Business

The nation’s second-largest for-profit college operator, Education Management Corporation, is expected to agree to pay nearly $90 million to settle a case accusing it of compensating employees based on how many students they enrolled, encouraging hyperaggressive boiler room tactics to increase revenue.

Today, Instructure became a public company (we’re INST on the NYSE). So what does that mean exactly?  Well, it really just means that instead of having a handful of venture …

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Varsity Tutors, the leading live learning platform for private instructors in the United States, announced today it closed $50 million in Series B funding from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), musician and TV personality Adam Levine and education executive Stuart Udell, among others. As part of the terms of investment, Woody Marshall (TCV General Partner) and Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia, Hotwire and Hotels.com) joined Varsity Tutors’ Board of Directors. The new round of funding follows a previously unannounced $7 million in Series A funding from Answers Corporation executives David Karandish and Chris Sims that first closed in May 2014.

The massive disruption of the education industry is well underway, but the biggest tremors are yet to come—disruptions so dramatic that many universities will cease to exist in the next few years.

Online education will grow up by scaling down. In spite of the practical and theoretical possibilities of e-learning, the very qualities that have enabled massive open online courses (or MOOCs) to serve prodigious numbers of learners—machine-graded assessment, prescriptive course design, and self-paced enrollment—have also tend to promote antiquated pedagogy, curtail student engagement, and preclude a sense of cohort. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Internet is a hub where virtually everything can be a commodity, and students with Web access have entry to a wealth of information. That same principle now applies to teachers.Some argue that education is a learning tool that should be free nationwide, yet some teachers are starting to cash in on the same classroom lessons they teach, with help from an online education resource called TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT).

The touch-and-swipe interface of the digital marketplace makes it feel so easy. Looking for an app to teach your 5-year-old how to read? Flick your finger over to the education aisles of the App Store (or Google Play, or the Amazon Appstore), and press “buy.”

News Corp said it sold its digital education brand, Amplify, to a management team supported by a group of private investors following slowing growth in the digital curriculum market.The company did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

News Corp announced today that it has sold its Amplify Insight and Learning businesses to a management team supported by a group of private investors. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. As a result of the sale, beginning in First Quarter of Fiscal 2016, News Corp will reflect the results of its Digital Education segment as discontinued operations. “We are extremely proud of the crucial work that the Amplify team has done to create a digital platform for the future. It is tragic that so many children are digitally literate but functionally illiterate, and it has been the cherished vision of all at Amplify to ensure that students, regardless of their background, have access to a contemporary curriculum delivered on a contemporary platform,” said Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of News Corp. “There is no doubt that the foundations laid by the creative team at Amplify will be profoundly influential in coming years as both curriculum and classroom evolve. All who have been involved in the Amplify business at News Corp should be conscious of their contribution to education in the US and beyond.”