Online Ed Ventures Coursera, edX Add Partners to Expand Internationally

Two purveyors of free, online college courses are expanding and increasing their international offerings.

Coursera will add courses from an additional 29 universities around the globe, bringing its number of partner institutions to 62, TechCrunch reports. With 90 new courses, it will offer 313 courses in all, including offerings in French, Spanish, Chinese and Italian.

Meanwhile, edX, the brainchild of Harvard and MIT, has added six more schools, doubling its partner list.

In a second TechCrunch article, edX President Anant Agarwal says that the platform is on track to educate 1 million students in its first year.

The question all along, though, has been how students can sell this education to prospective employers, since these startup ventures don’t offer degrees. They are moving toward certificates for a fee that verify completion of courses. It remains to be seen whether employers will accept them, though.

In December, Coursera also launched Career Services, an option that allows students to be matched with employers.