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Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

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Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#41

Post by bhaumik »

10-6 wrote: post #16

This article was written in 2011, and I think since then with the "learn to code" movement becoming so popular and coding bootcamps promising to help people get software development jobs, things have changed a bit--at least for edtech companies teaching programming skills. There are a ton of popular websites that teach people coding/software development/design skills online now that have grown incredibly over the las…

Thinkful pivoted from a subscription model to being a school focused on job placement a couple years back. Our core products are remote immersive & part-time courses in software development & data science. But tying back to the OP, the immersive program has a no tuition till you're hired financing option, (which a few other schools offer too). It's been pretty exciting hearing the joy from applicants who wouldn't have been able to afford the course w/ traditional financing options.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#42

Post by thomastjeffery »

jldugger wrote: post #8

> The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. The way I remember it, middle class folks in Kansas City suburbs really, really care about the quality of their schools and levy property and sales taxes to fund it. Rural Ohio townships where dual earners are making 17k less than the national median for such households may not have a lot of middle class to speak of. Cost…

One problem I see is that the scale of teaching has defined what teaching is. Since there is usually a very small ratio of students to teachers, "teaching" has evolved into lecturing and homework, in hopes that it can become more scalable.

One problem is that this method of "teaching" is not appealing to most of us, so the ratio of teachers to students does not increase.

Another problem is that "traditional" lectures, homework, and testing are not the most effective methods of learning, they are simply more well-known, and known to be scalable.

It doesn't seem scalable for each student to follow her/his own curriculum, since that would create more contexts for teachers to respond to, thereby creating a need for more teachers. What is ignored here, is the redefinition of "teacher". Such a teacher is much more of a "mentor", and that is certainly a more appealing job to me.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#43

Post by PakG1 »

analog31 wrote: post #28
twunde wrote: post #9

The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since s…

I'd add Texas Instruments, with their graphing calculators. They have an extremely low tech product whose prevalence actually detracts from kids learning to make effective use of computation. But they've established a monopoly position by understanding what real problems they're actually solving: 1) Moderating development to within a pace that teachers and the curriculum / testing industry can keep up with. 2) Keepin…

I remember in high school, TI-83 graphing calculators were just being mandated to be used in classrooms. All students were required to buy one. No idea what happened with students who weren't able to afford one, they weren't cheap in my high school mind. I do remember being annoyed because I couldn't see how buying the TI-83 helped me to learn algebra or anything else better. But we all enjoyed playing Tetris on the darn things....

We all complained about the TI-83 being a prime example of school boards being clueless and putting technology in the classroom for technology's sake.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#44

Post by brettcvz »

mbesto wrote: post #24
orb_yt wrote: post #14

I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. One would think there would be a market for Duolingo style apps for other subjects, such as mathematics, where the user is simply charged on a subscription bases. Could such a business not survive?

> but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. Except we have no idea whether these companies are actual businesses or not (i.e. have profits). Anectodal - Clever has just as much funding and number of employees as another EdTech business I know about that also interacts with "millions of students" but is barely pushing beyond a few million dollars in revenue. This isn't…

Clever has a slightly unique business model (we sell to edtech companies, not to consumers or schools), but we do have a healthy, growing, sustainable business.

Source: I work at Clever

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#45

Post by jacobolus »

analog31 wrote: post #28
twunde wrote: post #9

The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since s…

I'd add Texas Instruments, with their graphing calculators. They have an extremely low tech product whose prevalence actually detracts from kids learning to make effective use of computation. But they've established a monopoly position by understanding what real problems they're actually solving: 1) Moderating development to within a pace that teachers and the curriculum / testing industry can keep up with. 2) Keepin…

I got all the way through high school (AP calculus, etc., high school class of 2004) and through lots of technical courses in college without ever needing a graphing calculator, except once during the AP exam, and possibly once for an in-class exam, for which I could borrow one from the school (the rest of the time I just had a $5 used “scientific calculator” but a slide rule would have been just fine, and in college a laptop with real programming languages on it). Learning arcane features of the calculator’s function is not really necessary for the AP exam and is a waste of time, but I would recommend spending a couple hours familiarizing oneself with the basic features before the exam.

Students and parents are often fed a misleading impression of what tools they will actually need to work through a course, and pressured to buy calculators that are not necessary, preying on their desire to succeed at school. I think I was the only student in the class with enough moral outrage about TI’s calculator scam to try such a thing, but my impression was that it really had no practical consequences, except for me spending a lot less time than the other students playing low-quality snake, brickout, and tetris clones.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#47

Post by Alex3917 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #26
jldugger wrote: post #8

> The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. The way I remember it, middle class folks in Kansas City suburbs really, really care about the quality of their schools and levy property and sales taxes to fund it. Rural Ohio townships where dual earners are making 17k less than the national median for such households may not have a lot of middle class to speak of. Cost…

"1:1 tutoring is the gold standard for educational outcomes." Is it? I'd be interested to see some data to support or refute this. I'd always assumed that students benefit somewhat from other students being around (due to observing how others learn, being pushed to be better etc.), so perhaps the ideal ratio would be in the 1:2 to 1:4 range. If people have really figured out that 1:1 is better than 1:2, 1:3 and 1:4,…

> I'd be interested to see some data to support or refute this.

https://www.amazon.com/Equality-Achievement-Introduction-Soc...

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#48

Post by askvictor »

malloryerik wrote: post #20
orb_yt wrote: post #14

I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. One would think there would be a market for Duolingo style apps for other subjects, such as mathematics, where the user is simply charged on a subscription bases. Could such a business not survive?

Is Duolingo actually making money?

Is uber actually making money? Is Twitter actually making money?

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#49

Post by ChicagoDave »

I built Textfyre in 2007 and closed in 2011. Gates Foundation put our ideas in their grant program and put all their resources into existing publishers. Later, Pearson was on NPR spouting many of Textfyre’s pitch points. None of these companies have figured out Interactive education or reduced cost or improved quality.

I still believe we could have, but we couldn’t convince others. Mostly because a real MVP would have cost millions to create.

But we could have saved states billions by replacing textbooks with online, interactive, cross-discipline content.

The market is closed to startups. The industry is fighting disruption in every way they can.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#50

Post by ivansavz »

visarga wrote: post #22
adamnemecek wrote: post #19

Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these…

I like the idea. The role of the teacher would be to coach students (like giving them advice, monitoring progress). What was missing from the MOOC formula was real person, in the flesh accountability for learning.

Yes, human in the loop is definitely good. Reminds me a bit of the "Granny cloud": https://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU?t=12m (talk is worth watching from the beginning)
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