17 more top universities offer free cyber courses

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Seventeen leading universities in the United States (US) and abroad will start offering free cyber courses through the online education platform Coursera, the company said on Wednesday.

The announcement by Mountain View-based Coursera underscores the rapid expansion of so-called Moocs, or massive open online courses, that are reshaping the higher education landscape.

Coursera, a for-profit company started by two computer science professors at Stanford University, will now offer more than 200 courses from 33 institutions that are open to anyone with Internet access. Officials said the website has registered 1.3 million students around the world.

The new Coursera partners include Brown, Columbia, Emory, Vanderbilt and Wesleyan universities, as well as Berklee College of Music and Mount Sinai School of Medicine.