One third of the learners that ever registered on a MOOC platform joined in 2020. The pandemic brought many people into online education. MOOC providers, in particular, benefited immensely by attracting many learners with their free online courses from top universities.

This is also true for Class Central. Out of all the people who ever used Class Central, 40% did so for the first time this year.

Now in its 9th year, the modern MOOC movement has crossed 180 million learners, excluding China¹. In 2020, providers launched over 2800 courses, 19 online degrees, and 360 microcredentials.

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 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 2020, 16.3K MOOCs will be announced or launched by around 950 universities worldwide. In 2020 alone, around 2.8K courses were added.

Learners

In the years leading to 2020, MOOC providers’ growth had stagnated: they were gaining a similar number of learners every year.

But in 2020, providers gained over 60 million new learners combined. Half of these were just for Coursera, who gained almost as many users in a year than edX, its next closest competitor, gained since its inception.

Online Degrees

2018 was a blockbuster year for MOOC-based degrees: 30 degrees were added, leading me to call it the year of MOOC-based degrees.

But in 2019, we saw a big slowdown: only 11 degrees were announced.

This trend has seen an uptick in 2020: 19 online degrees have been announced, and edX removed its marketing master’s from Curtin University. FutureLearn also removed a degree: the Cyber Security master’s from Deakin University.

In total, there are now 67 MOOC-based degrees. This includes Georgia Tech’s online master’s degree in computer science (OMSCS), which used to be offered on Udacity, but went independent in 2020.

You can find a comprehensive list of MOOC-based master’s degrees here.

Microcredentials

In 2020, 360 new microcredentials were launched — 200 of them by Coursera alone. This represents a significant increase over 2019, when 170 microcredentials were launched. In total, there are now 1180 microcredentials of 13 different types.

Subjects

Overall, the distribution of courses across subjects remains similar to last year. Forty percent of courses belong to the categories that are the easiest to monetize: business and technology.

[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 2020.

[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.