Financial Aid Offered by Online Course Providers

In recent years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have garnered significant popularity among students and working professionals. These online courses are affordable and accessible to everyone, be it a student or a working professional. And what is more, for those who have financial difficulties, most of the online platforms offer financial support (for example: Coursera financial aid, Simplilearn scholarship, and Udacity scholarships) to ensure that students get their education. Upon successful completion of the online courses and certifications, students/professionals will have a certificate from the course provider institutes that can add value to their professional profiles.

Many online learning platforms along with top universities and educational institutions offer these financial aid courses on a variety of topics, from IT to science, commerce, and arts courses. Some of the popular platforms offering online courses are Coursera, Edx, Udemy, Udacity, Swayam, Simplilearn, and Cloudera, among others. Here are some examples of such financial aid online courses.

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• Key Characteristics of MOOC: How Do They Impact Learning?
• Free MOOC Courses Online With Certificates in 2023

As some MOOCs you can access for free, certain online learning platforms charge a small fee if you wish to get a verified certificate of completion. Similarly, some universities/ institutes offer course credits for online courses. However, many course providers have financial aid facilities such as Edx and Coursera financial aid, in case you are not able to afford it. Get through this article to learn which MOOC providers offer quality financial aid, how to apply for financial aid for online courses, and access online courses of your choice for free. So, let us get started.

1. Coursera - Financial Aid

Established in 2012, Coursera is one of the most popular massive open online course (MOOC) providers in the world. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States, the platform was founded by two Stanford University computer science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera has partnerships with global universities to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of disciplines. The partnerships include the Indian School of Business (ISB), the University of London, the University of São Paulo, Yonsei University, the University of Illinois, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others.

Coursera offers both paid and free online courses curated and provided by top colleges or companies like Google. By enroling in Coursera free courses, you can access only certain course materials and watch tutorials. But if you also want a certificate of completion validated by the University/Institution that offers the course, you will need to pay the course fees.

In case you can not afford the course fees, there is Coursera financial aid that allows you to complete the course and earn your certification.

Best Coursera Courses & Certifications

How to Apply for Coursera Financial Aid?

To receive Coursera financial aid, you need to follow some crucial steps such as filling in the Coursera financial aid application, and providing all the details required - course benefits and career goals. Here are the steps for receiving the financial aid application for coursera.

Steps for Financial Aid in Coursera

• Visit the Coursera website- https://www.coursera.org/
• Choose the course of your choice for which you want financial aid application for Coursera
• Click on the "Continue to the application" for the chosen course, and you will land on the financial aid page
• Click on the "Learn more and apply"
• You will be asked to fill out the Coursera financial aid application by providing information about your educational background, employment status, and your annual earnings (if applicable).
• Then you will be asked to answer a few questions like why you are applying for Coursera financial aid, the purpose of this course, and whatnot.
• Make sure that the word count for these questions is above 150.

Once you apply for financial aid Coursera, wait 15 days for your application to be reviewed. You will be notified via email once it gets approved.

You can also re-apply to the application for financial aid Coursera if you do not complete the course within 180 days.

In case your Coursera financial aid application is rejected, you will also be notified via email explaining to you why your application was denied. This will help you fix the problem and apply it again.

Note: Do not try to access the free trial of the course for which you have applied for financial aid as it is under review. If you do so, your application will be cancelled.

If you have already started a free trial of the course and still want your financial aid application for coursera to be approved, you will need to cancel your subscription and re-apply once the free trial ends. Free trials for a Coursera course last for seven days from registration.

Is Coursera Financial Aid applicable for other new Coursera courses?

To receive financial aid for Coursera online courses, you need to apply for separate applications for each new course. You will be required to fill out the new Coursera financial aid application by following the previous instructions.

2. Edx - Financial Aid

Founded in 2012 by the prestigious institutes Harvard University and MIT, Edx is another leading online course provider. The platform offers online university-driven courses across various domains in both free and paid versions. You can access some Edx online courses for free but have to pay to earn a verified certificate. On the other hand, edX has certain professional certification programmes led by top universities that you can learn by paying a certain amount. In case you can not afford the fees for the certificate, you can apply for edX financial aid.

As almost all edX courses offer a certificate, financial aid on edX is available mostly for MicroMasters, Professional Certificates, MicroBachelors, and XSeries Programmes. You will need to opt for each course as an audit learner and then apply and submit the edX financial aid application.

Best Edx Courses & Certifications

How to Apply for Edx Financial Aid?

You can get up to a 90% discount on verified certificates if you cannot afford to pay full price for an Edx online course. Edx financial aid is available for most courses that offer verified certificates. However, a few courses and programmes are not eligible like Professional Education courses and those courses that are not available in the free audit track.

Steps to Apply for Financial Aid in edX

• Visit the official edX portal- https://www.edx.org/
• Choose the course for which you want financial aid in edX
• Enrol in it as an audit learner
• Fill in the edX financial aid application by providing all the required information
• You will be then asked to write three distinct essay responses in 200-300 words
• Submit the edX financial aid application

After submitting the application for edX free courses, wait till your application for financial aid in edX gets approved. It takes 2-4 days to get your edX financial aid application reviewed.

You will be informed over email with a coupon code for a 90% discount once your application is accepted. You can then apply the code on the payment form for the discounted rate. You will also be notified if your application is denied.

Is Edx Financial Aid applicable for other new courses on this platform?

Edx financial aid is applicable for only one course as it grants financial assistance on a per-course basis. So, if you want to access a new course, you need to apply for a fresh edX financial aid application separately.

Also Read:

• Best MOOC Training Courses That Will Advance Your Career
• 10 Free MOOC Courses with Certification to Pursue

3. Udacity - Financial Aid

What started as a free computer science class offered at Stanford in 2011, had over the years grown to become one of the most popular online courses and certifications providers in the world offering massive open online courses. Udacity is a US-based for-profit educational organisation founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky.

The name ‘Udacity’ has its origins in the word audacious. The company has a motto that goes, "audacious for you, the student", according to Sebastian. Initially, the platform focused on offering university-style courses but now focuses more on vocational courses for professionals.

Udacity courses and certifications are of the highest quality and the provider has come up with solutions for aspirants who want quality education yet are struggling with the financial requirements. The Udacity financial aid is a collaboration between Udacity and multinational corporations. However, Udacity financial aid is a bit different from other platforms. There are different criteria that one must qualify for to get financial aid in Udacity courses. You will not get Udacity financial aid for all courses. Instead, the provider regularly partners with top organisations in the world to offer scholarship programmes for certain relevant courses.

List of the Current Udacity Scholarship Programmes:

• AWS Machine Learning Scholarship Programme

Amazon Web Services and Udacity have partnered to offer 425 scholarships to deserving students to take the AWS Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree programme.

• Suse Cloud-Native Application Development Scholarship Programme

Udacity is collaborating with SUSE, the multinational open source software company to provide 300 scholarships for the Cloud Native Application Architecture Nanodegree programme.

• Bertelsmann Technology Scholarships

The Multinational Media Giant has partnered with Udacity to provide 1600 scholarships to three Nanodegree programmes: Azure Cloud Architect, Business Analytics, and Introduction to Machine Learning with TensorFlow.

• WTECH Scholarship Programme

Udacity provides scholarships for the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree and Deep Learning Nanodegree Programme.

• Access Bank Scholarship Programme

A total of 1,000 Nanodegree programme scholarships are to be provided to people in Africa to build practical, in-demand, cutting-edge tech skills in fields such as Programming, Data Science, Product Management, Digital Marketing, Programming for Data Science.

• Nokia + Blacks in Technology Scholarship Programme

A total of 302 scholarships will be provided to improve educational and professional opportunities for the Black community in various fields such as AI Programming with Python, Java Programming, Cloud DevOps Engineer, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Intermediate Python.

• Blacks in Technology Scholarship Programme

A total of 150 scholarships will be awarded for Programming for Data Science, Product Management, or Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegrees Programmes.

Top Udacity Courses and Certifications

How Do the Scholarship Programmes Work?

There are two application phases for scholarships. First, select the scholarship programme, for which you wish to apply for.

Phase 1: Challenge Course

Steps

• Apply for phase 1 of the scholarship program.
• Choose from the different tracks/ courses available. Please note that you must choose the learning track that you are most interested in. Once the application is closed, you can not change to another track.
• If selected, you will be notified via email. You should receive (if selected) an email within 3-5 days before the first phase date.
• There will be a deadline in phase 1 where you will have to complete the learning track/ challenge course (view lessons, attend assessments, and the like). If you complete the course within the time period, you will be eligible to enter phase 2. The deadlines for phase 1 will vary depending on the course.

Note: There are no extensions for Phase 1 of the Scholarship Programme. Udacity only considers progress made before the Phase 1 deadline when selecting Phase 2 winners.

Phase 2: Nano Degree Programme

Steps

• A specific number of students who have passed phase 1 will be awarded scholarships to take the different nano degree programs which will be completely free for the recipients.
• Once you are selected for Phase 2, you will be notified via email.
• Once selected, you can choose from the different nano degrees provided.
• You will have support from Technical Mentors through a Q&A platform called Knowledge, and also from other Udacity students in your Nanodegree programme via Student Hub - a chat platform connected to the classroom.
  

Here is one example

For Bertelsmann Technology Scholarships:

15000 students will be selected for the challenge courses. The students can choose one: They are:

• Designing Infrastructure and Managing Migration
• Introduction to Data
• Introduction to Machine Learning: Supervised Learning

1600 students from the initial challenge phase will earn a full scholarship for the nano degree programmes. The nano degrees are:

• Azure Cloud Architect
• Business Analytics
• Introduction to Machine Learning with TensorFlow

Note: Every online courses with financial aid and its subsequent phases will have different criteria (age and educational requirements). Also, some of the scholarships are specifically catered towards minorities from different parts of the world. So, if you can manage the expense then opt for courses that do not offer Udacity financial aid, so that those in true need of these scholarships can benefit from them.

For more information regarding Phase 1 and Phase 2 selection criteria, please visit Udacity’s Scholarship landing page.

• Visit the scholarships page of Udacity- https://www.udacity.com/scholarships
• Sign up, and fill out the information requested under the “notify me” section.
• Generally, all current and upcoming Scholarship programs are listed on the webpage and updated regularly.

Note: If you are not accepted into the Scholarship Programme, you will not be considered again for that academic time period, due to the high number of applications. You will have to apply next time for online certificate programs with financial aid.

But worry not, as there are some Udacity Free courses that you can take that you can audit (meaning that you would not get any certificate)

4. FutureLearn - Financial Aid

Launched in 2012, FutureLearn is a UK-based digital education platform. It was founded to provide a space for the top UK institutions to engage in the MOOC space. As of now, FutureLearn courses and certifications have grown to become one of the biggest online course providers in the world.

Though the platform does not offer any scholarships or financial aid to learners at the moment, they plan to do so in the future. This begs the question- why include them in the article?

There are some courses in Future Learn which are sponsored courses. They offer free digital upgrades for these courses. This means that you can enrol in these courses for free and for specific courses, you will get certificates as well. So take a look at these Future Learn free courses and certifications.

Top Future Learn courses and certifications

Check out the courses here https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

Future Learn also offers discounts as part of some campaigns (promotions, research, and the like) to teams. However, at the moment, there are no discount codes for individual learners.

Conclusion

To sum it up, these are the details of the online degree financial aid offered by online course providers to students who can not afford the course fees but want a verified certificate that will improve their professional profiles.

Free Online Courses and Certifications from Top Providers

Now that you have some idea about the different financial aids given by top eLearning platforms, you might be looking into choosing the best course from the best platform. For that check out our top courses and certifications where our experts have compiled the best courses and certifications that can take your career to greater heights.