EdTech Thoughts Weekly Update - 6/19
Summer is coming
Hello!
I hope that many of you enjoyed Sunday’s edition of Weekend Reading. As a reminder, this Weekly Update is for paid subscribers only - see below for how to upgrade.
This newsletter covers the predictable failure of metaversities, how the traditional model of taking summer off from school might change, a for-profit college in the UK advertising cash payments for enrollment, and LinkedIn’s bet on skills.
Programming note: this newsletter will be published next Tuesday (6/27), but will be taking July 4th week off.
Additional note to paid subscribers: as you will see in the poll results below, last week’s vote was overwhelmingly in support of fewer links, deeper content. This format still needs more refinement, but I like it too. Thank you for your support!
1. What happened to the metaversities?
Context: Last June, EdSurge profiled 10 universities working with Meta (formerly known as Facebook) to re-create their school campuses in the metaverse, appropriately named “metaversities.” This article circles back a year later to see where the metaversity projects stand.
A belief that is rapidly solidifying in my head: when someone says, “[well-known thing X], but digital,” it is not a good idea. To give a few examples:
Textbooks, but digital? The market for digital materials didn’t really grow until publishers pivoted to digital homework, not textbooks. Pearson+ is learning this lesson now.
Vegetables, but on the blockchain? The only foods I eat that I know the origins of are the ones that print it on the bag.
Stick shifts, but digital? How did this make it past user research?
Flight school, but online (or in VR)? Actually not totally out on that one, but have questions!
When simple-sounding concepts make a digital breakthrough, it is because they introduce digital principles to an analog problem. For example:
Uber was not “taxis, but digital.” It was a highly-scalable screening process for getting in the car with strangers.1
Bitcoin was not “money, but digital.” It was a globally connected form of money that was not backed by any sovereign entity.
Whether you think Uber and/or Bitcoin are good is separate from whether they are novel. They applied concepts that were uniquely enabled by the internet.
Building exact replicas of college campuses is not novel; it is boring. It does not make anything about the college experience better other than, maybe, allowing a broader cross-section of learners to be in one (virtual) place.
What’s particularly frustrating about this is we actually have novel metaverse concepts. Millions of college-age people hang out and build stuff together in Fortnite, Roblox, and plenty of other online games every night. I wish more universities ran experiments that allowed students to build new virtual spaces rather than re-creating existing physical ones.
2. Summer is coming
Context: The Atlantic profiles how extreme summer heat in many parts of the US is crossing the threshold at which it is medically safe to let children [MT note: or adults, for that matter. but the article focuses on children] play outdoors for extended periods of time.
Our platonic ideal of summer - the one filled with vacations, summer camps, and unscheduled adventure - is changing. Not immediately, but the seeds are starting to germinate.
The first seed, and subject of the above-linked article, is climate change. Summer is, well, hot. In fact, summer is becoming so unbearably hot in a growing percentage of the country that children cannot play outside safely for long portions of it.
That outcome sounds particularly bleak in the context of the rising prices of summer camp. Paying an increasing portion of discretionary income to have kids sit inside all day sounds a lot like…school. Which parents already pay for through taxes. It makes Philadelphia Public Schools Superintendent Tony Watlington’s proposal for a year-round school pilot sound a lot less crazy.
When you add all this up, it starts to smell like change. Not immediately - there are far too many vested stakeholders in the existing model. But climate change and wealth inequality (not to mention the learning loss we’ve always sort of accepted) are deep-rooted, existential problems with today’s operating model. I have to believe that, after a certain point, there is a concerted effort to blow it up and try something new.
3. Oxford Business College makes millions
Context: Oxford Business College (OBC) is a for-profit university in the UK that has formed partnerships with other, government-funded non-profit universities in the UK. These partnerships allow both parties to receive government funding for enrollments. The New York Times posits that OBC is bending the rules to focus on making profits over making sure the students are set up for long-term success.
“Join a university without any qualification and get up to 18,500 pounds,” one advertisement on Facebook reads, listing no school, only a phone number and the money figure, which is about $23,000. Dozens of similarly anonymous posts appear on Facebook groups for Eastern Europeans in Britain.
“Do you want to study at the easiest university in U. K.?” asks another ad. “Do you need additional income?”
Before breaking down this quote, it is important to note that Oxford Business College is not affiliated with Oxford University, though I’m sure the name likeness doesn’t hurt recruitment efforts.
With that out of the way, this is insane! And I’m surprised it didn’t get more attention.
What was most striking to me is that while no US universities advertised $23K cash transfers, many of the recruiting tactics mentioned in the article - particularly around uncapped commissions on enrollments and cash payments for referrals - come straight from the old-school US for-profit university growth playbook.
I say old-school because these tactics were, extensively and for good reason, litigated out of the US system years ago. These battles were so public for so long it is weird to see them pop up in another country’s education system.
4. Most clicked link from Weekend Reading: LinkedIn bets on skills
Context: LinkedIn launched a skills-matching feature in February that allows recruiters to search for job candidates based on skills rather than previous roles or degrees.
In this article, HBS professor Joe Fuller aptly calls skills-based hiring “the great white whale, the holy grail of the labor market.” We often throw these analogies around with positive intent, but remember that the moral of both those stories is that the whale and grail were ultimately unattainable.
In the startup world, the skills vs. degrees narrative has been building for what feels like forever (though is actually probably < 10 years). I’ve definitely had moments where I viewed the discussion quite cynically.2
However! The past ~18 months has seen this narrative pick up steam among some of the bigger companies in EdTech. The moments that stick out the most to me:
Pearson’s $200M Credly acquisition (and Faethm before that, but that was smaller)
Coursera releases their first skills report (which they, and Emeritus, followed up with new reports this year)
ETS and Carnegie’s joint investment in competency-based education
And now, LinkedIn’s announcement that the company’s skills-matching feature, launched just 4 months ago, is already being used by 45% of recruiters on the platform.
Big EdTech is still a relatively small part of the overall economy, but these moves feel validating after the epic journey the skills vs. degrees narrative has endured.
Hot Takes and Half Bakes
Thoughts I have that aren’t fully formed yet, but which I hope to workshop with you!
Marlin Equity Partners acquires LineLeader ChildcareCRM: There were 3-5 deals like this last year too, I’m curious what the playbook is here. Childcare providers are so staff-heavy, I’m not sure what there is to cut.
Upgrad invests $10M in a medical school on Vanuatu: I can’t come up with a strategic reason for a move like this that holds up to scrutiny.
Wiley announces plan to sell OPM arm: Down markets provide opportunities to re-trench. Already a low-margin business compared to the company’s traditional publishing arm, my guess is that this year’s increased regulatory scrutiny made the company think the juice was just not worth the squeeze in the OPM market.
Resumption of student loan payments begins October 1: I feel like a lot of people have a gut sense that this is going to go exceedingly poorly, but no one has yet been able to precisely articulate what exactly is going to go wrong.
Question of the Week
Note: votes are anonymous
Results of last week’s poll: thank you for your votes! It looks like y’all liked the concept of letting the free newsletter provide a general overview of what is happening in the ecosystem while this one goes deeper on a smaller number of things. I’ll keep working on making both better!
I know there are Uber drivers who have done bad things - I said highly-scalable, not perfect! I would argue that ratings history has been a dramatic positive for the taxi/transportation industry.
Particularly the 3-4 months after I read Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education.