Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS) is partnering with Coursera, an online learning platform, to offer a virtual Bachelor of Arts in liberal studies.

The partnership, which was announced Nov. 17, is the first online bachelor’s degree completion program at Georgetown. It aims to offer an affordable and flexible way for adults who want to work full time and cannot attend an educational institution in person to complete their degrees. Applications will open in early December 2022, and the program plans to accept 450 students before classes begin in the summer of 2023. 

The most recent on-campus cohort comprised 62% students of color and 40% military-connected students, according to a Nov. 17 statement by Betty Vandenbosch, the chief content officer at Coursera.

SCS Dean Kelly Otter said the Coursera degree aims to target learners that don’t fall in the traditional 18- to 22-year-old demographic of students pursuing undergraduate degrees. Educational institutions often overlook degree-seeking students outside this age group, according to Otter.

“With the huge influx of veterans and women going to school and adults realizing they needed a college education, we needed to make a new offering,” Otter told The Hoya. “The traditional college experience did not work as well for people who were working full time.”

The core curriculum will focus on developing students’ written and verbal communication skills before they specialize in a particular discipline, according to an SCS statement. The degree program merges a liberal arts education with professional development tracks, allowing students opportunities to apply their learning from each course to the workplace.

Otter said the SCS Bachelor of Arts in liberal studies was established in 1974 as an in-person program, but enrollment has been on the decline since 2014. According to Otter, an internal SCS analysis found that the enrollment decrease was a result of price increases and the fact that the program was only offered in person.

The SCS decided to move the program online to bring down the price and lower barriers to enrollment. Each credit hour is priced at $400, which Coursera said is 22% more affordable than the average online credit hour rate at comparable private colleges. This rate is approximately 80% less expensive than a traditional undergraduate degree from Georgetown.

Students who complete the degree can choose from a variety of concentrations, including business, international relations or communications, according to the statement by Vandenbosch.

“The program combines the best aspects of online learning, such as asynchronous courses taught by renowned Georgetown faculty, with high-touch support services crucial to student success, including academic advising,” Vandenbosch wrote in the statement. 

Otter said that SCS professors redesigned the curriculum to work in a virtual environment, tailoring it to be rigorous and interactive while remaining asynchronous. 

“Every course is being designed from scratch,” Otter said. “A team of experts worked for months on every course to custom design them to be interactive and asynchronous.”

Otter said Coursera’s expertise in academic infrastructure takes the pressure of logistics off of faculty members and allows them to focus on academics.

“Coursera was chosen because they have a good experience doing the kinds of activities that are beneficial to the school and students,” Otter said. “Their infrastructure takes the work off the academic institution so that faculty can focus on the students, the teaching and learning.”

The new partnership with Georgetown is Coursera’s 40th degree program. Students can transfer up to 64 college credits, including military training, to their 120-credit degree requirement, according to the SCS.

In line with the SCS’ commitment to accessibility and college completion, the bachelor’s program does not require any application fee or deposit. Otter said the program aligns with Georgetown’s values by promoting personalized, accessible education.

“This is truly an Ignatian approach, a Jesuit mission in action — meeting people where they are and recognizing that education can never be a one-size-fits-all system,” Otter said. “Ed-tech is helping us see how these advancements can provide more access and more rigor and more engagement within a classroom.”