The certificates will have value as long as they remain evidence of honest completion of the course. To say they are worthless is kind of short-sighted. Considering the number of tech resumes in the typical hiring manager's inbox that contain a laundry-list of programming languages in the skills section and not even a single project or course to prove the knowledge of the candidate, I'd say there is a fairly large domain for these certificates.

Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you choose?

Obviously coursera will not be replacing real college any time soon, but it can definitely serve a role in verifying at least cursory knowledge of basic skills.

> Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you choose?

I would accept neither as evidence of anything other than the skills a candidate advertises.

IOW, I trust "I know Scala" on a resume exactly as much as "I know Scala and completed a Coursera course on it".

Well if nothing else it gives a portable measure of ability. Like instead of having to saying I'm an expert in Scala and the meaning of that being largely arbitrary; you've got a syllabus of stuff they claim to know (which you still need to verify it it matters).

>Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you choose?

The big problem with your logic is assuming that one of these two options must be meaningful. Those two resumes are either both good enough to bring in for an interview, or both not good enough to bring in for an interview. "I have a worthless piece of paper" changes nothing.

It does to me. It shows that someone at least took the time to work through a course. It also shows they are cool enough to know what coursera is and open minded enough to use it.

Ok, but you asked "which would you choose?". That is not the same as saying "I would choose X". You are assuming your opinion on the matter is common, I am suggesting it is not as common as you believe.

Certificates and other records from this and Robert Sedgewick's algorithms course (maybe others) can be shared with employers through Coursera's placement service. Not entirely meaningless.

Coursera will ultimately try and leverage their courses as a hiring mechanism. I'm participating in the course, and have taken a prior course as well. After sigining up you will receive an email from coursera asking your permission to share course results with employers.

If they can't use the course certificate as a signal mechanism then there will be no incentive for employers to partner with them