The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) has launched four paid certificate programmes for global learners through US-listed online learning platform Coursera to be available from 2022.
The partnership comes amid an accelerated interest in online education brought about by the pandemic as millions of students and working professionals are signing up to study and upskill themselves to stay relevant.
The four certifications -- Business Management, Strategic Management, Marketing Strategy, Product Management -- are meant for working professionals, leaders, entrepreneurs and marketers who have spent some time in the workspace and are looking to get reskilled.
Each program is designed as a 6-8 months-long graduate-level offering which will comprise interactive learning, including synchronous and asynchronous sessions with renowned IIMK faculty and Coursera’s learning tools. Learners will get a certificate from IIMK upon successful completion of the course.
For IIMK, the partnership will mean taking first steps globally by tapping into Coursera’s 82 million-strong user base.
IIMK director Debashis Chatterjee said the surge in online learning does not render physical campus education irrelevant because online cannot be a substitute for college education beyond a point. “How many people can IIMs take totally? We exclude more than we can include. Online education complements rather than substitutes by catering to a different learner segment which we did not have access to before,” he said.
For Coursera, India is an attractive market with nearly 11 million users on its platform. The platform added over 5.7 million of those learners in 2020 alone, according to its Global Skills Report 2021.
“Indian institutions are seeing demand from across the globe. It’s not about Indians teaching just Indians anymore…These are new certificate courses created to meet specific needs of online education,” said Coursera chief content officer Betty Vandenbosch.
Three out of the four courses are open to anyone. ‘Business Management’ will require some knowledge in the subject, she added.
Coursera has also tied up with six Indian educational institutes, including IIM Calcutta, IIT Roorkee and OP Jindal Global University, to offer online certifications and degree programs. The platform said that apart from India, it has been seeing traction from students in the US, UAE, Canada, Singapore, Bangladesh for them.
The Indian government is also reportedly roping in Coursera and other online learning platforms to map some of their courses to Indian university curricula. However, Betty clarified that this collaboration is not a part of the government effort.
Coursera completed a $4.3 billion IPO to get listed on the NYSE in March 2021.
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