Our mission is to provide universal access to the world’s best education. As we work toward long-term sustainability, we are continually iterating on our platform and course formats. We wanted to let you know about one upcoming change that will affect some courses starting in January 2016.

When you enroll in certain courses, you’ll be asked to pay a small fee (or apply for Coursera’s financial aid program) if you’d like to access graded assignments or earn a Course Certificate. You can also choose to explore course videos, discussions, and ungraded assignments for free, but you won’t be able to submit graded assignments or earn a certificate.

In order to provide universal access to our paid offerings, we introduced financial aid as part of our first certificate product. We remain fully committed to our financial aid program. This year, we have already provided over 100,000 learners with access to Course Certificates through financial aid. In the coming months, you’ll notice further improvements to make our financial aid option more visible to learners who aren’t able to afford the graded course experience fee.

We are on a mission to change the world by providing universal access to the world’s best learning experience. To do this, we also need to have a business model to support our platform, our partners, our content, and everything we do for learners.

We welcome your questions and thoughts in the comments section of this post, and we will continue to provide updates on product changes in the coming months. We hope you continue to enjoy all of the fantastic content on Coursera, including the exciting new courses and Specializations that launched this fall, and we wish you success as you pursue your goals.

Thank you for being with us on this journey.

Daphne Koller

President and Co-Founder of Coursera

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