Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

London-based QS World University Rankings released yesterday its eighteenth edition placing MIT at the world’s best university for the 10th straight year.

The top five universities experience a significant reconfiguration: Harvard University (5th) falls out of the top three. Stanford University loses one position to be ranked third along with the University of Cambridge. Caltech also drops out of the top five for the first time since 2015.

In a major milestone, China hosts two of the world’s top twenty universities for the first time. 48% of Japan‘s universities decline.

The 2022 edition of QS, that is, Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad are based, ranked MIT as number one in 12 subject areas: Architecture; Chemistry; Computer Science and Information Systems; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Economics and Econometrics; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering; Linguistics; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.

MIT also placed second in four subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Biological Sciences; Earth and Marine Sciences; and Materials Science.

 

 

IBL News | New York

edX.org announced this month the extension until June 2022 of its Online Campus Essentials initiative, a free solution for colleges and universities facing resource and technology constraints in the wake of the COVID-19 global health crisis.

This offering, part of the edX Online Campus product, follows edX’s vision of a global supply chain of content and credentials from universities.

Online Campus Essentials allows institutions to access for free a catalog of 100 hand-picked courses on technology, computer science, and business, taught by Harvard, MIT, Berkely, Georgia Tech, Columbia University, Oxford, TUDelft, IBM, and AWS, among other brands.

A survey from Cengage found that a majority of students show a positive attitude toward online and hybrid courses.

IBL News | New York

Bayer announced this month that the Degreed tool will power GoLearn, the healthcare and agriculture giant’s development portal used by 99,000-plus employees.

IBL News | New York

The White House announced this week an initiative called the COVID-19 College Challenge to encourage universities to get their communities — students, faculty, and staff — vaccinated.

This project is part of the Biden Administration’s campaign to accelerate vaccination, aiming for the goal of 70% of the U.S. adult population receiving at least one shot by July 4th.

First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona kicked off the challenge on their social media platforms.

“I encourage every college and university to take this pledge and get creative in becoming Vaccine Champion Colleges,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

 

IBL News | New York

Data cloud company Cloudera (CLDR) announced yesterday that it will be acquired by private equity firms Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) and KKR, in an all-cash transaction valued at $5.3 billion.

The transaction will result in Cloudera — today with a market cap of $3.7 billion — becoming a private company.

Activist investor Carl Icahn, who had an 18% stake in Cloudera, was pushing for the deal. Now, along with other shareholders, will get a 24% premium, that is, $16.00 in cash per share. Prior to the market opening yesterday, the stock was traded at $12.86.

The closing of the deal is subject to the approval of Cloudera shareholders and antitrust approval.

In 2018, Cloudera merged with Hortonworks, another key startup in the Hadoop space, for $5.2 billion. It also bought Datacoral and Cazena, two startups that would help the company to reposition itself in the big data self-service market.

The Hadoop software was the way to process big data a decade ago.

Cloudera went public in 2018, closing at $18.09 a share after raising $1 billion. The vast majority of that was a $740 million investment from Intel Capital in 2014. In December 2020, Cloudera bought Intel’s stake for $314 million.

Cloudera’s Hadoop powered the edX Insight Analytics platform. In addition, Cloudera used the Open edX platform for a part of its internal training.

 

IBL News | New York

The controversial billionaire investor George Soros — whose hedge fund has earned an average annualized return of 33% from 1970 to 2020 — has strongly recommended this month buying Coursera’s stock (COUR).

Moreover, Coursera is one of the three “Strong Buy” stocks recommended, along with luxury goods and brands Fartech, Ltd (FTCH) and Sotera Health (SHC), according to Nasdaq.com.

Soros Fund Management took a position of 105,000 shares, valued at $4 million, at Coursera’s IPO at the end of March this year. Overall, the IPO raised $519 million, before expenses.

In this regard, 5-star analyst Ryan MacDonald, of Needham, laid out a clear case:

“Given the increasing role of automation, the widening skills gap, and the shift to online learning, we believe Coursera’s comprehensive platform will help it gain share in a large TAM that we size between $47B-$50.6B.”

To this end, MacDonald rates COUR shares a Buy and his $56 price target indicates confidence in a 47% upside over the next 12 months.

Despite analysts’ support, the stock is at $38.53, below its opening on March 31 when it closed at $45.

Yesterday, Coursera announced that 16 new universities and higher ed institutions across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa embraced its initiative of Coursera for Campus.

On the other hand, Tencent Cloud will roll out in the coming months, several courses designed to develop in-demand cloud skills, starting with the beginner-level Tencent Cloud Practitioner class.

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MAY – JUNE 2021 – NEWSLETTER #37  |  Breaking news at IBL News  |  Noticias en Español

 

edX 

• “The New Normal Will Be Blended Education,” Says Agarwal at the Annual Open edX Conference

• A Course from Penn on edX About the Potential to Fight Diseases with mRNA Vaccines

• The Linux Foundation and CNCF Issue a Free Kubernetes on Edge Training on edX.org

• UNESCO Releases Its Learning, Open edX-Based Platform

 

Coursera

• SUNY’s Class on Solar Energy and Panel Installations Gets Over 50,000 Enrollments

• Coursera’s Stock Price Drops Despite Analysts’ Endorsement

• Coursera Partners with Microsoft to Launch a Certificate on Azure

• Coursera Announces Five New Degrees While the Stock Drops Below the Debut Day

 

Learning Platform Raising Funds

• Engageli.com Nabs Another $33 Million While Announcing the Launch of the Platform

• MasterClass.com Continues Its Funding Spree Raising Another $225 Million

• Outlier.org Raises Another $30 Million for Expanding Its Catalog of College-Level Courses

• Thinkific Goes Public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Raises $129 Million

• Blackboard’s Former CEO Attracts More Millions for Its Zoom-Based Startup

• The French OpenClasrooms.com Raises $80 Million for Its International Expansion

 

Initiatives

• The Moodle Platform Company Buys Three Partners and Creates Moodle US

• Thinkific.com Creates an App Store for the Integration of External Tools

 

2021 Events | All of the Key Conferences Listed!

• Education Calendar  –  MAY — JUNE — JULY-DECEMBER  |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain

 

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This newsletter is created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specializing in AI-driven learning platforms and communities. We also a course production studio. Read the latest IBL Newsletter   |  Archive of Open edX Newsletters• Coursera’s CEO Says that Its Valuation Won’t Drop After the Pandemic Winds Down

• Coursera Rallies 36% on Its Debut, Giving the Company a Whopping Valuation of $5.8 Billion

• Coursera.org Aims for a Valuation of Over $4 Billion on its IPO

 

Initiatives

• Instructure Launches a Tool that Assesses Students’ Learning Loss During the Pandemic

• Udacity Launches its School of Cybersecurity to Address Market’s Demand

 

Learning Platforms

• Degreed Reaches a Valuation of $1.4 Billion After Raising $153 Million

• The OpenSAP Micro-Learning Free Platform Reaches Five Million Enrollments

 

2021 Events | All of the Key Conferences Listed!

• Education Calendar  –  APRIL — MAY — JUNE — JULY-DECEMBER  |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain

 

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This newsletter is created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specializing in AI–driven learning platforms and communities. We also a course production studio. Read the latest IBL Newsletter   |  Archive of Open edX Newsletters