1000美元读完MBA

    虚拟课堂真正的难题在于，雇主如何看待没有真实学位的商学教育。许多MOOC课程通常会有偿提供一份结业证书（SOA）。皮卡德很怀疑这种证书的价值。她指出，大多数求职者不会把自己的成绩单给面试官看，更不用说一堆结业表。此外，课程的难度和质量参差不齐，因此人们很难判断这种结业证书的可信度。她说：“如何完整呈现自己的学习情况，对此，我一直在努力想办法。我目前主要依赖博客，这样其他人就能详细了解我做过什么……”

    对皮卡德来说，知识比正式的证书更重要。她并不打算进军金融业或咨询业，在这些行业，MBA是获得好工作的先决条件。相反，凭借自己在尼加拉瓜担任农业与食品安全志愿者的经验，她打算从事可持续供应链开发方面的工作，重点是咖啡。她还计划把自己的博客扩展成一种资源，为志趣相投的人们提供一个社区：在这里，既可以省钱，又不会错过商学院课程。

    皮卡德显然已经规划好了自己的职业方向。然而， MOOC的反对者众多，且十分活跃，他们反对的理由也一大堆。但“免费MBA”博客却认为，这些否定者们忽视了互联网教育的潜力。皮卡德说道：“最近有许多文章在谈论MOOC的失败，许多人认为它与课堂教育相差甚远……尽管它并不是人们所期待的人人平等的教育改革，但我却看到了MOOC许多积极的方面。”

    她坚信，对于合适的人，MOOC教育能够像课堂教育和在线MBA课程一样有效。她说：“如果一本书能让你从中学到知识，MOOC自然也可以。而且，从MOOC中，你可以学到更多。”皮卡德愿意用一个博客和1,000美元为MOOC的未来下注——如果赌赢，她不仅能接受高水平的商学教育，更能省下数万美元。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓    

    The real elephant in the virtual classroom is how employers will perceive a business education that doesn't come with a bona fide degree. Many MOOC courses offer a Statement of Accomplishment (SOA), often for a fee. Pickard is skeptical of their value. Most jobseekers wouldn't bring their transcripts to an interview, much less a stack of course completion forms, she points out. Also, the level of difficulty and quality of courses ranges widely, making it tricky to decipher how much credence to give a particular SOA. "I'm still struggling with how to present it overall," she says. "For me, at this point, it really does hinge on the blog, so I can direct somebody there to explore what I've done...."

    For Pickard, the knowledge is more important than the formal credential, anyway. She has no plans to enter finance or consulting, where an MBA is often a prerequisite for top jobs. Rather, building on her experience as an agriculture and food security volunteer in Nicaragua, she plans to work in sustainable supply chain development, with a focus on coffee. She also plans to expand her blog into a resource and community for like-minded students looking to save money without missing out on the B-school network.

    Pickard certainly has her work cut out for her. The critics of MOOCs are an active bunch with plenty of fodder to pull from. But the No-Pay MBA argues that these naysayers are missing the potential of an Internet education. "I've seen a lot of articles come out recently talking about the failures of MOOCs and people saying it's not as good as a classroom experience ... it's not the egalitarian revolution in education that people were hoping for, but I see so many positive things about MOOCs," says Pickard.

    She's particularly adamant that, for the right person, a MOOC education can be just as effective as classroom-based and online MBA programs. "If you can learn from a book, you can learn from a MOOC, and you can probably actually learn better from a MOOC than you can from a book," she says. Pickard's willing to bet on it with a blog and $1,000 -- if right, she'll come out with a quality business education and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.