Will online courses transform world of education? Some may wonder what it feels like to attend a class at Stanford University. The recently popular MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) can satisfy this desire. But they are also most likely to change the situation of higher education. Only last month,both Peking University and Tsinghua University announced plans to start open online course on the edX platform,one of the world's major providers of MOOCs,to explore this new form of online education. Gaining momentum  "It's not only a change of platforms from offline to online. It's more about a reform of teaching methods,even the whole education system,"said Chen Jining,president of Tsinghua University. The potential of MOOCs to reform education has been obvious in the US ever since the immediate popularity of the course Artificial Intelligence,taught by Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who later co-founded Udacity, a platform with 1.6 million enrolled  students in 200 countries. According to Nature magazine,by June 2013,74 percent of universities in the US offered some type of online course. Lu Fang, vice-president of Fudan University,explains the appeal of MOOCs as a simple case of supply and demand:"The demand for high quality educational resources from both enrolled students and professionals is feeding the rise of MOOCs,in which classes usually taught by top teachers are available to everyone,"said Lu. Too early to replace With easy access and free of charge, MOOCs are said to have the potential to change the present education system. But there are barriers,because hardly any universities offer degree certificates, as college administrators point out, it's difficult to confirm if students are foaming anything in MOOCs,reposed USA Today. The Wall Street Journal also reposed that,presently,a typical MOOC student is likely to have already graduated from college and is using the course to explore an interest or acquire professional skills. Even so, an increasing number of undergraduates are signing up. "What we are really establishing are educational pathways for people who want skills that are related to contemporary jobs,"Thrun told The Wall Street Journal. What can we learn from the passage?
Most of the MOOCs focus on professional training for college graduates. There are barriers for MOOCs to replace the present education system. International companies prefer applicants who graduate from MOOCs. More and more undergraduates have realized the limits of MOOCs.