Opportunities in Higher Education Technology

At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League – Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown – more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent. 5

We’ve seen with companies like MissionU the trouble of immersive programs marketing themselves as a college replacement. Immersive programs need to think carefully about their marketing and consider an agnostic approach to replacing college. Higher ed is a very developed industry and things haven’t changed for a reason. On the other side, Minerva S... See more

In 2014, there was approximately $1.3 trillion of outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. that affected 44 million borrowers who had an average outstanding loan balance of $37,172.

The direct education experience is really, really hard to scale. Learning happens best on a local level with one-on-one instruction. Apprenticeships and tutors have earned a place in the system, but it’s a lot easier to scale technology than people.

Learning and development is hard without in-person interaction.

There is also opportunity for immersive programs in digital skills outside of software development. There are far fewer full-time programs dedicated to teaching digital skills in marketing, sales, accounting, finance, and design than in coding. Universities aren’t teaching Salesforce, Google AdWords and Marketo but those are the tools students need... See more

Instead of enticing students to abandon the university system, why not build programs on top of it? I can imagine companies innovating with programs that fill nights, weekends or breaks in students academic lives.

Although the first coding boot camps didn’t pop up until 2012, there are already 95 programs up and running. Course Report shows that the market is sized at ~$260 million for coding boot camps, graduating almost 23,000 students in 2017. Until more software developers are trained and find their way into the market, opening and scaling an effective b... See more

Of all the research I’ve done about higher ed tech, I’m most reluctant about the pure play online space. If people are going back to school to make a career change, they want to get a job at the end of the experience (shocker, I know). Right now these online courses don’t count for college credit, and don’t have employers waiting to hire students a... See more