IBL News

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  • 2U Offers edX Universities a New Revenue Sharing Program

    2U Offers edX Universities a New Revenue Sharing Program

    IBL News | New York

    2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), the parent company of edX, unveiled a new partnership model for universities that includes a more attractive revenue-sharing approach.

    Essentially, 2U is shifting its one-size-fits-all model to a more customizable, platform-based approach that enables universities to design partnership packages that best fit their institutions’ needs, according to the company.

    Revenue share options begin at 35% for a core set of tech-enabled services and increase from there. Higher revenue share options give partners access to the company’s full range of services and investment capital, similar to 2U’s legacy model.

    As a part of this approach, 2U provides universities access to the edX marketplace and community, with 45 million learners.

    At a 35% revenue share, it includes program design and management, edX marketplace & organic marketing, prospect nurturing, ongoing student support, and 2U’s Digital Campus & data analytics ecosystem.

    “These services have been proven to deliver strong student persistence and high rates of degree completion,” according to 2U.

    The Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of the first partners to leverage the combination of 2U and edX support, entering into a new partnership with the company to power a priced $24,000 Master of Business Analytics, as well as a MicroMasters program on the Fundamentals of Business.

  • 2U Presents Quarter Results While Transitions to Operate Under the edX Brand

    2U Presents Quarter Results While Transitions to Operate Under the edX Brand

    IBL News | New York

    2U, Inc (Nasdaq: TWOU) announced its second quarter financial results, showing a revenue increase of 2% to $241.5 million and a net loss increase of $41.0 million to $62.9 million. Costs and expenses for the second quarter totaled $289.4 million, a 5.5% increase from $274.3 million in the second quarter of 2021. This increase included $17.1 million of operating expenses related to edX.

    In addition, the Lanham, Maryland – based company, owner of edX.org, said that it implemented a new marketing framework to decrease its spending, with $70 million in annualized cost savings,

    2U Co-Founder and CEO Christopher “Chip” Paucek talked about the implementation of a plan around the edX platform, intended to drive traffic to the edX marketplace. “We are taking significant action to accelerate 2U’s transition to a platform company under the edX brand and unify our product and marketing strategy to create the world’s leading free-to-degree online learning marketplace.”

    As part of the plan, Harsha Mokkarala, 2U’s current Chief Data Scientist, will now serve as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, and Anant Agarwal, founder of edX and 2U’s current Chief Open Education Officer, will serve as Chief Platform Officer, “leading the company’s unified product and technology strategy.”

    In addition, Chief Operating Officer, Mark Chernis, will step down from his role at the company effective October 3, 2022.

    Paul Lalljie, 2U’s Chief Financial Officer, added that the company’s expectation of driving “significant improvement to adjusted EBITDA for full-year 2022 and will generate positive free cash flow for full-year 2023.”As a business outlook for the fiscal year 2022, 2U provided the following expectation:

    • Revenue to exceed $960 million, representing a growth of 2%
    • Net loss to range from $240 million to $230 million
    • Adjusted EBITDA to range from $105 million to $115 million, representing growth of 65% at the midpoint

     

     

  • Coursera Slightly Improved Its Financial Results for the Second Quarter of 2022

    Coursera Slightly Improved Its Financial Results for the Second Quarter of 2022

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera.org (NYSE: COUR) reduced its annual losses and generated more revenue during the second quarter of 2022, as shown in the financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2022, disclosed yesterday.

    Specifically, the net loss was $49.3 million or 39.5% of revenue, compared to $46.4 million or 45.4% of revenue a year ago.

    The total revenue was $124.8 million, up 22% from $102.1 million a year ago. This increase of 22%, along with the overall improvement, was fueled by the strong demand for entry-level professional certificates and the enterprise offerings.

    “We continue to see strong demand from businesses, governments, and academic institutions looking to deliver the in-demand skills and industry-recognized credentials required to enter digital jobs,” said Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda.

    “Our second-quarter results reflect strong demand for our entry-level Professional Certificates and sustained revenue growth across our Enterprise segment,” said Ken Hahn, Coursera’s CFO.

    These are the operating highlights per segment offered by the Mountain View, California-based company:

    • Consumer revenue for the second quarter was $69.7 million, up 12% from a year ago on increased demand for our expanding portfolio of entry-level Professional Certificates. The company added 5 million new registered learners during the quarter for a total of 107 million.
    • Enterprise revenue for the second quarter was $43.7 million, up 55% from a year ago on sustained momentum across business, government, and campus customers. The total number of Paid Enterprise Customers increased to 958, up 64% from a year ago.
    • Degrees revenue for the second quarter was $11.4 million, down 4% from a year ago on lower-than-anticipated student enrollments. The total number of Degrees Students reached 17,460, up 19% from a year ago.

    Content, Customer, and Platform Highlights

    • Content and Credentials:
      • Expanded Meta partnership with 5 new entry-level Professional Certificates.
      • Announced 3 new degree programs, including a partnership with Northeastern University and Mayo Clinic to offer the first university and industry collaborative degree on Coursera with the Master in Management: Digital Transformation in Healthcare.
      • Added 15 new educator partners to the platform, including 4 top-ranked Indian universities and industry leaders like Accenture, ADP, Campus BBVA, Coinbase, Genentech, Goodwill, Hero Mindmine, HR Certification Institute (HRCI), PwC India, SAP, and Tally Education.
    • Enterprise Customers:
      • Coursera for Business won new and expanded partnerships with customers across the globe, including Procter & Gamble (U.S.), PwC (India), Arcos Dorados (Latin America), Petrobras (Brazil), and Boubyan Bank (Kuwait).
      • Coursera for Government launched or deepened initiatives with the Prime Minister of Guyana and the Department of Public Affairs (Guyana), the Queensland AI Hub (Australia), and the National Transformation Initiative (Barbados).
      • Coursera for Campus saw strong momentum in the Americas, including a system-wide for-credit initiative with Louisiana Tech and the University of Louisiana System, as well as a curriculum integration effort across 30 academic programs at Universidad del Valle de México (UVM).
    • Learning Platform:
      • Launched Career Academy for institutions, a career training academy to deliver skills and industry credentials for a high-demand, entry-level digital job.
      • Introduced Clips for Coursera for Business customers, delivering short, actionable content on job-relevant topics, with easily accessible 5- to 10-minute videos and lessons surfaced within the context of longer courses for a clear path to deeper skills development.
      • Announced several new learner personalization features to motivate and support learners, including personalized schedules, data-driven deadlines, in-course coaching, and AI-powered nudges.

    Regarding the projections for the year, the company provides the following financial outlook:

    • Third quarter 2022:
      • Revenue in the range of $126 to $130 million
      • Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $(10.5) to $(13.5) million
    • Full year 2022:
      • Revenue in the range of $509 to $515 million
      • Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $(42.5) to $(48.5) million

     

  • ClassDojo Achieves the Unicorn Status at a $1.25 Billion Valuation

    ClassDojo Achieves the Unicorn Status at a $1.25 Billion Valuation

    IBL News | New York

    ClassDojo disclosed this month that it raised $125 million in a Series D round, led by Tencent, at the end of last year. This funding allows the San Francisco – based company to become a unicorn at a $1.25 billion valuation.

    Earlier this year, the company acquired Prendea, a Y Combinator alumni company focused on Latin America, for an undisclosed amount.

    The capital injection will be used to enhance its software environment beyond the classroom.

    Specifically, it plans to expand its virtual space to at least half of the 51 million kids in active ClassDojo classrooms.

    ClassDojo previously raised funding from venture capital firms, including SV Angel, Shasta Ventures, and General Catalyst.

    ClassDojo, an educational platform that connects teachers with students, was founded by Liam Don and Sam Chaudhary in 2011.

    “We don’t want to turn it into an edutainment thing where we do math games with robots. That’s been done a million times,” said Liam Don to Forbes. “We want to expand the creative toolset that kids have.”

     

  • Half of the Students Prefer a Hybrid Class Format, While Faculty Favor In-Person Learning

    Half of the Students Prefer a Hybrid Class Format, While Faculty Favor In-Person Learning

    IBL News | New York

    Nearly half of students prefer a hybrid class format, while 54% of faculty favor a fully in-person environment. This poses a challenge for institutions to align the two groups’ differing preferences.

    This is the main conclusion of Barnes & Noble College Insights’ annual College 2030 research report, which highlights the idea that students and institutions are now on the path to preparing for a post-pandemic future.

    “The world has adapted and developed solutions to conquer COVID-19, and higher education must do the same, revising offerings and solutions to best accommodate emerging student needs,” says the report.

    The report suggests that enhancing the value of higher education can be achieved by offering more tangible career prep programs and developing soft skills.

    “While students felt their courses are preparing them for years beyond college, they still want more career preparation support – such as building out the educational experience with soft skills development and tangible resources around networking, resumes, job searching, and mentorship.”

     

     

    • PDF Download: Barnes & Noble College Insights’ annual College 2030 Report

     

     

  • A Majority of Higher Ed Institutions Were Hit by Ransomware Attacks

    A Majority of Higher Ed Institutions Were Hit by Ransomware Attacks

    IBL News | New York

    A 64% of higher education organizations were hit by ransomware in 2021, in a jump of 44% from the previous year, according to a report from Sophos, a global cybersecurity leading firm.

    For issuing this report report, titled “the State of Ransomware in Education 2022”, the company surveyed 5,600 IT professionals in 31 countries, including 730 respondents from the education sector during January and February 2022.

    Sophos concluded that “the education sector is poorly prepared to defend against a ransomware attack, and likely lacks the layered defenses needed to prevent encryption if an adversary does succeed in penetrating the organization.”

    The increased numbers of successful ransomware attacks are part of a broader threat environment that has affected organizations across all sectors.

    Around 50% of educational organizations reported that they paid the ransom to restore data, compared with the global average of 46%.

    While paying the ransom almost always gets you some data back, the percentage of data restored after paying has dropped over the last year. On average, in 2021 lower education organizations that paid the ransom got back 62% of their encrypted data and higher education organizations got back 61% of their encrypted data. This is in line with the global average of 61%.

    “The key takeaway here is that paying the ransom will only restore a part of your encrypted data and you cannot count on the ransom payment to get you all your data back,” said Sophos.

  • A Leading Cognitive Scientist Will Be the First Woman to Lead Dartmouth

    A Leading Cognitive Scientist Will Be the First Woman to Lead Dartmouth

    IBL News | New York

    The Dartmouth Board of Trustees elected Sian Leah Beilock, a leading cognitive scientist and current president of Barnard College,  as the institution’s 19th President last week.

    Beilock’s election by the board of trustees followed a global search by an 18-member committee drawn from Dartmouth faculty, staff, students, alumni, and trustees after President Hanlon announced in January that he would step down on June 30, 2023.

    Sian Leah Beilock, 46, will be the first woman to lead Dartmouth College in the institution’s more the 250-year history. She will succeed Philip J. Hanlon ’77, who will step down at the end of the coming academic year after a decade in the role.

    Sian Leah Beilock will assume office on July 1, 2023.

    “Sian is a leader with the aspirational vision to build our research enterprise, further our tradition of excellence in undergraduate education, and expand our global impact; she embraces the teacher-scholar model and brings experience from a world-class R1 institution as well as a distinctive liberal arts college,” said Elizabeth Cahill Lempres ’83, Thayer ’84, Chair of the Board of Trustees.

    “It is an immense honor to join Dartmouth, one of the nation’s most storied institutions of higher learning, and I am even more deeply moved by what lies ahead,” Beilock said. “It is clear to me that Dartmouth’s tight-knit learning community, together with world-class research and scholarship, is an enormously powerful vehicle for the creation of outstanding ideas with real impact.”

    Before joining Barnard, Beilock served as Executive Vice Provost of the University of Chicago, where she was the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and an officer of the university.

    Beilock is one of the world’s leading experts on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the brain and body factors influencing all types of performance. Her 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

     

  • Higher Ed’s Data and Analytics Infrastructure Is Outdated, Finds an Educause Report

    Higher Ed’s Data and Analytics Infrastructure Is Outdated, Finds an Educause Report

    IBL News | New York

    Existing data infrastructures in higher education institutions are outdated and disorganized, while these organizations are struggling to implement data governance systems and are lagging behind the adoption of AI and big data analytics products.

    These are conclusions that Educause researchers found in a recent Horizon Report 54-pages report focused on Data and Analytics.

    Another key finding points to the fact that higher education institutions are increasingly asked to support decisions with data.

    The 2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report Data and Analytics Edition highlights that this data-focused culture presents challenges when serving students. “Only measurement matters has become a common catchphrase as institutions are increasingly being asked to adhere to data-drive decision-making processes,” concludes the report.

    The economic environment is adding more pressure on Academia’s managers. : “Public opinion on the value and ROI of a traditional college degree has continued on a downward trend, and underfunded and understaffed institutions lack the data and analytics capabilities for measuring and reporting compelling evidence of their value to skeptical consumers. New for-profit alternative credentialing centers have risen to meet the demand for education and training, and their advanced analytics capabilities enable them to identify and target learner preferences and needs. ”

    In this context, some institutions are investing, even creating chief data officer positions and reorganizing roles. In this regard, Educause’s Horizon Report suggests that “the CIO needs to envision ways to retrain IT staff with emerging skills in data ops and retool IT departments with technologies necessary to deliver a modern architecture.”

    In addition, “the institutional researcher needs to play a leadership role in data literacy work. And the chief academic officer needs to encourage appropriate use of data to inform decisions related to faculty, curriculum, and students.”

    Overall, experts agree that the approach that could best support institutional goals and business practices would be based on unifying data sources into a centralized data lake or connecting information systems that previously were “siloed” in different departments or offices.

  • EdX Announces Two Career Courses with META on Augmented Reality

    EdX Announces Two Career Courses with META on Augmented Reality

    IBL News | New York

    edX.org, currently a 2U (Nasdaq: TWOU) company, announced the launch and availability of its first two courses in partnership with Meta/Facebook on augmented reality (AR) effects using Spark AR this week.

    The two courses — Getting Started with Spark AR and Creating and Designing with Spark AR —will be part of a Professional Certificate program in Spark AR for Beginners, starting in August on edX.org.

    There will be two months (16 – 20 hours per week), of self-paced courses, priced at $268 or free without a credential.

    Spark AR Studio is an augmented reality platform for Mac and Windows that allows for the creation of AR effects and filters for AR experiences.

    “The metaverse has vast potential to change how we experience and access education, much like how various technologies came together ten years ago to increase access to high-quality education at scale with MOOCs,” said Anant Agarwal, edX Founder and Chief Open Education Officer at 2U.

    As part of its partnership with edX, Meta will provide a voucher for free access to its Spark AR Certification exam to the first 200 learners who complete the Spark AR for Beginners program on edX.org and receive a certificate of completion from edX.

    Learners who complete the certification will gain access to the Meta Career Programs Job Board, an exclusive job platform that connects learners who are certified in any Meta Certification with affiliated employers looking to hire talent.

    “Courses in the Spark AR curriculum will empower students to become the next generation of creators with skills needed to build for the metaverse,” said Leticia Jauregui, Global Head of Meta Immersive Learning.

    In the beginning of July, Meta (Facebook) announced five new Professional Certificates on the Coursera.org platform on Software Engineering.

  • A Cengage’s Report Reveals that the Degree Stigma Causes Employment Crisis

    A Cengage’s Report Reveals that the Degree Stigma Causes Employment Crisis

    IBL News | New York

    A majority of 62% of U.S. employers are contributing to the talent crisis by requiring degrees for entry-level jobs, even though nearly half, 43%, admit that skills training credentials are more important than a degree when considering a candidate for a position.
    In addition, more than a quarter, 26%, filter the candidate pool because “that’s the way it’s always been done.”

    This is what the Cengage Group’s 2022 Employability Report states when analyzing what is causing the job crisis, as 65% of employers say that they are struggling to find talent in the U.S.

    Only 38% of U.S. adults have a four-year degree. “These degree requirements and employers’ mixed messages about what’s actually needed for job eligibility caused half of all recent graduates not to apply for entry-level jobs because they didn’t feel qualified,” says the report after collecting data from 1,000 U.S. hiring decision-makers.

    “While employers continue to implement outdated degree requirements, they seemingly contradict themselves by ranking skills training credentials (43 percent) and real-world experience (28 percent) more important than a two or four-year degree (26 percent) when considering an entry-level candidate.”

    This outdated mindset and lack of focus on a candidate’s skills and experience are the main drivers of the talent crunch, according to the educational company.

    Michael Hansen, CEO of Cengage Group, highlighted that “this outdated mindset and degree stigma is not only widening the labor gap, it’s costing businesses time and money and turning away potential talent.”

    Nearly half of employers, 48%, don’t require a degree because they believe candidates can attain the proper skills through life experience, internships, skills training credentials, stackable credentials and hands-on experience outside of an institution.

    “For a number of fields, including several in-demand industries like healthcare, technology and skilled trades, the future of work – thanks to the accelerating pace of technological change – will not depend only on a degree. It will instead focus on a candidates’ skills, experiences and potential to upskill or train in new fields,” said Hansen.

    Only in IT, there are 3.85 million unfilled jobs in the U.S.

    The report points out that today’s talent expects employers to invest in their continued learning and career development, and most employers, 77%, say free employer-sponsored education offerings are a differentiator for recruitment and retention in this tight labor market.

    Three in four employers, 75%, offer employer-paid/employer-sponsored education opportunities, with 61% offering online education opportunities. Outside of providing education, 78% of employers say they offer the flexibility needed to pursue education opportunities.