dooes

That is precisely the conclusion the market has come to, and why they are having issues. Though their target audience is actually the professional working folk.. who don’t have the motivation and time to work on deadlines projects or the willpower to finish non deadlines projects and hw. Overall the business case seems difficult

Deadlines matter a lot in increasing difficult (but also helps with efficiency). Especially when compounded with multiple courses.

even if they get their credentialling system to be “accepted”, they have not solved the root issue which is the elephant in the room: their credentials are not trustworthy because anyone can easily cheat their tests. The other elephant in the room is that the rigor of their online courses.

Education is not a one size fits all - you cannot offer the same from MIT vs community college no matter if the course content is the same. The difficulty (proxied by the reputation of the school) of the same courses vary wildly and dramatically, as does workload, peer support, TA support, exams, and even the pace and how the final grade is curved.

By necessity they cannot grade difficultly, since they are trying to get people to pay for courses like they are dessert. By necessity they cannot offer different tiers of difficulty based on entrance exams or other tests, since they would insult their customer base (the intuitive argument being that those in most need of such nanodegrees are inversely the ones who may do worse in general).

There wasn’t enough innovation. What they offer is replaceable instantly by any single university in the world which offers a course for free and hosted on YouTube.

I don’t have a solution but I think online education has not been solved. Clearly there is a lot of innovation but nobody is making it.