Best Of

At this point, it is much too soon to hit the proverbial panic button.

Remember, on Udemy, when a student subscribes to a course, they supposedly have lifetime access. I can't believe that Coursera would dump 85,000 instructors and 250,000 or so courses. Udemy has 81 million students for a good reason, and taking their courses and instructors away will create millions of outraged people.

I suspect that while there will be some changes, I highly doubt Coursera will alienate that many Udemy subscribers.

I hope I am right in my reasoning.

In my 30 years in IT I’ve been through too many mergers/acquisitions to count. I’ve never seen it benefit the company being acquired. I’m positive this will be no different. What remains of Udemy will be molded into the Coursera including pay scales and content management. Udemy is gone, sadly. Upside is we have a 6 month notice.

Aside from the future combined company name, there are not yet any decisions about the future use or non-use of the Udemy brand. This discussion will certainly be an important part of integration planning over the coming months. I am pretty attached myself 😉

Coursera values perceived legitimacy. I could see, for example, Coursera weeding out courses that didn't qualify over time for PP or UfB as a baseline.

The response "Proven expertise, strong learner engagement, high learner satisfaction and consistent quality remain core signals of instructor excellence, and these strengths will continue to be recognized and valued" seems to me to lean that direction.

I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing for the health of the marketplace.

Thanks Steve, Udemy instructors' insights and rapid content creation (a.k.a. time to market) are a key part of Coursera’s interest in the company. We will now shortly kickoff planning for how Udemy’s platform and marketplace will be integrated, and expect that process to take at least a couple months. We certainly appreciate the loud and friendly reminder that "time to market and getting many quality courses out fast" is so much of what makes Udemy special.