The online marketplace for business education: An exploratory study

Abstract

The Internet has had a vast and pervasive impact on the education industry, one of which is the creation of an online educational marketplace. This study investigates the online marketplace for business courses by viewing it as part of the platform economy. Data pertaining to 9064 business courses was collected from the Udemy website using a web scraper tool. The analysis of the data reveals that the demand for MOOCs in business is great, with an average of 3169 students enrolled in each course, with some courses surpassing 100,000 students. The demand varies between categories, with business & data analytics, and entrepreneurship being among the most popular categories. The results also show that course enrollment in courses is highly skewed, giving support for the notion that power asymmetries that seem to arise in such decentralized markets. Finally, the analysis reveals that not all participants in the online marketplace for business education benefit equally. Specifically, the study found that courses tended to have a higher enrollment rate when the course provider was male. Finally, the analysis showed that despite increasing academic interest in online education, academics have been slow to enter the digital marketplace as service providers.