Though Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Global Technology are offering free online classes, about 95 percent dropped out before getting a completion certificate.

The University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits, is a multi-campus South African public research university  situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. They have signed up with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer free massive open online courses, called edX, to everyone around the globe.

Massive open online courses can certainly help bridge the educational gap by delivering opportunities to students who ordinarily wouldn’t be able to attend classes at university. Wits is the first African university to team up with a major international massive open online courses provider and joins the more than 60 global universities, colleges and institutions that offer edX.

“We are pleased to welcome the University of Witwatersrand to our global community of educators and learners,” Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, said.

Even so, about 95 percent of students enrolled in free, online courses from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped them before getting a completion certificate.

Out of 841,687 registrants in 17 courses offered in 2012 and 2013 by the universities’ joint edX program, 43,196 saw the classes to conclusion, according to an emailed statement from the Cambridge, Massachusetts based schools. Some of the students signed up for multiple courses, according to the statement.

The research looked at data from 597,692 students who registered for the courses. In about 55 percent of all registrations, students viewed less than half of the course material they’d signed up for, and in about one third, users never looked at the course material.

About half of registrants who dropped their courses did so within a week or two of enrolling, the researchers said. Students browsed the free course material, just as they might look at any other web based content, they said.

People probably had diverse reasons for signing up for the classes, Ho, who conducted the research along with Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineering and physics professor Isaac Chuang said. Some may have been teachers looking for ideas for how to teach their own classes or students looking for additional explanations of material for classes they were taking in another, more formal setting.

      Many were probably just curious. Registration soared after EdX president Anant Agarwal appeared on “The Colbert Report” in July, the researchers said. Interests of online students don’t necessarily reflect those of people who sign up for standard classroom courses, Ho said.