June Feature: M&A ACTIVITY FROM CHERRY TREE

Summit Partners Acquires Teaching Strategies
Blackbaud Acquires Reeher
Renovus Capital Acquires Great Lakes Institute of Technology
WeWork Acquires MissionU
Battery Ventures Invests in Learnosity
Techtonic Group Raises $2 million
Learning Machine Technologies Raises $3 Million
Activate Learning Buys Conceptua Math
Halifax Partners Acquires ChanceLight
Campus Labs Acquires Chalk & Wire
Frontline Education Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Prologic
Fuse Universal Raises $20 Million
Lumni Acquires Base Capital and Paytronage
Sterling Invests in Academic Programs International
ClassWallet Raises $2.3 Million

Forbes | Best Executive Recruiting Firms 2018

Active searches

Learning Ally, VP of School Sales and Account Management
KIPP Texas, Chief People Officer
KIPP Texas, Chief Financial Officer
Two CEO searches currently underway under non-disclosure agreements.
One board search in K-12 underway under a non-disclosure agreement.

Closed 2017-2018 searches

Walton Family Foundation, Senior Advisor
Edmentum, President and CEO
Rosetta Stone, CEO
Camelot Education, CEO
Sotheby's Institute of Art, Senior Director, Global Admissions and Recruitment
The School of The New York Times, Director, Pre-College Division
HelioCampus, SVP, Market Development
KIPP Texas, Chief Operating Officer
Revolution Foods, VP Sales
AltSchool, Chief Impact Officer
KIPP Foundation, Chief of Programs and Impact
CIG Education Group, Vice President, Global Information and Technology
American Public University System (APUS), President
Burning Glass, VP Business Development
OnCourse Learning, Chief Technology Officer; Chief Marketing Officer
Turnitin/Insight Venture Partners, SVP Sales
eDynamic Learning, SVP Sales & Marketing
Quad Partners, Chief Financial Officer; Chief Marketing Officer
InsideTrack, SVP Program Development
Voyager Sopris Learning, President
Elsevier, Head of Adaptive Solutions
GEMS Education, Chief Financial Officer
Cambridge Education Group, General Manager
American Honors/Quad Learning, VP Business Development
Catapult Learning, VP Sales
MeTEOR Education, VP Growth Strategies
Illuminate Education, VP Sales
Center for the Collaborative Classroom, Chief Technology Officer
Human Capital Institute, Chief Learning Officer; Chief Marketing Officer
ILSC, Managing Director
Jones & Bartlett Learning, VP Content Production
Penn Foster, EVP Business Solutions; General Counsel
Teachers for Tomorrow, Chief Revenue Officer
Tiber Health (a University Ventures portfolio company), Chief Product Officer

Sources

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• Academic Business Advisors, LLC
• Associated Press (AP)
• Academic Business Advisors, LLC
• The Atlantic
• Bostinno
• Brookings Institution
• Campus Technology
• Center for American Progress
• Center for Digital Education
• Center on Education and the Workforce
• Christian Science Monitor
• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• The Clayton Christensen Institute
• CLO Media
• CNBC
• CNET smartplanet.com
• Computer World
• Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
• eCampus News
• eLearning
• The Economist
• The Economic Times
• edSurge
• Education Dive
• Education News
• Education Next
• Education Sector
• Education Week
• Educause Review
• Edudemic
• Edutopia
• EdWeek Market Brief
• eLearn Magazine
• Entrepreneur
• eSchool News
• Fast Company
• Forbes
• Fortune
• FoxNews.com
• Geekwire
• GettingSmart.com
• Harvard Business Review
• the Hechinger Report
• the Heritage Foundation
• Huffington Post
• Inside Higher Ed
• IT World
• Journal of Applied Research on Children
• KQEDMind/Shift
• McKinsey Quarterly
• MDR EdNet InSight
• MIT Technology Review
• Mother Jones
• National Journal
• NBCNews.com
• NewsDay
• NewsWeek
• The New Republic
• The New Yorker
• The New York Times
• The Week
• NPR
• OnStartups.com
• Politico
• Psych Central
• Rolling Stone
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Scientific American
• The 74 Million
• SkilledUp
• Skoll World Forum
• Slate
• The Stifel Equity Research Group
• Social Science Research Network
• TechCrunch
• Tech Radar
• T.H.E. Journal
• Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Time
• University Business
• University Ventures
• University World News
• US News & World Report
• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post
• Venture Beat

K-12

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Education Week: How Do We Know If Ed Tech Even Works?
We have an obligation to test educational technology before widespread adoption...more>>

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Education Week: Map: Per-Pupil Spending, State-by-State
As part of each state's overall school finance grade, Quality Counts 2018 looks at per-pupil spending adjusted for regional cost differences across states. It captures factors such as teacher and staff salaries, classroom spending, and administration, but not construction or other capital spending...more>>

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Education Week: The "Creative Destruction" of the American School Publishing Industry
In case you had not noticed, allow me to inform you of the precipitous decline of the American school publishing industry...more>>

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MDR: Understanding the Industry - Interview with Newsela CEO Matthew Gross
I fielded questions to Matthew Gross, CEO of Newsela, who provided these insights...more>>

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edScoop: SETDA announces new partnerships with emerging edtech startups
The 11 educational technology startups chosen as SETDA's Emerging Private Sector Partners cover all corners of the education sector...more>>

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THE Journal: Mobile Devices See Upswing in K-12
Shipments of mobile PCs for the education market were up 4 percent in the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same period last year, according to a new report from Future Source. In real numbers, sales reached 5.8 million units to start the year, up from 5.5 million in 2017's first quarter...more>>

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The 74: States Are Raising the Bar for Their Students, New Report Shows, but Higher Standards Are Not Driving Higher Test Scores
States are setting higher expectations for student academic performance, according to a new report in the journal Education Next. The authors find that proficiency standards on state tests have grown more stringent over the past few years, defying worries that they would be dumbed down as the federal government took a more detached approach to school accountability. But higher standards don't seem to have yielded higher performance...more>>

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Pew Research: Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018
YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among teens. Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online 'almost constantly'...more>>

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Hechinger: The massive experiment in New Orleans schools that few have noticed
A few years ago, with little fanfare or announcement, the New Orleans education system began a massive experiment that's reshaping how kids learn across the city...more>>

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EdWeek Market Brief: Most Ed-Tech Products Don't Meet Minimum Criteria in Their Privacy Policies, Report Finds
A study by Common Sense finds that only 10 percent of the more than 100 ed-tech applications and services evaluated by the organization met minimum criteria for transparency and quality in their privacy policies...more>>

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EdSurge: How AR and VR are Being Used to Teach SEL
This past year, a group of eighth graders in Texas got upset about a train that didn't stop for bathroom visits as it headed toward a concentration camp. In Hawaii, another group of students had to decide which of their possessions to sell so they wouldn't lose their homes...more>>

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Venture Beat: Chinese schools are testing AI that grades papers almost as well as teachers
Some schools in China have incorporated paper-grading artificial intelligence into their classrooms, according to the South China Morning Post. One in every four schools, or about 60,000 institutions, are quietly testing a machine learning-powered system that can score students' work automatically, and even offer suggestions where appropriate...more>>

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Live Science: Can You Teach Evolution Without Saying the Word? Arizona Is About to Find Out.
Evolution may soon have a severely diminished role in Arizona science classrooms if proposed changes to the state's educational standards are approved...more>>

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THE Journal: NEPC: Virtual Schools Aren't Working
A new study from the National Education Policy Center offers "overwhelming evidence" that virtual schools don't work. The research from NEPC found that these schools have high student-to-teacher ratios and are "excessively large." They also continue to underperform academically...more>>

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TechCrunch: Google opens its G Suite for Education to home-school co-ops
Google today announced it is changing the eligibility guidelines of its free G Suite for Education service to include home-school co-ops. Parents and teachers who run home-school co-ops will be able to sign up for it in the coming weeks...more>>

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Forbes: Is Hybrid Homeschooling The Wave Of The Future?
Homeschooling is on the rise in America. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 1999 to 2012 the number of homeschooled children more than doubled, from 850,000 to 1.8 million...more>>

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THE Journal: 3 Challenges for Data Interoperability in Education Technology
A new report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) found that while many states have figured out how to share multiple sources of education data to reduce manual data entry or improve data consistency, they still struggle to use data "to present a full picture of student learning."...more>>

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EdWeek Market Brief: Data-Driven Instruction: Top Trend in K-12 Use of Ed-Tech, Teachers Say
Educators' use of data to make decisions about instruction and intervention is rising dramatically in U.S. schools, according to an online survey of 1,516 teachers released today by Kahoot!...more>>

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EdSurge: Frontline Education's 12th Acquisition: Prologic, a K-12 Payroll and Benefits Platform
Frontline Education continues to assemble pieces for its K-12 back-end administrative software suite. The Malvern, Penn.-based company has agreed to acquire Prologic Technology Systems, a payroll and benefits platform...more>>

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EdDive: Report: Small but growing number of charter schools are 'intentionally diverse'
A small but growing number of charter schools are making student racial and socioeconomic diversity a "core part" of their mission, according to a new report released today by The Century Foundation...more>>

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Chalkbeat: Here's what annoyed high school students most about the switch to Common Core
The Common Core standards were supposed to get students to understand math more deeply. For some California high school students, it didn't work out that way...more>>

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The Columbian: Gates, Zuckerberg team up for new education initiative
Tech moguls Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday they will team up to help develop new methods for kids with trouble learning - an effort that will include dabbling into child brain science...more>>

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NPR: What's Going On In Your Child's Brain When You Read Them A Story?
"I want The Three Bears!" These days parents, caregivers and teachers have lots of options when it comes to fulfilling that request. You can read a picture book, put on a cartoon, play an audiobook, or even ask Alexa. A newly published study gives some insight into what may be happening inside young children's brains in each of those situations...more>>

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EdSurge: The Future of Education Depends on Social Emotional Learning: Here's Why
Social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life...more>>

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Forbes: How Primrose Schools Entered The Franchising Of Early Education
In the early 1980s, Marcy Erwin had recently moved to Georgia with her husband, Paul, and sought to place her young children in a half-day preschool reminiscent of the one her mother had operated-and that Marcy had worked at-back in Oak Park, Illinois...more>>

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Tyton: A State Approach to Bridging the Gap in Early Childhood Education
By kindergarten, 90% of a child's brain capacity develops, yet per pupil funding for public Pre-K programs is just over a third of funding available in K-12. The outcome is often limited access and participation in early childhood education (ECE) programs and unmet curriculum and educator professional development (PD) needs...more>>

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EdDive: Will voucher programs end up exposing flaws in private schools?
The performance of public schools has been under a microscope for decades, but private schools haven't seen anywhere near the same degree of scrutiny because they weren't funded by taxpayer dollars...more>>

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EdDive: Report suggests competency-based framework for K-12
In a new report titled "Levers and Logic Models: A Framework to Guide Research and Design of High-Quality Competency-Based Education Systems," iNACOL's Competency Works initiative seeks to lay out a model framework for what an effective competency-based education (CBE) program looks like in K-12...more>>

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EdSurge: How Can a Student Be 'Proficient' in One State But Not Another? Here Are the Graphs
When No Child Left Behind passed back in 2002, Congress enthusiastically proclaimed that 100 percent of American students would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. What they didn't expect was that some states would significantly lower the bar for proficiency to avoid being marked as failing or losing special funding from the federal government...more>>

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Education Week: Special Report, Student Testing: What's Next
How Schools Are Making Assessments Better, More Relevant, and Less Stressful...more>>

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Hechinger: Project-based learning and standardized tests don't mix
Can the long-struggling Philadelphia school system change how we measure success by focusing on meaningful work instead of test scores?...more>>

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Education Week: States Squeezed by Fiscal, Political Pressures on Funding
No matter how much they need, schools can only spend what they have-and that finite pot of money depends on broader economic and political factors largely beyond their control...more>>

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NYT: The Numbers That Explain Why Teachers Are in Revolt
After a quarter century of steady growth on education spending, a shock to the system...more>>

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The Week: The teachers' revolt
Public school teachers are striking for better pay and increased funding for their classrooms. Are they winning? Here's everything you need to know...more>>

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THE Journal: K-12 Tech Orgs Praise Senate Net Neutrality Vote, but Does It Matter?
School technology organizations are praising Wednesday's vote in the United States Senate to restore net neutrality rules...more>>

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ABC: More than 1 million students to miss school as teacher revolt sweeping nation heads to new state
A wave of teacher revolts sweeping the nation is set to hit North Carolina on Wednesday as thousands of educators are expected to swarm the state's capital in a quest for higher pay and more money for education...more>>

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NPR: What It's Like To Design And Build A High School During The #NeverAgain Movement
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Dean Gorrell, superintendent in Verona, Wis., about how his team had to rethink the building of their high school after Parkland...more>>

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EdDive: Advocates, parents call for more mental health services, reject idea of arming teachers
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who chairs the Federal Commission on School Safety, did not attend the listening session...more>>

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EWA: The Shifting Response to School Shootings
School safety experts recently weighed in on how states and school systems are - and should be - responding to the spate of campus shootings...Harper was critical of states and school districts that have responded to threats by expanding budgets to purchase security equipment and increasing the law enforcement presence on campus...more>>

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Austin American Statesman: 'School climate' and the unintended results of more security
School shootings like the one that took place in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 18 are often followed by calls for enhanced security measures. But Santa Fe High School already had many of these security measures in place...more>>

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ChalkBeat: What does the 'future of work' mean for schools? Big claims leave educators with more questions than answers
"It's time to update our schools so they work better for today's students," Stacey Childress, the head of NewSchools Venture Fund, said earlier this month at the organization's annual summit - a who's who of charter school leaders, their funders, their advocates, and others promoting school choice or education technology...more>>

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EdDive: Educators identify keys to a positive school culture
Nineteen actions result in developing a strong school culture, according to two educators who studied the most common positive behaviors in schools and say research shows that students thrive if they have these types of interactions 75% of the time...more>>

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Getting Smarter: Get Kids in the Community and Change the World
We're handing off some complex challenges (and some great opportunities) to young people. How do we get them up to speed on what they're in for and jump start their contribution? We think getting children outdoors and immersing youth in extended community-based challenges is the answer...more>>

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Higher Ed

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The Atlantic: Here's How Higher Education Dies
A futurist says the industry may have nowhere to go but down. What does the slide look like?...more>>

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Chronicle: Here's How Western Governors U. Aims to Enroll a Million Students
It took Western Governors University 21 years to hit the 100,000-student enrollment mark. The online university is growing at a pace of 20 percent a year, but this week it made clear that its ambitions are far grander...more>>

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CNBC: How technology is changing in the education sector
"The digital medium gives us the opportunity to really take the education and learning experience to the next level," Albert Hitchcock, chief technology and operations officer for Pearson Education, told CNBC in an interview broadcast earlier this week...more>>

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EdSurge: Reading the Trend Lines Reshaping Education: A Look at Bryan Alexander's Book in Progress
This week EdSurge sat down with perhaps the most well-known futurist of higher education, Bryan Alexander, who is working on a new book tentatively titled Transforming the University in the 21st Century, The Next Generation of Higher Education, expected to come out next year...more>>

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UV Letters: Artificial Intelligence: Hero or Villain for Higher Education?
Before there was artificial intelligence, there was natural intelligence. And in the world of comedy, no natural intelligence shone as bright as Doug Kenney's. In the 1970s, Kenney was the comic genius behind National Lampoon, Animal House, and Caddyshack and helped spawn Saturday Night Live, Spinal Tap, and a golden era of American comedy...more>>

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Chronicle: 3 Takeaways From a Book-Length Federal Report on 'The Condition of Education'
None of the myriad data points in "The Condition of Education 2018," a congressionally mandated annual report from the U.S. Department of Education released on Wednesday, should come as a great surprise to close observers of the sector...more>>

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WFAA: Paul Quinn College's plan to revolutionize colleges everywhere
So, Paul Quinn became the first college in a major city designated as a federal work college, which means every student now holds a job - most in the corporate world...more>>

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NAFSA: Economic Value of International Students at U.S. Community Colleges
NAFSA's latest analysis finds that the 96,472 international students studying at U.S. community colleges contributed $2.4 billion and supported more than 14,000 jobs to the U.S. economy during the 2016-2017 academic year...more>>

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Forbes: Congress Needs To Follow The Research And Prioritize Higher Education
Worldwide, we have seen a trend towards increasing investment in traditional higher education, including and especially liberal arts programs like philosophy, economics, mathematics, biology and chemistry. But in the U.S., we're questioning not just the dollars-and-cents value of a four-year degree but the developmental, intellectual and societal value...more>>

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Inside Higher Ed: Republicans Like Higher Ed
New America survey finds a more nuanced, positive view of higher education among Republicans than previous surveys, but a partisan divide on who should pay for college...more>>

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WSJ: The GOP's Ambitious College Reform Plan
College administrators have barely had time to digest the full impact of tax reform, but they are already facing a new challenge as Washington weighs a major piece of legislation that could shake up the way higher education does business...more>>

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The Atlantic: The Confusing Information Colleges Provide Students About Financial Aid
Families need clarity when it comes to figuring out how much higher education is going to cost them. Unfortunately, that's not what they're getting...more>>

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The Atlantic: Colleges Are No Match for American Poverty
Amarillo College, in Texas, is working hard to accommodate low-income students-but it can only do so much...more>>

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The Hill: The college dropout problem most education advocates don't talk about
...For all this healthy attention as to whether students can afford to go to college, however, we've too often lost sight of an equally crucial question - whether they'll actually earn a degree once they're there...more>>

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The Economist: How global university rankings are changing higher education
They favour research over teaching and the sciences over the arts...more>>

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Hechinger: With enrollment sliding, liberal arts colleges struggle to make a case for themselves
To thwart the skepticism of prospective students, some map job options, offer guarantees...more>>

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Chronicle: Yes, College Is 'Worth It,' One Researcher Says. It's Just Worth More if You're Rich.
The question "Is college worth it?" is a favorite of op-ed writers. Its latest iteration, published in The New York Times this week, argues firmly that it's not...more>>

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WSJ: Schools Pay Millions in Sexual-Harassment Settlements
Public university systems with schools in the nation's five major athletic conferences paid out more than $10.5 million in settlements related to sexual-harassment claims in 2016 and '17, according to a Wall Street Journal review of recent settlements, gathered mainly through public-records requests...more>>

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The EvoLLLution: How Higher Ed Marketers Can Learn From the Corporate World... and Where We're Already Ahead
While there are some significant differences between marketing in the corporate world and in the higher education space, the similarities between the two are robust and the lessons postsecondary marketers can learn are numerous...more>>

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Chronicle: Colleges Let Ailing Majors Die or Revamp Them?
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has combined liberal-arts majors with computer science, while Assumption College has cut shrinking majors as it gambles on new career-focused programs...more>>

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The EvoLLLution: Bootcamps Go To College
As work and learning shift closer and closer together, it's critical for colleges and universities to revise and rethink education models to ensure graduates can tackle the challenges of the modern (and future) labor market...more>>

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Inside Higher Ed: The Invisible Boot Camp
Trilogy Education Services runs coding boot camps for a growing number of universities. The partnerships are lucrative for the institutions, but are they worth the reputational risk?...more>>

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Times Higher Education: BRICS & Emerging Economies University Rankings 2017
The Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies University Rankings 2017 includes only institutions in countries classified as "advanced emerging", "secondary emerging" or "frontier" by the FTSE, including the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa...more>>

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Venture Beat: Carnegie Mellon University starts first AI degree program in U.S
Carnegie Mellon University today announced it will offer an undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence. The college claims the degree will be the first of its kind in the United States...more>>

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Inside Higher Ed: Moody's: Declining Enrollment Is Squeezing Tuition Revenue
Recently released data on declining college enrollments in the U.S. and constraints on tuition pricing will continue to suppress tuition revenue growth this year, according to Moody's, the credit-rating agency...more>>

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NPR: Why Is Undergraduate College Enrollment Declining?
Undergrad enrollment in the U.S. is down for the sixth straight year. Women enrolling in higher education saved colleges in the 1980s. So who can save colleges today?...more>>

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New America: By the Numbers: Trends in Nontraditional Student Enrollment
The demographics of those enrolled in college look very different than they did twenty years ago. Students once considered "nontraditional" -- including those who are low-income, first-generation, above the age of 23, financially independent, living off campus and attending part-time -- have found themselves elbow-to-elbow with the more commonly conjured image of a college student -- one who is between the ages of 18 and 22, living on the quad, attending full-time, and from a middle- to high-income family...more>>

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The Atlantic: MIT Now Has a Humanist Chaplain to Help Students With the Ethics of Tech
Greg Epstein wants the next wave of entrepreneurs to start considering the implications of their work...more>>

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Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Free Fall Continues, U.S. Data Show
The number of career colleges and the number of credentials they award have dropped by roughly 20 percent in the last four years, new data from the U.S. Education Department show...more>>

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WSJ: After Obama-Era Crackdown, For-Profit Colleges Seek Nonprofit Status
Change would save the schools millions in taxes, lessen federal oversight and distance them from a tarnished industry reputation...more>>

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LA Times: A federal court gives defrauded Corinthian College students a victory over Betsy DeVos
A federal magistrate has blocked the U.S. Department of Education from paring back a loan relief program for defrauded students at the failed Corinthian Colleges chain, finding that the agency invaded students' privacy in fashioning a new program...more>>

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NYT: Predatory Colleges, Freed to Fleece Students
Try as they might, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress cannot disguise that they continue to do the bidding of the for-profit college industry, which has saddled working-class students - including veterans - with crushing debt while providing useless degrees, or no degrees at all...more>>

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The EvoLLLution: How Everyone Benefits from Badging: A Guide to Mainstreaming Digital Credentials
Digital badges add great value for employers, students and institutions alike but it's critical for colleges and universities to more quickly recognize and adopt the delivery of these microcredentials to keep pace with labor market needs...more>>

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EdSurge: Why the Lumina Foundation Is Betting Big on New Kinds of Credentials
A college degree isn't the only path to meaningful work. In fact, these days it seems like there are more kinds of credentials than ever, some with trademarked names like Nanodegrees and MicroMasters...more>>

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Fast Company: Employers like EY and IBM are now hiring workers without college degrees
Companies often use a bachelor's degree requirement as shorthand for a variety of soft skills. But the tight labor market is forcing them to broaden their talent pools...more>>

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The EvoLLLution: How Digital Credentialing is Driving the Shift Towards a Learning Economy
Digital credentialing and microcredentialing are two advances, driven by technology, pushing a paradigm shift in higher education and the labor market that recognizes lifelong learning as the new normal...more>>

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Lumina Foundation: Partnership between Credential Engine and the Navy launches
What do Credential Engine and the Navy have in common? In two words, competencies and credentials. Credential Engine is improving transparency in the credentialing marketplace...more>>

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EdSurge: For Free Community College, Online Learning Isn't Always Part of the Recipe for Success
Free community college programs are springing up around the country, aiming to bring more students to local higher-ed institutions. But several colleges experimenting with such programs are avoiding a tactic that other public institutions are increasingly using to boost numbers: online learning...more>>

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TechCrunch: Udacity and Google launch free career courses for interview prep, resume writing and more
Udacity today announced a new partnership with Google that will make a number of career courses freely available to recent graduates and mid-career professionals...more>>

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EdSurge: Andrew Ng Is Probably Teaching More Students Than Anyone Else on the Planet. (Without a University Involved.)
One selling point of MOOCs (massive online open courses) has been that students can access courses from the world's most famous universities. The assumption-especially in the marketing messages from major providers like Coursera and edX-is that the winners of traditional higher education will also end up the winners in the world of online courses. But that isn't always happening...more>>

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EdSurge: The Second Wave of MOOC Hype Is Here, and It's Online Degrees
In the past year or so there's been a flurry of announcements from the big MOOC providers involving new degree programs based around their online courses...more>>

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EdSurge: European MOOC Platform OpenClassrooms Raises Additional $60 Million in Funding
The French MOOC provider and online higher-education platform OpenClassrooms has raised an additional $60 million in a Series B funding round led by General Atlantic, a global equity firm, along with three previous investors...more>>

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Inside Higher Ed: A Seat at the Table
As part of its pitch for expanding apprenticeship opportunities, a White House-convened task force last week released a report that took several shots at colleges and universities...more>>

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Et Alia

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Bryan Alexander: What the Mary Meeker slides mean for the future of education
Last week Mary Meeker published her latest trends report. It's gotten a lot of attention, typically; here I'd like to identify what I see as the important findings for the future of education...more>>

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McKinsey: The economics of artificial intelligence
Rotman School of Management professor Ajay Agrawal explains how AI changes the cost of prediction and what this means for business...more>>

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Fast Company: Can this wearable remind you to not get distracted?
Foci will measure your breathing and learn when you get into a state of focus, and help remind you to not scroll through Instagram when your attention shifts...more>>

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Venture Beat: Macron warns the digital revolution will fail if companies don't address its social impact
In a kind of digital call to arms, French president Emmanuel Macron sought to position his country as a beacon for a disruptive future - reconciling the desire to encourage innovation with the need to address the social chaos it could cause...more>>

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EdSurge: Thunkable Launches Cross-Platform App Maker That Lets Kids Drag, Drop and Build
Making an app that works across different mobile platforms was once unthinkable for novice programmers. But Thunkable, a company with roots in MIT, is rolling out a new platform where even kids can build games and safety apps across different devices...more>>

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McKinsey: Putting talent at the top of the CEO agenda
McKinsey global managing partner Dominic Barton discusses how executives serious about delivering value need to spend more time identifying their organizations' top performers and most critical roles...more>>

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HBR: Become a More Productive Learner
...We're consuming more information but not learning more. In short, we have become less productive learners. But by applying an intentional approach to consuming information and best practices of how we learn, we can reverse this trend toward unproductive learning. Here are four ways to become a more productive learner...more>>

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Fast Company: These are the three things to invest in to build employee loyalty
Before you consider a new benefit or program, think seriously about these three key areas...more>>

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McKinsey: Debiasing the corporation: An interview with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler
The University of Chicago professor explains how executives can battle back against biases that can affect their decision making...more>>

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EdSurge: Facebook's Latest Higher Ed Push Part of Broader Trend
Facebook is teaming up with community colleges as part of a nationwide effort to teach digital-literacy skills to small-business leaders and others in cities...more>>

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HBR: How Johnson & Johnson and American Express Are Developing Young Leaders
Over the next decade, approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day. Young leaders will have substantial opportunity to climb the corporate ladder - by 2030, millennials alone will comprise three out of every four individuals in the U.S. workforce - and companies will increasingly grapple with how to accelerate the development of those individuals for leadership positions...more>>

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EdSurge: Eyeing More Deals, 2U Raises $331 Million From Latest Public Offering
Its stock's been soaring, and earnings are beating expectations. It posted $92.3 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2018-up 42 percent from the same period last year...more>>

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Chicagoinno: Chicago Startup LearnCore Acquired for $50M
LearnCore, a Chicago startup that makes sales training software, announced Tuesday that it has been acquired by Belgium-based sales enablement platform Showpad for $50 million. Founded in San Francisco in 2010, LearnCore relocated to Chicago in 2011 and has steadily grown its corporate training business without raising institutional venture capital...more>>

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Chief Learning Officer: Measuring Up the Elite
Several years of data from the world's best companies for learning and development reveal a focus on efficiency and high-performance spending...more>>

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Chief Learning Officer: Learning Investment in the Face of Innovation
The importance of investment in value creation has again been affirmed in 2018 financial markets in reaction to the federal tax policy passed by Congress in December 2017. Trillions of dollars of wealth have been created and agreement about the importance of investment in national infrastructure awaits political courage to act...more>>

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GeekWire: Boeing partners with Degreed.com as part of $100M workforce education investment
Boeing is launching new educational initiatives to follow through on its pledge to spend $100 million of its federal tax savings on workforce development programs...more>>

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EdDive: Walmart to help fund college degrees for associates
Full-time, part-time and salaried U.S. Walmart associates that have worked for at least 90 days in stores, throughout the supply chain, at the corporate office or for Sam's Club are now eligible for financial and academic assistance to earn an associates or bachelor's degree in business or supply chain management from three participating nonprofit universities: University of Florida, Brandman University and Bellevue University...more>>

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EdSurge: Pluralsight's Public Offering Nets $310 Million
Pluralsight, the company behind an online library of courses aimed for technology, creative and business professionals, is officially trading on the public market...more>>

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HR Dive: The new role of the L&D professional: Curator
The newest hat worn by learning and development professionals is that of a curator. While that title may call to mind an image of a stuffy museum job, these pros actually curate learning content from many sources, with online training at the fore...more>>

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Forbes: Recruitment App Debut Raises $6.7 Million To Rip Up Résumés
LinkedIn made it passé to send dozens of résumés to potential employers. Now Debut is finding the perfect match for graduates with personality tests and math quizzes, degrees be damned...more>>

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Venture Beat: What rural America needs to succeed in the digital economy
A seismic shift is happening in rural America. The opioid epidemic is disabling a segment of the workforce, retail jobs are giving way to ecommerce platforms, and college graduates are moving to cities in search of higher pay...more>>

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Burning Glass: Underemployment, Research on the Long-Term Impact on Careers
College graduates who start out underemployed are likely to stay that way for years, and women are more likely to be underemployed than men-a slow start that has long-term implications for the gender pay gap...more>>

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Business Insider: The 'lost generation' of millennials born in the 1980s may never be as rich as their parents
From saving longer to buy a home to facing increasing living costs, millennials are balancing myriad money woes compared with previous generations. All of these hurdles mean they're at risk of accumulating less wealth during their lives...more>>

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MIT Technology Review: AI and robotics are changing the future of work. Are you ready?
EmTech Next video series...more>>

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McKinsey: Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce
Skill shifts have accompanied the introduction of new technologies in the workplace since at least the Industrial Revolution, but adoption of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will mark an acceleration over the shifts of even the recent past...more>>

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McKinsey: Delivering for citizens: How to triple the success rate of government transformations
An increase in the number of successful government transformations could help solve society's greatest challenges, serve citizens better, and support the more productive use of public resources...more>>

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THE Journal: Skills Deficit Will Imperil U.S. Economy by 2030
For all the talk of technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics doing away with the human element in corporate life, well trained human beings are still an essential ingredient. In fact, if the current skills gap remains unplugged, by 2030 the world will see "tens of millions of unfilled jobs and trillions of dollars in unrealized revenue," according to a new study by global consultancy Korn Ferry...more>>

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Recode: Rapid advances in automation mean a lot of workers won't have the right skills
What's needed: More workers with technological skills and fewer manual laborers, says a new report from McKinsey...more>>

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Venture Beat: Where is VR headed? Investors share insights on the industry's trajectory
After an initial frenzy of interest in virtual reality due to Facebook's acquisition of Oculus, investors and startups alike faced a "VR winter." This was a difficult period of time in which consumer adoption of VR was slow, funding dried up, and startups had to get creative to survive the lean times...more>>

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Getting Smart: The Future of Learner Experience (LX)
Last week, thanks to the support of the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, we had the opportunity to gather a group of innovative educators and an absolutely brilliant crew of learners that were eager to discuss the future of learner experiences...more>>

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WSJ: Michael Bloomberg Commits $375 Million to Education Initiatives
Disbursed over five years, gifts will target K-12 and higher-education initiatives...more>>

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Times Higher Education: Will handing curriculum design to industry solve the skills gap?
Cutting academics out of module creation poses risks, but it is a model that will be watched closely, says Chris Havergal...more>>

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Pew Research: Americans say U.S. colleges make the grade, but many say public schools don't measure up
Americans say their nation's colleges and universities compare relatively well with those in other developed countries - but the public offers more negative assessments of the state of U.S. public schools...more>>

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Edsurge: New Markets Venture Partners' Latest Edtech Fund Closes at $68 Million
When New Markets Venture Partners first began fundraising for its second education technology investment fund, Barack Obama was in office, Brexit was for up for debate and iPhones still had headphone jacks...more>>

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Edsurge: Why Google Maps-not Netflix or Amazon-Points to the Future of Education
Among the many lessons I learned from my time working for David Gergen, an advisor to four U.S presidents and now the director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, was that metaphors matter in public life...more>>

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TechCrunch: Broadening education investments to full-stack solutions
As an education investor, one of my favorite sayings is that education is the next industry to be disrupted by technology, and has been for the past twenty years...more>>

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NYT: Young People Keep Marching After Parkland, This Time to Register to Vote
The pace of new voter registrations among young people in crucial states is accelerating, a signal that school shootings this year - and the anger and political organizing in their wake - may prove to be more than ephemeral displays of activism...more>>

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EdDive: Senate lawmakers vote to preserve net neutrality, but House remains a hurdle
The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to save net neutrality rules established by the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) 2015 Open Internet Order (the full history of net neutrality is much more complicated), which were set to end in June following a December repeal by the agency, Business Insider reports...more>>

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EdSurge: The Brief Life of a College Alternative: MissionU Will Cease Operations After Sale to WeWork
Traditional colleges don't open, or close, very often. But in the world of experimental higher education, new entities can pop up quickly, and can shut down with little fanfare...more>>

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Brookings: How history explains America's struggle to revive apprenticeships
Donald Trump is the latest in a long line of presidents to announce ambitious plans to slash the cost of college and create millions of new apprenticeships...more>>

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Forbes: How General Assembly's $412.5 Million Deal Signals a Classroom-To-Career Revolution
If you are searching for clues about the future of higher education, look no further than last week's $412.5 million acquisition of coding boot camp General Assembly by the world's largest recruitment and staffing firm, Zurich-based Adecco Group...more>>

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EdDive: It's time to break silos, look at education as a continuum, leaders say
A recent Gallup poll revealed that only about one in four adults believe that students who graduate from high school this year are prepared for college or a career, and Lone Star Community College Chancellor Stephen Head agrees...more>>

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CLO: The Future of the Corporate University
A dual focus on business strategy and employee engagement can ensure a corporate university's guiding principles align with those of the company...more>>

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McKinsey: Linking talent to value
Getting the best people into the most important roles does not happen by chance; it requires a disciplined look at where the organization really creates value and how top talent contributes...more>>

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NPR: High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University
Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor's degree...more>>

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EdDive: What is the role of public education in the US?
Leaders at a summit sponsored by the Reagan Foundation debated the purpose of schools - and the role of the federal government in helping them achieve that purpose...more>>

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EdDive: ASU+GSV 2018: Our recap of the annual higher ed and K-12 innovation showcase
We've rounded up our coverage of last week's summit in San Diego in one location for your convenience...more>>

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