Summary.
In a recently announced transaction, 2U will acquire all edX assets, including the brand, about 3,500 digital courses, and the website — with its 50 million learners. This development should serve as a wakeup call for other colleges and universities, which must start thinking about how to unbundle the value chain and outsource areas where others possess superior core competencies By partnering and controlling significant parts of value chain instead of resisting them, universities can gain a significant portion of revenues that would steadily migrate toward EdTech companies. Those additional revenues can provide seed capital to universities to drive their own EdTech initiatives. Right now, they’re mere spectators in the game.
Tech company 2U recently announced an agreement to buy edX’s assets from Harvard and MIT for $800 million. How will this transform the business of education, and how can traditional learning institutions adapt?
Three recent developments are noteworthy. First, digital technologies have matured to a point where they can cause disruptive changes to the age-old college education model. For centuries, the principal mode of college education — the classroom model — required students to come together at a predetermined time and location to be taught at an instructor-led pace.
Source: HBR
