Last week, Coursera’s new CEO, Greg Hart, delivered something the company’s investors had been eagerly awaiting: growth.
In his first full quarter as CEO, Greg’s leadership helped drive Coursera’s stock price up 36% following the earnings call, pushing the company’s valuation past the $2 billion mark.
However, this pursuit of prioritizing Wall Street could come at a cost to learners worldwide. The company is rolling out a “Preview Mode,” a feature that would lock almost all course content, including video lectures.
Coursera’s Monetization Journey: A Quick Recap
Coursera formally launched in January 2012 with the mission statement: “We are committed to making the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it.” At that time, Coursera had no business model.
Over the years, Coursera gradually introduced monetization features, including certificates, specializations, and subscription plans, while placing certificates and graded assignments behind paywalls. This transition is detailed in my article, Coursera’s Monetization Journey: From Zero to IPO.
During the Jeff Maggioncalda era (June 2017 to early 2025), Coursera maintained a relatively stable free auditing policy. Under his leadership, learners retained access to video content for most courses, even as certificates and graded assignments required payment.
While competitors like edX and FutureLearn implemented time-based paywalls, restricting all course content, Coursera largely resisted this approach, keeping video lectures accessible to non-paying users.
That appears to be changing under new leadership.
Coursera’s New “Preview” Mode
In early July, while attempting to enroll in Programming Languages I from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, I encountered a significant change: the course was completely locked, with only Module 1 accessible.
When I consulted with my Classmates (that’s what we call each other at Class Central), they reported full access to the same course, minus the graded assignments. This inconsistency suggested that Preview Mode was in limited testing.
I reached out to my network familiar with this matter and confirmed that Preview Mode is real and will be deployed across the platform.
What remains unclear is the extent of this deployment. What percentage of courses will be affected? Will universities have the option to opt out? Will it be limited to certain geographic regions?
Class Central will be closely monitoring these developments.
Courses that have offered free video access for years, some for over a decade, may soon become restricted. This represents a fundamental shift from a model that had been stable for years.
I dread to think of all the places and different articles we published on Class Central that need to be updated.
When $17 Million Turns into Half a Billion Dollars
After failing to boost the stock price through layoffs and stock buybacks, Coursera replaced its long-time CEO with Amazon veteran Greg Hart.
In Hart’s first full quarter as CEO, he raised Coursera’s 2025 revenue outlook by $17 million, projecting a range of $738 million to $746 million. During the earnings call, CFO Ken Hahn attributed the current quarter’s growth to “strong receptivity to our Coursera Plus subscription offerings and marketing campaigns, including localized promotions and pricing that benefited our paid conversion rate.”
This likely translates to increased discounting (a recent Coursera trend) and geographic pricing adjustments that reduce costs in countries with lower purchasing power.
While this represents only a 2% increase in annual revenue, Wall Street responded dramatically: Coursera’s stock price surged 36%. In other words, a modest 2% revenue boost made Coursera’s investors and employees half a billion dollars richer overnight.
Hart indicated the additional $17 million will come from the consumer business, which he described as having “a more responsive model.” This suggests Coursera can adjust pricing strategies more aggressively to maximize revenue, and the upcoming Preview Mode rollout is part of this approach.
Previously when MOOC providers implemented paywalls, it was done in the guise of sustainability. Yet Coursera’s financials tell a different story. The company has never been stronger financially, generating $29 million in free cash flow last quarter alone while maintaining $775 million in cash reserves.
This move appears to be designed primarily to boost a stock price that, despite the recent surge, remains 73% below its IPO level.
Weren’t MOOCs Already Dead?
In many ways, yes. Major platforms stopped using the term “MOOC” to describe their courses years ago. The term had been fading, a decline accelerated by 2U’s acquisition of edX and subsequent bankruptcy. FutureLearn’s acquisition by Global University Systems further consolidated the market.
This left Coursera as the last major independent player — the largest platform and the one with the most generous free access policy.
MOOCs never achieved the transformative potential promised during the early hype. The movement lost its way as monetization increasingly took precedence over accessibility.
When I built Class Central as a side project over Thanksgiving weekend in 2011, my goal was simply to track free online courses from Stanford. Throughout the years, I believed Coursera had preserved some of the original MOOC spirit by maintaining free access to course content.
With Preview Mode’s implementation, that spirit finally dies. MOOCs, as originally conceived, are now truly dead.