Jeff Maggioncalda: CEO of Coursera (Raise the Line)
Hi, everyone. My name is Siblani.
I'm the co-founder and CEO of osmosis.org, a health education platform. And today I'm really happy to be joined by Jeff Mada, who's the CEO of Coursera, which most of you have heard of, many of you have taken courses on and basically they were the category defining company for massive online open courses.
Today, Coursera has 46 million learners and 200 university and industry partners worldwide. Um Those are the latest stats I have.
It's probably even more given how much of a rocket ship. Coursera seems to be before.
Coursera. Jeff was the founding CEO at Financial Engines which provides online investment advice and he also worked as a consultant at mckinsey.
So Jeff and I met at a conference here in Utah a month ago called Learn and Ski. We share investors, uh learn capital and learn, start.
Um and we had the pleasure of getting to know each other. And uh of course, there's interest in health care and it already seems like that was a year ago, given how much has changed because of COVID.
Um And we're really proud that we've partnered with uh Coursera to launch osmosis first course, competing medical education course on COVID, which to date has had over 10,000 people enroll in that between Coursera and and the osmosis platform.
So Jeff thanks so much for being here with us today. It's my pleasure.
Great to be here. So the first question is how did you come to accept the role of co at Coursera?
I'd been the CEO of Financial Engines for 18 years. II started just out of business school.
And uh so that was a long haul. I have three daughters.
Um They were very young when we started and then ultimately, obviously grew to be older adults. Let's take some time off.
So we, we took a couple of years off. We traveled around the world.
I volunteered and did things. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and it was really super fortunate that I got a call from a recruiter who I used at financial ends before that saying that Coursera was looking for a CEO.
I'd always wanted to be a teacher when I was in high school. I always wanted to be a teacher.
I thought that that dream would, would never really come to fruition. And although I'm not a teacher, I think is sort of the next next best chance I II do think that access to education and learning is the path to access to opportunity and equality.
And when I look at what's happening in society globally and here in the US, it is really a tale of, of two groups, uh the haves and have nots and it's almost all predicated on educational opportunity and the kind of knowledge and skills people can develop.
So I feel that this is a great business, but more importantly, it's a great mission and it's a great way to try to use my time and talent to make a difference in the world.
100%. I couldn't agree more.
Great. So in terms of making a difference in the world, again, when we met in Utah, at this conference, we talked about the impact COVID-19 was having back then.
It was mostly in China. Um At least that's where the discussion was.
And I'm curious um how have the last few months affected demand for Coursera? And do you have any specific kind of stats you can point to in terms of the B to C or B to B demand you've been seeing?
Yeah. Well, it, it, it, it clearly has affected demand quite a bit when, when Daphne Kohler and Andrew, who were the two founders started Coursera, the idea was, you know, create access for everybody in the world to, to, to have um you know, uh uh high quality education available to them.
Uh UNESCO has reported that 1.5 billion students have had their schools closed. So this is 100 and 90 countries have closed.
Every school in the country is 91% of every schools in the world from kindergarten through college have been closed. So as you might expect all the people working from home and the students not being able to school has, has clearly created AAA demand for Coursera um year over year last 30 days, we've seen new registrations up by 670%.
Uh We see especially uh new learners coming to Coursera that were never here before. I mean, traditionally, we would attract a lot of people in data science, in computer science and business, but it's a much wider representation of uh of learners who are coming.
So our new learner registrations are up 900%. Uh public health enrollments are up 2200%.
And um a and, and so we're, we're just seeing a across the board and, and the way that kind of rolls out is country by country.
As we saw like when I was talking with you in, in uh Utah, uh we saw first it was China Taiwan, Vietnam, other parts of Asia.
And then we saw big spikes in Italy, Spain, France, Europe. The the US really started activating as the lockdowns started happening and now we're seeing big growing demand in Lactam and in India.
So it really is across pretty much every region. Uh and it's a across pretty much every domain with a real focus on not only public health but also personal development.
So there's been a lot of interest in mental health courses uh that we have a, a course by Yale uh Laurie Santos. Professor Santos has a course called the Science of Wellbeing.
Uh It's one of our most popular courses. It has been, it had 500,000 enrollments uh last year after the launch in the last month, there's been a million people more who've been enrolled in that course.
And so, you know, people are coming to course for a lot of reasons and a lot of it is because they're isolated, they're feeling isolated and they're, and they're, and they're trying to, I think improve themselves and use their times in what they believe to be a constructive way.
That's awesome. That's great to hear that.
At least, uh again, they're able to be productive with their time because there's only so many seasons of uh Netflix you can watch before I think uh you may want to start learning.
So, um you know, everyone is at in their house because of the concept of social distancing, which um has been promoted to so called flatten the curve right, to reduce the number of people who will need health care.
Um And so everyone knows that concept of flattening the curve osmosis, we talk a lot about the concept of raising the line and actually, that's the name of this video series and interview series um which basically means increasing health system capacity, including how many people are capable of providing healthcare, the workforce.
Um Do you mind talking to us a bit about course's work with regards to healthcare education? Yeah, definitely.
So, so um so we have been mostly focused on data science, technology and business. Uh But in January of 2019, we made a major push to put more health care content on the platform.
Coursera works with over 100 and 70 of the top universities, many of them have the top medical schools. And so they have been really interested in helping to share access to medical training.
Uh We started with just a, a launch of 100 healthcare related courses in January. We're now up to 450 health care related courses.
And as I said, the, the these courses are seeing higher demand than, than other courses on the platform. And um on March 25th, uh with osmosis, we, we launched the COVID-19, what you need to know which counts towards uh continued medical education.
Uh I'll, I'll tell you your team is fantastic. That need and quality is a rare combination already.
We've received over 7, 7000 enrollments and 1400 completions. So it looks like a lot of people are coming to not only learn the material but also get that continuing medical education credit and, and uh we really are pleased to be working with you guys and, and seriously, we work with a lot of players.
You guys are both quick and high quality and we really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
Now, that means a lot and I'm glad the team will be able to see that. Um Obviously, it means a lot coming from you all because we have a lot of respect for everything Coursera has done and I saw we, we had an email go out um obviously at osmosis but also the Coursera audience this past Friday.
And what type of feedback are you getting on those? Yeah.
So, so a number of universities are putting things out there. Uh There's the, the, the big one is uh when I say the big one, the one with the most enrollments is from Imperial College of London.
So per College of London has been a partner for a while. Uh they have a master's in public health degree on Coursera.
It's, you know, one of the top ranked public health programs in the world. Imperial College of London is the number four ranked medical school in the world.
They put out a talk called Science Matters. Let's talk about COVID-19.
They've seen 94,000 enrollment so far. And one of their star professors is Neil Ferguson who put together that simulation model that, that influenced heavily the US and UK policy on social distancing.
So that's been getting a lot of attention. Uh We got one by Johns Hopkins University called Fighting COVID-19 with epidemiology.
It was a teach out, it was sort of a live event that they did. Uh University of Florida put out COVID-19, a clinical update.
So kind of talking about what's it like uh in the clinics? Uh what, what were are the manifestations of, of COVID-19?
And then we have a university in Barcelona who has a, a Spanish language course on um on COVID-19. So it's a sort of special course on, on COVID-19.
So we are uh we're seeing a lot of demand for, for COVID is not surprised CO COVID related course is not surprisingly. And there's, you know, there's a lot of news out there, but rarely can someone get to the true experts who have done a thoughtful uh piece on, you know, educating people about COVID.
So I think the quality uh it is really a, a nice difference here. This is attracting a lot of people totally.
And II personally enrolled in the Hopkins course. Uh uh you may not know this, but I was actually a medical student, Johns Hopkins when my co-founder and I met and started osmosis.
Um That's great. Yeah.
So the, the Hopkins course is the number two most popular courses so far this year. The number one course is that UR A blending course.
So those two courses are our top two courses on Coursera for 2020 so far. Wow.
Amazing. So, um you know, I mean, we're all praying that COVID will come to a close soon.
We can all get back to our daily lives and, and, and, and see, see our people in person, um our friends and family. But I II do think there's a lot of talk around lasting effects that this pandemic is going to have um on all parts of society.
And I'm curious given the role of Coursera has had on higher education, what are some of the effects you think uh this pandemic will have on universities and colleges around the world even in a post COVID world?
Yeah. Well, II II think, I think in terms of sort of what I think of is like the three big waves of COVID.
The first major wave is the health one, right? The mobilizing health care workers to save people's lives and the the the dedication and the sacrifices and the risks being taken by frontline workers is just extraordinary.
Uh II think appropriately, that's where where society went first is the healthcare thing, the the the healthcare front and that's gonna continue for a long time.
And a lot of predictions suggest this is gonna come in waves, the epidemic will be uh mitigated and then it will you know, sort of recur and, and, and so we'll be dealing with this for a long time.
I do think health will remain the number one thing and the way that we manage health with telemedicine, things like that will be a lot, uh will be changed a lot different than they are today.
The second big wave is kind of school closures that happened immediately as part of the social distancing and I'll talk a little bit about the way that we see.
Uh So the higher education and education and general changing. But then the third big wave, which we're just now starting to see is the whole unemployment wave.
So you go from health to school to, to employment. And so there's a lot that we're working on now on employment and I think the future of employment and the way people work together will be different.
But let me focus in on the second big piece which you just mentioned, which is schools uh clearly the big thing about pandemics is that uh it's a viral infection that gets transmitted is highly contagious.
What that means is knowing whether you have the disease, knowing whether you can transmit the disease. Uh and mitigating that transmission is really important.
Of course, as a treatment side, if you do get it, but that's gonna really change the way people are able to come together or not come together.
I think that the uh the first approach which made a lot of sense. The first public health uh public health approach was to shut everything down.
All workers work from home, all schools closed, I think to get the economy and society running again, understanding who's most at risk based on age uh com comorbidities, whether or not you've had it and you have antibodies.
I think being able to assess appropriately the risk that someone gets the disease or transmit the disease is going to be important.
And then based on that risk, I think we will allow certain people to come together in certain ways. But I think the idea of kind of universal assembly is gonna, it's gonna be a long time before we get back to that in the workplace and at school, so we see a world where there's gonna be some on campus classes, uh especially the ones that require clinical labs uh and things that are more physically oriented.
It is looking like many campuses are not gonna be open in the summer, probably won't be open in the fall. Perhaps they'll partially open them for med school students and others who need to be on campus.
They will probably have um blended periods though so that they can actually spread people out a little bit more using the, the the the plants on campus.
So we see blended classrooms being pretty much a staple for the the next probably many years. There'll be some people on some students online and some students uh in the classroom.
But on the flip side, I think there's gonna be uh a lot of remote teaching because professors are often at higher risk of, of fatality if they catch the disease.
And so it might be the case that students are on campus and professors are not. And so I think it's kind of both directions you're gonna have some students on campus, many students online, some professors teaching live classes, some professors teaching online, the backbone of the whole thing that we believe is gonna be uh technology and whether that's Coursera or Zoom or some combination, I think the key thing is there's gonna be a much bigger role for technology to play in the provision of education.
Totally. It, I mean, and that, that same thing is being discussed in terms of uh you know, sales marketing.
Do we even need to be doing conferences anymore? Um Frankly, for me, it's been kind of uh a nice, nice not to have to fly everywhere.
Uh you know, twice a week to different conferences. So, um one thing we spoke about at the conference last month though is how mission driven Coursera is.
I mean, you mentioned that's the main reason you joined them and you clearly had done a lot of that this kind of education work beforehand.
Um I'm curious, uh you know, you had mentioned that Coursera works with several underserved populations, putting COVID aside refugees, prison inmates, veterans can you talk a bit more about kind of how you, how you've made that a separate piece of the work that you all do at Coursera and what programs they or other, of course there and other online education companies could be doing.
Yeah. Well, so, so when the company was founded, it really was founded by, by two professors with a mission to try to serve the world.
And so from the very, I mean, well before I got here, which was about three years ago, the company was always super mission focused.
And um and so uh uh they, they started with financial aid, like right out of the gate, financial Aid was part of the part of the deal and every lecture people can watch for free.
So every course you can watch the lectures for free. If you want to get the certificate, you have to pay every course, you can actually take the test and get a certificate with financial aid if you qualify for national aid.
Many years ago, we launched Coursera for refugees, which is basically offering Coursera through non profit institutions.
We work with about 14 nonprofit institutions to serve refugee populations. So far, we've served over 40,000 refugees all around the world who often are displaced from their countries and also displace um are are are, are uh lose their academic credentials or the transferability of their aca academic credentials aren't as high.
So, education is really important for a more transient population. Uh You mentioned veterans were gearing up to provide Coursera through nonprofits to, to veterans and their families.
Uh, gearing up to provide through nonprofits. Coursera for underserved high schools, uh, and also formerly incarcerated individuals who are coming back to society.
And that's a, that's a really tough, tough transition as well. The biggest, uh, sort of social impact effort that we made is a version of Coursera for campus that we're making available to any impacted school or university in the world.
Uh And we've started doing this on March 12th. We're working with UNESCO the World Bank and World Economic Forum.
We've seen uh tens of thousands of inquiries. We've already had 6000 universities come to us from 100 and 20 different countries.
Uh In, in February, we had 50 50 instances of Coursera for campus active for campuses. We're currently at 4000 active programs right now serving 100s of thousands of students uh and, and, and, and thousands of faculty.
So we're really excited to be doing this. And I think, you know, we're looking forward and, and thinking that that workforce development and unemployment might be another big uh sort of social impact effort that we can make.
That's awesome. That's so great to hear.
We definitely have a lot of similarities in how mission driven the orgs are. I mean, when you mentioned the refugee populations that you all work with, I think I followed up and sent you some of the work we've done with the Syrian refugees and all the med schools there that students have been displaced and, you know, donated thousands and thousands of years worth of osmosis to those refugees there.
Um, I guess I have 11 last question, um, which is, you know, say you were, uh, a student right now, um, and you were displaced from school.
Um, is there any advice you'd be, you'd want to give yourself or any other students out there who are, um, dealing with the pandemic right now?
And maybe a AAA job market that's not as, uh, robust as we would have hoped. Yeah, of course.
It depends on the age of the student, you know, a young person versus, let's, let's suppose they sort of a young adult. Maybe someone in college.
Yeah. Um, an undergrad.
I think that, uh, first of all, it's, it's very tough. I have three daughters living with me now.
Uh, they are 2226 and 28. So, two of them are out of college but one's a, as a junior and she's doing the whole zoom video thing and, and, and her, her college is Duke.
So it's on the east coast. So she's getting up really early because, you know, they're, they're running on east coast time now.
Her roommate is in Korea. She has to get up at three in the morning.
So, first of all I feel for you try to keep mine in the good fight. It's, it's really not easy to do, you know, hour long zoom videos.
Um So I'd, I'd say, you know, get your rest, do the best you can to take care of yourself. Uh And, and obviously try to stay in it.
There are lots of resources, you know. Coursera certainly is, is part of that, that you can use to complement this to, to learn some of these uh these sort of skills that, that you could do a and, and knowledge that you could do online.
So II would certainly recommend that in terms of the job market, you know, it's a really tricky one. I was uh just hearing from the, um Christine Lagarde uh from the IMF and a, a lot of folks are thinking that it might not be a vi mean, who knows how fast things might bounce back at, at least it's not a structural fin financial institution.
Um, insolvency issue that, that I'm on the board of Silicon Valley Bank and uh banks are in great shape. We have lot, lots of liquidity.
The Fed has stepped up, the, the uh IMF has stepped up. There's, this is not a financial crisis, it is an unemployment crisis.
So what I would say is that it's not clear how long it'll be before the job market really comes back. Um, to some degree, unfortunately, the jobs least impacted are the digital jobs.
The ones that will come back the strongest, I think will be the digital jobs. There's a huge emphasis on data science, um on, on technology, computer science.
I do think that if you're a liberal arts major, this is a good chance to whether it's getting a degree or getting just a certificate, rounding out that liberal arts background with some, a little bit more stem oriented professional certificates could be valuable.
And II would expect, I think many students might stay on an extra year and do a four plus one, maybe stay, stay another year and uh and get a master's degree in only a year.
So a number of universities do this. And if yours doesn't, there are also online programs like Coursera, we have 17 degrees.
You can earn a master's degree online. Uh They're inexpensive, they're fully online.
So you don't have to go to campus. You, there's no, no, no risk that the campus gets closed and would would interfere with this.
So I do think it's kind of smart to keep your studies going, maybe adding a little bit more stem because I think the digital transformation is upon all of us and when the economy comes back, it'll be the digital jobs that are, are most in demand.
That's great. That's great advice.
Thanks. Thanks for sharing that.
So I think we're about out of time. But um Jeff, thanks so much for being with us today and uh to the listeners I wanna thank you for joining today's show.
Um You can join osmosis to raise the line and th the curve uh just go to osmosis.org/covid-19. We have a link to the Coursera course that we have as well.
Thank you again and have a good rest of your day and stay safe out there. Thank you for having me.
It's great to have you guys as a partner. Likewise, Jeff, thanks again.
Take care. Bye bye bye.
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