John Mitchell, Stanford University’s vice-provost for online learning and the overseer of their MOOC program, recently stated that professional development courses offered universities the best opportunity to grow the income they generate from online courses. “I think [Stanford] will have low cost, high volume, but non-free courses online that will help make our online programs sustainable,” he said. Mitchell, who taught a computer security MOOC on the Coursera platform, also said “that no college or university was able to continue funding free courses without finding a way to cover the costs.”
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/moocs-are-free-but-for-how-much-longer/2015204.article