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Well, the courses start at $200, we have a generous refund policy, and you can actually try the system and class out for free right now with a guest account. We don't even require a real email.

Also, we have thought very seriously about the business model of offering classes for free (Udacity model) and charging for certification/one on one. The numbers we see for that model just don't work, even at a large scale. You have to focus in introductory classes with the broadest possible appeal, reduce the difficulty of the course so you don't get 10,000 complaint emails from students who can't keep up, use a MOOC structure that is more about cost control than maximizing learning. Plus, the conversion from free to paid user may or may not be enough to cover the cost of course development. Our model, on the other hand, allows us to pay our professors quite generously for classes that may not have 100,000 students attending and focus more on building our catalog instead of just building the user base.