Ten years ago, over 300k learners were taking the 3 free Stanford courses that kicked off the modern MOOC movement. I was one of those learners.

Now, a decade later, MOOCs have reached 220 million learners, excluding China¹. In 2021, providers launched over 3100 courses and 500 microcredentials.

In 2021, 40M new learners signed up for at least one MOOC, compared to 60M (fueled by the pandemic) in 2020.

Here’s how the top MOOC providers look in terms of users and offerings:

For Class Central‘s complete analysis, keep reading. For our previous years’ analyses, follow the links:

• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2020
• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2019
• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2018
• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2017
• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2016
• By The Numbers: MOOCs in 2015

Courses

By the end of 2021, 19.4K MOOCs will be announced or launched by around 950 universities worldwide. In 2021 alone, around 3.1K courses were added.

Online Degrees

2021 was the slowest year since MOOC providers began offering online degrees. Only Coursera added new degrees, while FutureLearn delisted a few.

EdX did announce a Masters in Public Health from Boston University, but it will start in 2023. Here is a complete list of MOOC-based online degrees.

Microcredentials

In 2021, around 500 microcredentials were added. The largest growth came from Coursera Specializations: around 250 new were introduced. Note that the Coursera Specialization numbers are inflated because Coursera launches each translation as a separate Specialization.

FutureLearn launched ExpertTrack in 2021, which are similar to Coursera Specializations. And in just a year, they’ve launched almost 100 of them.

A trend we noticed is that many of the microcredentials launched in 2021 are from companies rather than universities. For instance, companies account for two thirds of ExpertTracks.

Another recent addition are University Certificates from Coursera, which are cohort-based and have live sessions. Many of these haven’t gone live yet.

Subjects

The distribution of courses across different subjects has been relatively stable over the years, with business and technology courses accounting for 40% of all the courses.

[1] We decided to leave China out of our analysis because, as we learned more about Chinese online education, we realized that the metrics we’d like to present are: (1) sometimes unavailable, (2) sometimes available but impossible to validate to the extent we’d like, (3) sometimes reflect a view too narrow to adequately capture the overall state of MOOCs in China.

[2] For platforms with session-based courses, we counted the total number of distinct courses offered in 2021.

[3] This doesn’t include Coursera Project Network courses, since they tend to offer a light-weight learning experience compared to academic or professional Coursera courses.

[4] Graduate and postgraduate certificates are listed under microcredentials instead of under degrees.