costs 10,088 – 15,132 GBP.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of Class Central, a Tripadvisor for Online Education. But we also write about the MOOC industry in depth.

[1] https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-based-masters-degre...

[2] https://www.classcentral.com/report/moocs-stats-and-trends-2...

[non-entity]

One interesting thing I've noticed in a handful of the MOOC degrees (only a few of them at the moment offer this) is alternative pathways. I've seen masters degrees offer pathways for literally anyone, even with no prior education to be admitted into them and acquire a masters degree.

On one hand, I'm all for democratizing education, and have taken some courses from said programs individually (typically the offer a "preview") and from what I've seenb hey aren't something anyone without prior subjects knowledge can just fake themselves through.

On the other hand, a lot of the advertising from the schools themselves read like something from a for-profit and I wonder whether programs like these will weaken the reputation of the degrees or even that of the schools themselves. Paraphrasing something I've read on here before, sometimes, the degree is more about signalling than education.