Many massive on-line course produce no visible revenue. Is this situation sustainable or is it like the non-revenue internet companies of the original ".com" bubble? Why shouldn't the student pay at least the cost of a good textbook? Is that enough to cover the course development costs? If so, why should the cost of a for-credit version of the course be signficantly higher than that?
MOOCS belong to multi-million companies. I guess no one would invest that much money and not hope to produce revenue.
Many of massive on-line courses in computer science have emerged in the last two years, triggered by large enrollment in the free AI courses two years ago with Stanford-and-Google-affiliated faculty (I don't think it was an official Stanford course). There is a strong baqndwagon effect such that many university as well as several start-up companies are trying to put together a curriculum of similar courses. Generally, these courses are free for non-credit students, which in some cases may be all the students, so there is no revenue. If the course is offered for credit, generally all the revenue comes from tuition, which is the same as for small courses taught in classroooms, and is very expensive in elite universities.
However, it is not sustainable to have no revenue. Nor is it fair or desirable, even for a non-profit, to have all the revenue be from a small minority of for-credit students.
There needs to be a middle ground in which the revenue is comparable to the costs and the expense is shared fairly among all the students.
In such a model, how much more should for-credit students pay than non-credit students?
I attended the second Coursera Partners conference earlier this year, and from that I can provide two answers relating to your question. The first is that the revenue model for Coursera is clear, and reasonable. They charge partners to offer courses, these must be offered "free" the first time, but can offer a fee-based "signature option" for repeat offerings of the course. Coursera will share net revenue from the signature fees, after covering its costs of offering and managing the course.
The second answer is that the revenue model for the institution offering the course is not at all obvious, and many universities doing so are not expecting much, if any, revenue to emerge. Many see MOOCs as "loss leaders" to bring attention and reputation to the institution, school/college, or department, as well as attract real tuition-paying enrollment in courses that offer credit. Many Coursera Partners have said they cannot use state appropriations or student tuition to fund MOOC offerings, and are relying on donations/gifts to support them. As such MOOCs might be considered institutional philanthropy, offering high quality educational material to people across the world who could never afford to pay for it, even a few dollars.
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