The Gender Gap in Online Enrollments for Harvard’s MOOCs

Harvard University has released data on the enrollments in massive online open courses (MOOCs) introduced by HarvardX. For all course offerings by HarvardX since it was launched, there have been 586,691 students enrolled in all courses. These students have been located in more than 200 countries around the world. Only 39.1 percent of the students have identified themselves as women.

The data shows that male enrollments outnumber women enrollments in almost all nations. Exceptions are Greece, Georgia, Uruguay, Armenia, and The Philippines.

In the United States there have been 82,674 men who have taken HarvardX courses and 67,316 women. In the European countries of England, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, and Portugal, more than 60 percent of all HarvardX students have been men.