Blog Readings – PhilOnEdTech

Two weeks ago the long-simmering dispute between Moodle HQ and Learning Technologies Group (LTG), owner of three former Moodle Partners, reached its end point. The short description is that Moodle HQ has terminated the Moodle Partner contracts of eCreators and eThink, two companies acquired by LTG over the past year, and has also decided that eThink can no longer sell Moodle Workplace. Beyond the open source implications, this disagreement is important to understand in terms of its effect on the LMS market.

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Two days ago I reported that the majority of the reported enrollment declines for community colleges over the past decade (and in particular 2015 – 2019) comes from an accounting classification issue and not just from fewer students. At the end I pointed out that it is unclear if the pandemic-reporting from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) includes this sector-switching factor.

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One of the defining features of US higher education enrollment coverage in the media over the past few years has been the plight of community colleges. During the pandemic, much of the reporting was based on the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data showing prior year estimates in Fall 2020 that the “undergraduate student numbers are down in all institutional sectors, with the largest drop occurring in community colleges (9.5%)”. That report leads to “Why students are abandoning community colleges in droves” and “Enrollment at US community colleges plummets amid pandemic”, among other headlines. It turns out, however, that the majority of reported community college enrollment declines are mislabeled, or at least are based on an artificial category change. Prodded by an astute email observation and suggestion from Jonathan Grudin from Microsoft, I decided to explore the data further. Looking at IPEDS Fall Enrollment data from 2012 through 2019, roughly half of the reported enrollment declines have come from community colleges adding bachelor degree options, changing their names, and reclassifying from public 2-year to public 4-year schools. The same schools, with primarily the same programs and policies, are getting counted in different categories and artificially impacting the reporting on enrollment trends.

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Earlier this week I shared a profile of US online education enrollment based on the new IPEDS Fall Enrollment 2019 data set – the final pre-pandemic national distance education (DE) profile. I then shared a view DE enrollment trends in this post. In this final(?) post on the new data, let’s look at the institutions with the top online enrollments along with some of the trends.

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Earlier this week I shared a profile of US online education enrollment based on the new IPEDS Fall 2019 data set – the final pre-pandemic national distance education (DE) profile. To put the numbers in context, we should look at the trends since IPEDS started tracking online enrollment in Fall 2012.

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The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. I have been analyzing and sharing the data since the inaugural Fall 2012 dataset, and the Fall 2019 data were just released. This is significant in that it is the last pre-pandemic data set to be released – Fall 2020 should be fascinating but largely driven by institutional reactions to the pandemic.

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We all know that the higher ed textbooks – more broadly and accurately described as course materials – have been changing over time. Student spending on course materials continues to decline and even list prices have plateaued or even started to drop over the past three years. The market changes were apparent before the global pandemic, but we are now getting much better data on further changes driven by lockdowns and shifts to remote and online learning models. And if you dig into the data, it becomes more apparent just how important the rise of Inclusive Access (IA) has become.

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In June, 2014 I wrote a post at e-Literate, arguing that Classroom was not designed to be an LMS. In a follow up post titled “Why Google Classroom won’t affect institutional LMS market … yet”, I argued that there were missing features that prevented Google Classroom from being a legitimate LMS at the institutional level.

Nearly seven years later, with massive adoption at the K-12 level and a history of adding features, Google has made it official that Classroom is indeed an LMS and that the company is planning to roll out some of the key features needed by institutions.

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Although last month’s announcement that Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) had acquired Helix Education did not generate much buzz in EdTech circles, I think it is important to understand in terms of the Online Program Management (OPM) and broader Online Program Enablement (OPE) markets. What we’re seeing is likely a new model worth watching to see how the definition of OPMs expands.

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With the increased usage of EdTech due to the pandemic comes an increase in investment, and one trend that also appears to be playing out is a new wave of public offerings, whether through traditional means or backdoor through a SPAC. Today Bloomberg broke news of a major IPO planned in the K-12 space:

PowerSchool has filed confidentially for a U.S. initial public offering that could value the education software provider at more than $6 billion, including debt, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

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