ETCH Weekend Reading 3/24/24
Hello!
No announcements from me this week, straight to the news.
Funding / M&A
UpHill raises €7M / Portugal, Workforce Powertools / Explorer, Redstone, EnjoyVenture, Brighteye Ventures, Maze, Caixa Capital, Grupo Luz Saude
Uplift acquires TAO Connect / US, Mental Health
Scholastic ~acquires 9 Story Media / US, Content Provider
Toprankers acquires Judiciary arm of Coach Up IAS / India, Test Prep
To be a verified funding in this newsletter, a company must raise $1M+ from named institutional investors, be part of an acquisition where the combined entity has > 50 employees, or raise a VC/PE fund of $10M+
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People Moves
Kishore Rachapudi joins Andela as Chief Revenue Officer / via PRNewswire
Gavin Patterson joins Kahoot! as board chairman / via Financial Times
“We’re well positioned and have the firepower to really drive the business forward through M&A as opportunities emerge.” 👀
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Links
Early Childhood
While I’m not yet ready to say there is a trend of increasing interest in early childhood education (ECE) in the US, I can say that I, personally, have found more ECE content of late. It is a fun topic to explore, as it allows me to straddle my worlds as an education industry analyst and the parent of an 8-month-old.
For better or for worse, basically everything you read on ECE is different flavors of “ECE is incredibly expensive for parents” and “ECE workers are paid frighteningly low wages.”
One of the best encapsulations of this problem is the discussion around updating the US au pair program, which somehow manages to be an inaccesible luxury, an almost-affordable form of childcare, and a below-minimum-wage job all at once. / via the 19th
Also, I maintain my skepticism that private equity (currently) plays a role in driving up the cost of childcare in the lower- and middle-income portions of the ECE market. If anything, the problem with private equity-owned ECE schools is that they have picked off the high-earning parents, which makes cross-subsidization hard for neighborhood schools. / via Hechinger Report
However! All is not lost. More states are trying new things to lower the cost of ECE (to parents), such as California’s transitional kindergarten program. (Yes, the headline here is “bumpy rollout.” I am choosing to focus on the positive - that it exists at all.) / via Hechinger Report
And! Policy experts are getting more space to build a case for free childcare. / via The Atlantic
K12
How teachers are using AI in the classroom. I think it is fair to say that there are a lot of…fluffy…write ups on AI usage in the classroom. What I appreciate about this article is the specificity of use cases the author pushes for in his interviews with 7 teachers from both the US and abroad. / via the Markup
Related (but higher ed), Universities build their own ChatGPT-like tools. I’m not sure that every university will need their own custom AI tools, but it will be interesting to watch which feature sets emerge in common (or not in common) among these tools. / via Inside Higher Ed
LAUSD bets big on AI chatbot “Ed.” The vision for Ed is awesome - one place where students and parents can ask virtually any question about their school life. That said, this is a high-profile project with a thin margin for error. History suggests there will be bumps in the road to a high-profile mass rollout like this; it is an open question whether they will be debilitating. / via Education Week
Parker’s first budget proposal as Philadelphia mayor includes a boost to city schools, push for year-round schools. I’m still not sure who/what is driving this initiative, but Philadelphia has eagerly taken the vanguard position as the first major city to re-consider the traditional school calendar. I am (literally) here for it. / via WHYY
Higher Ed
Inside the craziest college admissions season ever. So many different nuggets to pick from in this article. One theme that sticks out to me - intense competition led students, and schools, to all look the same. There are outliers are the top, but enrollment yield looks like it is falling at most schools and “the majority of applicants have competitive transcripts..but one consequence of the huge increase in applications is that far fewer of them “knock your socks off.” / via New York Magazine
Which makes the schools with true differentiation especially worth watching. HBCUs continue their positive momentum and Hampshire College is back! / via Higher Ed Dive
On the negative end of differentiation, young Chinese want to study abroad, just not in the US. / via Washington Post
UW Madison plans $1M advertising campaign to attract…more funding from state politicians. This is *wild.* This type of lobbying happens indirectly and behind closed doors everywhere, and the Wisconsin education system has been on a roller coaster with the state legislature since at least 2015, but seeing a public marketing RFP for these activities - as opposed to, say, recruiting students - still made me do double-take. / via Inside Higher Ed
A bluffer’s guide to the Australian Universities Accord. Australia’s post-secondary system has pioneered a number of interesting post-secondary learning initiatives - such as income-contingent loans, lifelong learning accounts, and demand-driven funding. Some were entertainingly disappointed in this year’s system update, but the above-linked piece from wonkhe provides a helpful perspective on both the Australian and UK systems. / via wonkhe
Workforce
Do less that matters more. Maybe the most important words to think about over the next ~10-15 years of your career. (This article is technically about academic scholarship, which is being overrun with junk article submissions (and publications, but I believe the lesson applies to every job.) / via Inside Higher Ed
Related, plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI. A quote to keep in your back pocket if you find yourself in a debate over whether AI will destroy jobs: “We invent new tasks for humans to do over time. In fact, so far, economic history has seen a continuous diversification in the number of tasks humans do. Back in the agricultural age, nearly everyone did the same small set of tasks: farming and maintaining a farm household. Now, even after centuries of automation, our species as a whole performs a much wider variety of different tasks.” / via Noahpinion
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Thanks for highlighting that article on the Au Pair Program. I think a part of the problem with the narrative around the au pair program is the idea that it is broken! Yes, it is broken compared to an imaginary perfect program immune from the realities of economic tradeoffs. But treating a program as broken that has been a life saver for so many working families (like ours) and au pairs that would have never made it to this country otherwise - is a mistake and leads to something like we have now, an attempt at massive reform instead of continuous improvement.
This isn't to say there aren't problems. I know au pairs who have not been treated well by families, and have had to scramble to get rematched or been hesitant to out of fear. It is stressful, but as I type - I think all have been able to get rematched. But I'm sure there are horror stories and plenty of suboptimal situations to cite when thousands of stressed out families and young people are involved. More common sense improvements would be - incremental increases to the stipend tied to inflation or some predictable index. Nobody is accounting for the fact that it costs between $1K to $2K/mo to a family in "hidden costs" to provide room, board, car, etc...
(Weird dynamic I've observed: often the au pairs with the wealthiest families and who get the most perks - their own guest house, nicest cars, highest wages - are treated most like "the help" and don't get a true cultural exchange experience)
Another common sense improvement would be holding the au pair agencies to higher quality control standards in terms of gathering au pair feedback, ensuring families are following the rules and spirit of the program, and initiating rematch when necessary. Also, the rematch process could be improved as mentioned in the article: https://19thnews.org/2024/03/au-pair-program-state-department-fix/
I'm thankful we've had 4 amazing au pairs who we still stay in touch with and who have come back to visit us. Been a truly amazing experience for my family, and I hope the same for these folks from other countries - at least that's what they tell us. But I'm also glad our need for the program is coming to an end because this "big reform" based on the assumption that the program is broken is going to completely change the spirit of the program, and probably the # of people (both families and au pairs) who have access to it - as what happened in Massachusetts (68% drop in participation).