The Online Education Market is Officially for Realz

Posted on 31. Jan, 2008 by jon in Education, Resources, Revolution

globalscholarSo many of you probably saw this already but GlobalScholar, a company that could be considered a competitor to eduFire, announced today that they raised $27 million. Kudos to Peter and the rest of the gang over there as you have to be doing something right to raise that much $$$ so soon after launching. My first reaction to the news was excitement. I’ve shared my thoughts on competition before so I won’t reiterate here but let’s just say that if there ever were doubts about whether online ed is a viable market this announcement should go a long way towards putting those to bed. Some of smartest minds on the planet are getting behind online education plays and there are some very good reasons for doing that.

While I admire some of the stuff GlobalScholar has done from what I’ve seen so far their vision of the future of education and learning is quite a bit different from ours. And that’s the beautiful thing about competing…as long as your vision hasn’t been realized yet by someone else there’s absolutely no reason to fear any announcement that any one of your competitors could make.

The next couple of years are going to be incredibly fun as all of us carve out our place in this quaint little $2 trillion industry. May the best men and women win and at the end of day what’s incredibly kick ass is that regardless of who “wins” the true winners are going to be teachers and students who are going to be able to leverage technology to lift learning out of its current muck and mire and turn it into something fulfilling, fun and affordable by everyone on the planet. And when you view it through that lens there aren’t really any losers in this battle.

OK, back to work!

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon

Related posts:

  1. Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops ...
  2. What is the Future of Teaching? ...
  3. Year-end State of the eduFire ...

  • Huge news indeed! And an excellent point that the true winners will be the students.
  • Keith
    Creating personalized remediation for students (of all ages) online is always going to be a win/win.

    Effective remediation is something that traditional education/professional development organizations struggle to handle.

    Remediation requires a combination of subject-matter expertise and personalized curriculum differentiation by the instructor.

    The Online/Virtual Classroom space is an outstanding way to provide both those accommodations for students.

    Congratulations to all!
  • Great news indeed! Online tutoring, especially the demand for quality math tutors and homework help on demand is key for students. The winners will indeed be quality online tutor providers in partnership with students.
blog comments powered by Disqus