2U, inc (TWOU) Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript fool.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fool.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published June 29. 2021 6:23PM
Nick Anderson, The Washington Post Get the weekly rundown Email Submit
Nine years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University teamed up to create a nonprofit platform called edX to deliver a curated selection of online courses from prominent universities, available free to the world. It was a major player in a movement that promised to be a game changer for higher education.
Now in a deal announced Tuesday, the education technology company 2U Inc. is purchasing edX and its assets for $800 million in cash. The proceeds will fund a nonprofit venture by MIT and Harvard to explore new initiatives in online education.
I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at
The Chronicle covering innovation in and around academe. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week.
The big deal this week in online ed.
The announcement on Tuesday that 2U will buy the assets of the nonprofit MOOC company edX for $800 million is shaking up the world of online higher ed. It also means I’ll riff on that news for you this week instead of giving you an annotated reading list, per The Edge’s summer programming (back to that next week).
This deal has ramifications in many directions. For starters, it will realign the commercial marketplace for online education, where colleges now pay billions annually to companies known as online-program managers, or OPMs, to help develop, market, and deliver online courses and degrees. The $800 million now headed to a successor nonprofit to edX could also have a huge impact on the future of open-source online options and maybe breathe new life into the original mission of the nonp
06/29/21
Online education company 2U has announced it will acquire edX, the online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT, for $800 million. Together, the organizations will boast a reach of more than 50 million learners around the globe, 230-plus partners and more than 3,500 digital programs.
A key part of the deal is 2U s commitment to advancing edX s mission to expand access and affordability to high-quality education for all learners, according to a news announcement. 2U plans to operate edX as a public benefit entity, a designation for for-profit organizations that focus on achieving particular public-benefit goals and balancing those priorities with serving shareholder interests. This will allow edX s long-standing commitment to the public good to be embedded in its new charter, an MIT frequently asked questions document explained. In this new incarnation, edX will operate under a set of guidelines that will preserve its mission.
Online learning giants 2U and edX will merge insidehighered.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from insidehighered.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.