Costs of attending college have increased by merely 25% in the last 10 years. During the 1970s, enrolling in classes at a private college would have cost students no more than $18,000 yearly. Today, costs are close to $50,000 per year for a good private university, according to a report at CNBC. While earning a college degree should be an investment every student should make, most of us cannot afford this without entering student debt and thus, accepting the loss of our financial freedom. During the last years, online classes have become more popular for this exact reason.

MOOCs have been around since 2008, when 25 students attended a course on connectivism at the University of Manitoba - with 2,300 joining online worldwide. They really hit the public consciousness around 2012, when Coursera was created. It partnered with universities to offer courses online, typically with a mix of active participation and self-paced study using filmed lectures and reading lists. Its closest competitor, edX, is a joint venture of Harvard and MIT. As the name suggests, MOOCs are designed for unlimited participation and are free, subsidized, or much cheaper than traditional higher education courses. Although they have been criticized for their low completion rate - an MIT study found an average quit rate of 96% over five years - that has done nothing to stop the demand. In 2019, MOOCs had attracted 110 million students and more than 900 universities around the world had submitted 13,500 courses.

For India's online learners, 2019 was the "Year of AI." Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerged as the most popular subject among e-learners, accounting for nearly two million enrollments in the last year alone, according to online learning platform Coursera's latest learner trends released yesterday (Dec. The analysis included 45 million learners, including five million Indians, on the platform. AI became accessible to the masses with AI For Everyone, which was launched in February this year by deeplearning.ai, Taught by Ng himself, AI For Everyone is described as a "primer course, geared toward non-technical learners--from marketers and designers to financiers and CEOs." It was the fifth most popular Coursera course of the year globally, and the fourth most popular in India.