Trying to learn online for free? Make sure you have these 3 things
I failed to learn a skill I strongly wanted and needed to by my set deadline.
Why? Because I tried to do it for free.
The consensus around online learning is that it’s almost always worth it to pay for courses given the relative value you get.
But I didn’t know how much harder it would be trying to do it for free.
So here are the extra costs you will incur if you’re trying to learn for free, and what you can do about them.
The free conundrum
Students who paid for their online courses were 11 times more likely to complete them.
That was the result of two studies done by MIT and Harvard in 2015 and 2017.
After looking at hundreds of thousands of students and completion rates, they basically broke the students into 3 groups: Non-payers, Intenders, and Payers.
Non-payers, students who did not pay for courses, tended to have around a 5% completion rate.
Intenders, non-paying students that stated having a strong intention to finish the course, still only had around a 24% completion rate.
