#1 The evolution of edtech: activity in private and public markets
While there’s been some pause in the action in edtech, the trend is your friend. Education is four-fifths the size of the healthcare industry ($6.5T vs. $8T), but edtech VC investment is one-sixth the size. With less than 4% of education digitized, we’re still in the early innings of the learning revolution.
Dealroom.co
#2 It’s time to eliminate school boards
The secret’s out of the bag: an unbelievably small number of voters get school boards elected… which school boards figured out a long time ago. Virginia was a wake-up call. In addition to getting the vote out, we ought to rethink the structure of boards. An average tenure of 2-4 years (vs. 10 years for a public company board director) is not consistent with how you create long term change.
Education Next
#3 Quarterfinalists announced in competition for $1 million Yass Prize
In conjunction with the Yass Prize, the STOP (Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless (STOP) Awards are giving away over $10M to education innovators, providers and entrepreneurs. That’s a lot of juice going to innovative ideas. The awards will be held December 14 at Forbes on Fifth in Miami – one of the hottest places for innovation.
Yass Prize
#4 University of hypocrisy
Ivy League schools are hypocritical in their role in producing inequality. Talent is equally distributed – opportunity is not. The “poison ivy” of elite universities is the fantasy that the system which they belong to does good. Elite means excellence, not exclusivity.
The Atlantic
#5 Momentum builds for helping students adapt to college by nixing freshman grades
It’s time to reimagine how we measure student performance. Higher education should measure “what did I learn,” not “what did I get.” Colleges have traditionally measured ‘time in seat’ rather than competencies. If “un-grading” empowers students to focus on mastery and instructors to create outcomes-based assessments, we’re for it.
The Hechinger Report
#6 5G rollout will benefit education sector in big way
The digital divide is a real issue in India, and 5G could be a transformative equalizer. Only one in four schools in India are connected to the Internet. Increasing school connectivity by 10% increases effective years of schooling by 0.6%, and GDP per capita by 1.1%, according to estimates from The Economist. 5G is long on potential and opens up digital opportunities.
Hindustan Times
#7 Meet Fizz, the social app downloaded by '95% of Stanford undergrads'
We’ve heard this story before: a social app starts at Stanford and spreads like wildfire. Time will tell if Fizz is the next Snap or if it will “fizz out” like YikYak.
TechCrunch
#8 With online learning, ‘let's take a breath and see what worked and didn't work.’
How ‘bout them apples: 82% of Harvard faculty are interested in adding digital tools they adopted while teaching remotely to in-person classes. The consensus is clear: digital learning is here to stay “AD” – after disease.
The New York Times
#9 School disrupted part 3: What parents know (don’t know) impacts schooling decisions
What you don’t know won’t hurt you? We think the opposite. More parents are now informed about alternative school models. Younger parents are 20% more likely to say they will enroll their children in more flexible, adaptive, and personalized school models in the next three years.
Tyton Partners
#10 The Economist asks: How can covid learning loss be overcome?
While COVID was a natural disaster, the way we dealt with it was a self-inflicted one. Jamie Saavedra, Global Education Director at the World Bank, shared the consequences: 1 month of school closures equaled 1 month of learning loss, and this generation is on track to lose $17T in lifetime earnings (14% of today’s GDP).
The Economist
