Scholarship not the only way; try MOOC

I get many requests from people who are looking for scholarships to universities abroad. Unfortunately, the days of scholarships galore are long gone.
Many universities may offer financial assistance, but often, it is just a fraction of the fees.

The students still needs to cater for the balance and the living expenses. The truth is, if you cannot afford a local university, you won’t manage to study overseas with a partial scholarship.

In any case, we have become a bit too obsessed with university education, to the extent that the work force in Kenya is now white-collar heavy and blue-collar weak. We fail to realise that sometimes what we need is not a higher university degree, but just a specific skill to turn our careers around.

Fortunately, many of these skills can now be learnt even through top-notch universities abroad without the need for a scholarship.

A good number of foreign universities have turned to Massive Open Online Courses, known also as MOOCs. This is free online education. There are no fees to be paid and no travel expenses. Neither is there the need to enrol full-time. You get a certificate of participation.

Employers too need to understand that a degree is not the be-all and end-all in education. Continuing education may be more important than an undergraduate degree.

Careers and workplaces are evolving quicker than ever before. Skill sets keep changing and employees need to have their knowledge updated.

That’s where the MOOCs come in handy. They use lectures, reading materials and videos, but in a more interactive way that allows learners anywhere in the world to gain skills and knowledge that would have traditionally been reserved for the privileged.

The online providers through which universities from around the world offer their MOOCs include Coursera and edX. They offer courses on behalf of institutions such as Stanford and Harvard universities and the universities of Toronto and Queensland.

MOOCs are not only limited to tertiary education. Providers such as Khan Academy offer primary and high school curriculum online for free.

As an employer, imagine that you have set up a new savings and credit cooperative society and you want all your staff to understand what credit risk is all about. There is a seven-week (six hours a week) MOOC available on edX offered by Delft University titled “An Introduction to Credit Risk Management”.

As a school, you are feeding several hundred children daily, and you want your canteen staff to understand nutrition and how to explain to the students what a healthy diet is and why the food is being changed in the canteen. Vanderbilt University, through Coursera, offers a seven week course (two to four hours a week) titled “Nutrition, Health and Lifestyle: Issues and Insights”.

What about a high school student who is considering a career in computing? Why not get a taste of the different areas of computing before you make an informed decision on what degree to take?

You could enrol in Harvard University’s “Introduction to Computer Science” MOOC through edX. It is a self-paced study that takes between 90 to 180 hours. Then compare that to Stanford University’s “Introduction to Databases” and Tsinghua University’s “Data Structures” MOOC. This way, you can get a much better understanding in computing before you decide on your degree.

Several providers are now offering verified or specialised certificates for MOOCs. This means they can verify and confirm that you personally undertook the MOOC and the certificate issued also carries the name and logo of the university offering the course.

The hidden cost of MOOCs is access to good internet and a decent computer.

Several million people have completed MOOCs globally.

The writer is a director at the International Education Centre, Nairobi