I'm confused by this - coming from an academic background, the words "financial aid" mean "help with subsidized tuition fees" to me, but you've said that this is going to be free. Can you elaborate on what you're thinking here?
The initial thought process around financial aid in this case is to give founders the means to be able to work on their idea, project, or company. I'd like to think of it more as a grant. The grant will afford founders in more disadvantaged positions an opportunity to focus on their startup.
We're still working out the details of program, but our aim is to encourage more people to work on their ideas, and hopefully help startups be better in the long run.
Got it. So funding for the ideas/projects/companies, not funding for the MOOC.
I don't envy you the task of deciding who will get the grants (and I say this as someone who routinely pores through hundreds of undergraduate student applications for scholarships and awards). Is there any way you can structure the MOOC to give you a cheap-but-not-trivially-gameable grade? That way you could formulate the "startup grants" as being awards for the best performers in the MOOC and cut down significantly on the administrative effort involved. Of course, you might want people to be working on their projects while they take the MOOC, in which case the timeline wouldn't work -- I don't know whether your MOOC is aimed more at preparing people for a startup or people currently doing a startup (this seems like a very important thing to decide and to be clear about).
... it occurs to me now that I've written this that you've almost certainly considered all the points I've raised already; but I figure I might as well leave them here just in case I've pointed out anything you missed. :-)
Yep! And I definitely appreciate your thoughtfulness and input. We are still fleshing out all the finer details of the program, but we will have a more detailed announcement soon.
However, we may offer something like 'financial aid' for future versions of the MOOC.