By Marni Baker Stein
As online registrations surpass on-campus initiatives at almost half of U.S. colleges, institutions are persistently enlarging their online offerings. The 200+ universities featured on Coursera recently achieved a significant benchmark, accumulating over 200 million course enrollments.
Capitalizing on this progress, nine additional universities joined Coursera in 2024, including Clemson University, IMD Business School, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, and Saïd Business School – University of Oxford.
Below, explore how universities globally are addressing the need with outstanding courses that impart job-related skills, such as GenAI and project management, along with fundamental topics like communication and leadership.
Notable University Courses in 2024
In 2024, universities introduced over 650 courses on Coursera, primarily in business, data science, and computer science. Remarkably, 10% of these courses centered on GenAI, marking it as the fastest-emerging skill for both 2024 and 2025.
With more than 5,800 university courses available on Coursera, they now represent upwards of 60% of the entire catalog and garnered over 24 million enrollments in 2024.
Leading Courses from Universities in 2024
Students gravitated towards timeless subjects, such as financial risk management from Yale, machine learning model training from Stanford, and English language development from the University of Pennsylvania and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
To address growing labor market needs, institutions have developed new courses. The top new course of 2024 aims to fulfill the yearly requirement for 2.3 million new project management experts, equipping students with crucial abilities such as project planning, software applications, and team leadership.
Additionally, communication has surfaced as an essential skill, being a focal point in every top new course — from crafting engaging narratives and acquiring new languages to automating communications through an AI assistant.
Prominent New University Courses
- Project Management Essentials (Howard University)
- The Art of Storytelling (IESE Business School)
- Comprendre la France, Advanced French Language & Culture (École Polytechnique)
- English Intermediate B1.2 (Università di Napoli Federico II)
- OpenAI GPTs: Creating Your Own Custom AI Assistants (Vanderbilt University)
Universities as the Pinnacle of Human Skills Development
While universities impart many of the fastest-growing skills for 2025, including prompt engineering and business enhancement, they remain the primary establishments for fostering essential skills.
University courses represented the bulk of enrollments in all the skills listed below. With the swift adoption of AI, these transferable skills are becoming increasingly essential for workforce flexibility, as noted by McKinsey.
- People Management
- Leading university course: The Manager’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Managing People at Work (University of London)
- Leadership and Management
- Leading university course: Leadership Skills (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad)
- Writing
- Leading university course: Writing in the Sciences (Stanford University)
- Lifelong Learning
- Leading university course: Training and Learning Online (University of Leeds)
- Emotional Intelligence
- Leading university course: Finding Your Professional Voice: Confidence & Impact (University of London)
- Problem Solving
- Leading university course: Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (Stanford University)
- Creativity
- Leading university course: Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success (Imperial College London)
- Business Communication
- Leading university course: Business Writing (University of Colorado, Boulder)
- Resilience
- Leading university course: The Science of Well-Being (Yale University)
- Innovation
- Leading university course: AI, Business & the Future of Work (Lund University)
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