Posts by Jonathan Hornstein

Cultivating and Increasing Belonging for Learners

Studies show that belonging impacts several student outcomes, including increased engagement; academic performance including persistence, retention, completion rates; and personal growth and wellbeing. We surveyed 2,056 students at 2- and 4-year public and private institutions in March of 2023 about their experiences related to learning in the classroom and institutional support outside of it. We […]

Tyton Partners End of Summer Update and Market Perspectives 

K-12 Transactions The K-12 market continues to be an evolving sector as we move post-COVID with the persistence of new staffing models, the role of new integrated technologies, continued concerns around students’ and teachers’ health and well-being, and the status of ESSER funding. Tyton Partners Represented the following K-12 transactions: School Specialty’s divestiture of EPS […]

Read Beyond the Headlines – Looking Back on 12 Months of Education Deal Activity 

“Read beyond the headlines” was a constant refrain from one of my undergraduate history professors. It’s an important reminder that those who only read the headlines generally miss the true story; and, it’s a good prompt for investors and those wondering if the education investment story has run its course. Hint – it hasn’t.     This […]

Tyton Partners’ Listening to Learners 2023 Reveals that While 70% of Students Value Representative Diversity Among Advisors, Only 30% of Institutions Report Scaled Implementation of this HR Practice

Cutting-edge research identifies strategies to enhance student outcomes and create a sense of belonging in higher education. BOSTON, Sept. 13, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tyton Partners, a leading education advisory firm, in collaboration with Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, and Turnitin, a leading supporter of academic integrity, […]

Listening to Learners 2023: Increasing Belonging In and Out of the Classroom

Listening to Learners 2023: Increasing Belonging in and out of the Classroom This publication on how to ensure students’ success and foster a sense of belonging throughout the college journey will be released on September 13, 2023. Tyton Partners’ 2023 Listening to Learners research publication focuses on how institutions can ensure students’ success and foster […]

Founder's Five: Jonathan Libov, Antimatter

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Jonathan Libov founded Antimatter in 2021 to transform complex subjects into shareable, puzzle-like content that sparks curiosity and fosters […]

Bear or Bull: Uncertain Capital Market Outlook for Higher Education 

Bearish or bullish? Glass half empty or glass half full? Many factors influence one’s opinions on the direction of the higher education market for the remainder of 2023 and into 2024. Based on our observations and conversations with presidents, provosts, investors, and executives, we’ve distilled what we believe are the three most likely factors for […]

An Interview with Mark Adiedo of The Rockefeller Brothers Fund

An interview with Mark Adiedo, vice president for people and culture and chief diversity officer at The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), on creating an anti-racist and anti-sexist organization. We continue our Voices of Impact series with Mark Adiedo by discussing with him the process of becoming an anti-racist and anti-sexist organization, how the RBF embeds […]

Is It the End of K-12 Education as We Know It?

Our notion of “school” is being reimagined across the country. Where those models are gaining traction vary, but a good bet is that those states that have established Education Savings Accounts (“ESA”) for families are at the forefront of testing. This is where forces are pushing on the public and private school models with which […]

Founder's Five: Michael Simpson, PAIRIN

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Michael Simpson founded PAIRIN in 2012 to foster a rewarding and relevant journey for students and career-seeking professionals to […]

Ufi Future of Work: Key Learnings from VocTech Market Activity Q2 2023

Ufi Future of Work: Q2 Report 2023 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development. The macroeconomic uncertainty continues. High inflation persists despite easing across Europe and the US. Economic growth has stagnated and, in Germany, regressed. This briefing is not […]

One-on-One Tutoring Works, But How Should It Be Paid For?

At the start of the pandemic, I became bothered by a question. There were widespread expectations that the disruption to schooling would lead to both broad-based and deep learning loss resulting in a generational impact on student progress that could lead to even greater inequities in outcomes. In the educational groups in which I was […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2023:  First-Generation Focus

In our recent article, we discussed an enrollment concern in higher education as institutions grapple to sustain their missions with an increasingly smaller pool of traditional-aged students. In this article, we’d like to extend that topic with a focus on first-generation students and suggest areas for institutions and solution providers to better support those students […]

Inside Higher Ed: Lack of Awareness Causes Students to Fall Through the Cracks

Colleges and universities employ various strategies to promote student success, but how many are students aware of, and how many are supporting students in the ways they should? A new report by Tyton Partners found 60 percent of students were unaware of the full scope of services offered to them at their college or university, creating gaps in […]

Tyton Partners’ Driving Toward a Degree 2023 Study Reveals a 60% Student Awareness Gap of Support Services in Higher Education

Tyton Partners’ Driving Toward a Degree 2023 Study Reveals a 60% Student Awareness Gap of Support Services in Higher Education BOSTON, July 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tyton Partners, a leading education advisory firm, in collaboration with Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, jointly announced the release of […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2023: Awareness, Belonging, and Coordination

Driving Toward a Degree 2023: Awareness, Belonging, and Coordination Tyton Partners’ 2023 Driving Toward a Degree research publication focuses on measuring what practices, policies and technology best support underserved racial/ethnic groups and students with financial need. This in-depth study delves into the critical aspects of student support services in higher education and highlights the need […]

Back to the Future of Work: the Age of Millennials and Gen Z 

As is the case across many industries, it seems like it’s always conference season. Tyton recently joined thousands of practitioners and providers at the Association for Training & Development’s (ATD) 2023 Conference and the Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) to connect with leaders and key providers operating at the intersection of education and workforce.  […]

Investing in AI Edtech: Cutting Through the Hype

Last week, we published our annual Time for Class study, which focuses on the state of digital learning and AI in higher education. The study examines how faculty and institutional leaders are using digital learning tools in teaching and learning to implement practices that can improve student outcomes. This year’s edition also gathered the student perspective, […]

Building Digital Learning Experiences for Today’s Higher Education Students and Faculty

We’ve hit a milestone moment: more of today’s higher education students report a preference for courses delivered in hybrid, blended or online formats (68%) than the traditional face to face format (31%). In addition, they are adopting AI tools at unprecedented rates. This shift is prompted by changing expectations for learning, demand for flexibility, and […]

Inside Higher Ed: Student and Faculty Perspectives on Digital Learning Differ

More than half of faculty members say they prefer face-to-face classes over hybrid or online delivery, but nearly seven in 10 students say they prefer an instructional model with at least some virtual component. Three-quarters of students favor digital course materials over print, while professors are split 50-50. And 60 percent of faculty instructors opt to […]

Time for Class 2023 Study finds students are earlier adopters of generative AI tools than faculty...

Time for Class 2023 Study finds students are earlier adopters of generative AI tools than faculty, and majority (69%) of learners prefer hybrid, blended or online course formats BOSTON, June 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tyton Partners, the leading education advisory firm exclusively dedicated to the rapidly evolving Global Education Sector, has published the 2023 […]

Time for Class 2023: Bridging Student and Faculty Perspectives on Digital Learning

Time for Class 2023: Bridging Student and Faculty Perspectives on Digital Learning Digital learning has become a prominent feature of modern education, with the potential to provide personalized instruction through technology-enhanced tools, communication, design, and support services in online, hybrid,  blended, and face-to-face learning environments. While digital learning tools can improve access and flexibility for […]

How Lever for Change is Innovating the Open Call Philanthropic Funding Model

Tyton Partners (TP):What is Lever for Change? Cecilia Conrad (CC):Lever for Change is a broker. What we try to do is to match philanthropists who are prepared to be bold; and by bold, we mean make large gifts for social change with organizations who can absorb those gifts and put them into impactful work. 100&Change […]

Philanthropic Innovations are Proliferating – Foundations Need to Keep Up

Back in January, I wrote that I was keeping an eye on two types of funding innovations among philanthropic organizations: incentive prizes, which have been around in different forms for centuries, and SchmidtFutures’ recent foray into focused research organizations. While the two methods are ostensibly different – incentive prizes crowdsource myriad possible solutions to a […]

Peering Past the Hype: K-12 Teacher and Administrator Perspectives on AI in the Classroom

Since ChatGPT’s launch in November, headlines have postulated about the potentially transformative and/or damaging implications of generative AI across sectors – particularly education. In this article, we’re going to give an overview of AI in K-12. While AI continues to be a divisive topic within the media and educational landscapes, on the ground, teachers continue […]

From Cliff to Escalator: Why the 5-year Higher Ed Enrollment Outlook is Less Dire Than Some May Suggest

“Looming Enrollment Cliff Poses Serious Threat to Colleges” … “Will Your College Survive the Demographic Cliff?” … “The incredible shrinking future of college” … While the impending “Demographic Cliff” — a decline in the number of traditionally college-aged people projected to impact the 2026 academic year and beyond — has been headline news in the […]

How the The ImPact is Creating Social and Environmental Change through Impact Investing

An interview with Sam Bonsey, Co-founder and Executive Director of The ImPact, on creating social and environmental change through impact investing We continue our Voices of Impact series with Sam Bonsey, the Co-founder and Executive Director of The ImPact, a global community of families committed to creating measurable social and environmental impact through impact investing. […]

Decoding the Dear Colleague Letter – What’s a TPS?! | ASU+GSV 2023

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, Mike Goldstein joined a discussion on leading impact investors in EdTech. He was accompanied by Tyton Partners Managing Director Mike Goldstein, Cooley LLP Special Counsel Katherine Lee Carey, Phil Hill & Associates Partner Phil Hill, Mainstay CTO Toby Jackson, and moderated by Achieve Partners Managing Director Ryan Craig. On February 15, the U.S. Department of […]

430 Billion: The Global Tug of War for International Students

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, Nick Kind hosted a discussion on the global tug of war for international students. He was accompanied by The World Bank Principal Education Specialist, IFC Alejandro Caballero, FutureLearn Executive Chairman Joseph Johnson, and World Financial Services CEO & Executive Director Esther Benjamin. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students traveling between countries to get […]

Dealing with the Demographic Cliff: Survival Strategies for Higher Ed

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, Gates Bryant hosted a discussion on survival strategies for higher education. He was accompanied by Common App President & CEO Jenny Rickard, IU Group N.V. CEO Sven Schuett, Spelman College Sr. Vice President for Enrollment Management Ingrid Hayes, University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of Admissions Chuck Trierweiler, and […]

Maximizing Returns and Impact: Leading Impact Investors in Edtech

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, Andrea Mainelli hosted a discussion on leading impact investors in EdTech. She was accompanied by The Vistria Group Partner and Co-Head of Vistria PRG Jon Samuels, Reach Capital Partner James Kim, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Managing Partner for Ventures Vivian Wu, A-Street Co-Founder & Managing Director Marc Sternberg, and TPG – Rise Fund Partner John Rogers. […]

Has EdTech Really Changed Anything? Can EdTech Drive Results in a Brave New World?

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, Kristen Fox joined a discussion on leading impact investors in EdTech. She was accompanied by Amira Learning CEO & Co-Founder Mark Angel, Southern New Hampshire University President Paul Leblanc, Edmentum President & CEO Jamie Candee, Rochester Public Schools Superintendent of Schools Kent Pekel, Tyton Partner Managing Director Kristen Fox, and moderated by McKinsey & Company Partner Jake Bryant. Has EdTech lived […]

The "Exhausted Majority": Microschools and Parent Power in K-12

At the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, our Founder and Managing Partner, Adam Newman, hosted a discussion on on microschools and parent power in K-12 education. He was accompanied by Odyssey CEO & Founder Joseph Connor, The Oakland REACH CEO Lakisha Young, VELA Education Fund CEO Meredith Olson, Prenda Founder & CEO Kelly Smith, and Avalanche VC Managing Director Katelyn Donnelly. On the heels of the […]

Ufi Future of Work: Key Learnings from VocTech Market Activity Q1 2023

Ufi Future of Work: Q1 Report 2023 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development. As economic uncertainty continues, the result of inflation has caused a decrease in consumer demand and investor appetite. At the same time, while layoffs are increasing, […]

Post ASU+GSV 2023: Signals Are Pointing to Accelerating Deal Activity for the Education Sector

Certainly, there’s lots to discuss in the education deal environment as we close the first third of the year. And, speaking of discussions, how many did you cram in during the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego last month?! Assuming you could find a place to sit (or in some cases, simply stand) it was a […]

Tyton Partners Voices of Impact Pulse Survey Q1 2023

The United States is living through a unique period of economic uncertainty as we grapple with inflationary pressures coupled with unprecedented labor market dynamics. Despite an anticipated cooldown, the labor market remains tight, especially as some industries still struggle to fill their talent needs. While it is clear economic upheaval has the potential to affect […]

What We Heard at ASU+GSV 2023: Philanthropy is Changing, with Strong Implications for Impact

It has become a Spring tradition to make the trek out to San Diego for the ASU+GSV Summit. This year, as we confabbed with 7,100 of our colleagues, the focus for most of the conference was on the potential and risks of generative AI in education as Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, and Sam Altman took […]

How the Institute for Citizens & Scholars is Building the Field of Civic Learning

An interview with Raj Vinnakota, President of the Institute of Citizens & Scholars, on building the field of civic learning Concerns about the state of American democracy are at an all-time high. Civic engagement is more polarized than at any time in recent history. From parents disrupting and taking over school board meetings, to 29% […]

Generative AI in Higher Education: From Fear to Experimentation, Embracing AI’s Potential

In November of 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a generative AI writing tool, sending shockwaves through education. While generative AI technology is not new, ChatGPT has made it accessible, intuitive, and free, catapulting the tool into the mainstream spotlight. Following the release of ChatGPT, Tyton Partners fielded a national survey in February and March 2023 as […]

Founder's Five: Rajay Naik, Skilled Education

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Rajay founded U.K.-based Skilled Education in 2020 with a mission to become the catalyst of online education for universities, […]

4 Strategies for Tackling Emerging Challenges in K-12 Education

Separating the signal from the noise in product development is always a challenge. One needs to only consider the current volume of Chat GPT coverage as an example of what product leaders grapple with in striving to balance between current customer needs and potential market-drive hype. This month, we offer some perspective on four signals […]

Q1 2023 Deal Highlights

Tyton Partners Q1 2023 Transactions Tyton Partners Delivers Record Q1 We are pleased to announce that Tyton Partners Investment Banking division has picked up right where it left off in 2022. We closed a record 24 deals last year across the PreK-12, Higher Education, and Corporate L&D and Staffing markets. As of the end of […]

Blue Is In: Q1 Sees a Rise in Upskilling Blue-Collar Workers 

Despite the anachronism of the terms “white collar“ and “blue collar”, they are still commonly used to describe job market dynamics. At the beginning of the year, many media outlets focused heavily on economic dynamics impacting white-collar industries and workers. But while the white-collar layoffs were a large component of the conversation, they were not […]

Founder's Five: Manoj Kulkarni, Realizeit

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Realizeit was founded in 2007 to leverage learning science and technology to create an adaptive learning platform that focuses […]

K-12 Market Activity: Changing Seas

As investors brace for shifts in K-12 buying behavior post-ESSER, continued activity in the K-12 market reveals where some K-12 business are placing bets. Notably, two recent deals – Paper’s acquisition of MajorClarity and IXL Learning’s acquisition of Teachers Pay Teachers – highlight organizations seeking to balance market expansion with broader and more diverse stakeholder […]

Online Strategies to Support Institutional Growth

In the U.S., the pandemic accelerated a movement toward hybrid and online learning in permanent ways, including for the “traditional-aged student”. Whereas 2015-2022 saw 2% growth of fully online enrollment, we’ve seen sustained increases in the movement of students to hybrid and online learning modes, post-pandemic. We expect this trend to continue. Preliminary results from […]

Sharpening Your 2023 Investment Theses in the HCM Market

We have seen continued investment activity in the human capital management (HCM) market across the past few months. The transactions were primarily early-stage investments, with a few growth-stage investments (e.g., Bitwise, Plum, Skillable) and M&As (e.g., Coding Dojo, Digital Marketing Institute, Qualified and Codewars). The early-stage capital raises were a mix of B2B technology platforms […]

Ufi Future of Work: The Jobs Frontier 2023

Ufi Future of Work: The Jobs Frontier 2023 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development. In this annual report, you will find our second public analysis of key developments in the “Future of Work” investment landscape from the previous year […]

Founder's Five: Aaron Feuer, Panorama Education

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Aaron Feuer founded Panorama Education in 2012 to tangibly improve student outcomes. Aaron founded Panorama Education in 2012 while […]

Tyton Partners Voices of Impact Webinar: Innovation for Worker Empowerment 2023

The US has long lacked a comprehensive infrastructure for workforce training and placement. As a result, millions of workers have been left undertrained, underemployed, underpaid, and undervalued while businesses have faced both record profits and unfilled openings.   This dynamic has been brought into stark relief during the pandemic-driven Great Resignation, a movement of workers away […]

How Schmidt Futures is Innovating Philanthropic Funding for Scientific Advancement (Part 2)

An Interview with Tom Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures, on innovating philanthropic funding for scientific advancement (Part 2) Last month, we published the first of a two-part interview with Tom Kalil, covering his insights into potential innovations in education and workforce development. In Part II of our conversation, Tom dives into a novel […]

David vs. Goliath: Shifting Dynamics in the Cert. & Licensure Testing Market

The 3Ps – Pearson, Prometric, and PSI – have long dominated the certification & licensure testing market. Corporate and government certifiers (i.e., employers) have historically contracted with providers with extensive in-person testing center networks, offering what were mostly traditional multiple choice exams. Because of poor digital infrastructure, certifiers could not rely on broad and consistent […]

Voices of Impact Webinar: Innovation for Worker Empowerment

Innovation for Worker Empowerment The US has long lacked a comprehensive infrastructure for workforce training and placement. As a result, millions of workers have been left undertrained, underemployed, and underpaid while businesses face both record profits and unfilled openings. Novel, for-profit companies have emerged to fill this gap, transforming both the channels through which workers […]

Founder's Five: Gregory Cianfarani, CORE Higher Education Group

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Greg founded CORE Higher Education Group in 2006 to solve a specific issue facing a specific category of institution. […]

How to Build Innovation and Learning Capacity for Better Student Success 

We work with institutions and organizations that are constantly innovating in service of building experiences, products, and services that can benefit students. There is urgency for institutions to adopt approaches that drive innovation in order to deliver on the promise of socioeconomic mobility and close persistent student success and outcomes gaps that exist based on […]

Founder's Five: Mark Salisbury, TuitionFit

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Mark Salisbury, together with his co-founder Kimberly Dyer, started TuitionFit in 2018 with a mission to help everyone find […]

Building K-12 Schools Back Better: From PPE to SEL

As we come up on the third “anniversary” of COVID-19, the dust from the pandemic continues to settle. The experience has been nothing short of traumatic for many communities. But it has also created an unprecedented opportunity to upgrade critical components of our K-12 school systems. This month, we took a pulse survey of school […]

How Schmidt Futures is Advancing Innovation in Education and Workforce Development (Part 1)

An interview with Tom Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures, on advancing innovation in education and workforce development (Part 1) I first met Tom Kalil when he was Deputy Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the Obama Administration. Tom is one of those people who immediately strikes you […]

K-12's M&A Alphabet Soup: Aftermath of HMH and NWEA Joining Forces

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), the largest US K-12 instructional provider by annual revenues, announced in January it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire virtually all the assets of NWEA, a not-for-profit organization and market-leading interim assessment provider in use by more than 10,000 districts. The news ended many speculative conversations among K-12 executives and […]

Founder's Five: Adam Salkeld, Digital Learning Associates (DLA)

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Adam Salkeld and his co-founder, Stephen Haggard, formed Digital Learning Associates (DLA) in 2016 to draw in the best […]

Ufi Future of Work: Key Learnings from VocTech Market Activity Q4 2022

Ufi Future of Work: Q4 Report 2022 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development. In this latest quarterly report, we offer our review of current market developments and dynamics, including: Please fill out the form below to be emailed a […]

Where Will Education Philanthropy Go in 2023?

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, I was leading fundraising efforts for the XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit that utilizes innovation tools to drive positive impact in the social, climate, and health sectors. Expecting the worst during a time of extreme uncertainty, we hunkered down for a rapid decline in philanthropic funding. I pushed my team […]

Impact Players Catalyzing Systems Change

At this time last year, I was looking forward with great anticipation to the role that catalytic capital could play in changing the “way we educate” and “the way we work.” As it became abundantly clear post-pandemic, our education and learn-to-work systems are broken, not designed for our “brave new world,” and are leaving many […]

Reflections from Europe – Whither Education in the Global Impact World?

Towards the end of 2022, I attended the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) conference in The Hague, one of the largest convenings of impact investing professionals in the world. Delegates came from the four corners of the globe to the coast of The Netherlands, although the audience skewed European. In many ways, the gathering was […]

Tyton Partners Expands Education Industry Coverage with the Elevation of Dan Clary to Managing Director in the Investment Banking Practice

Tyton Partners is pleased to announce the promotion of Dan Clary to Managing Director in the firm’s investment banking practice. In his new role, Dan will lead, source, and execute both sell-side and buy-side transactions across the global knowledge ecosystem with a focus on software and tech-enabled models serving higher education, corporate training and test prep, […]

How OneTen is Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

An interview with Dr. Marc Spencer, Chief Talent Development and Support Officer at OneTen, on closing the racial wealth gap The net worth of a typical White family in the U.S. is nearly ten times that of a Black family. These gaps in wealth are rooted in a history of systemic racism and discrimination, as […]

Higher Education in 2023 – The Key Issues Shaping the Year Ahead

As we enter 2023, our higher education consulting team is sharing thoughts on the year ahead across the sector. Institutions and the organizations that serve them continue to navigate dynamics including: These create urgency around institutional business model innovation, increased demand for partnerships and affiliation to address scale challenges and access expertise, and continued adoption of digital […]

Founder's Five: Michael Ermann, Amber Book

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Michael founded Amber Book in 2010 as a better way to help architects pass the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®) […]

Education Deal Diligence Outlook for 2023

Whether or not the U.S. economy enters a recession in 2023, shallow or otherwise, evidence suggests we are in the later stages of an investment cycle in the education market. As an asset class, EdTech has become well known to financial sponsors over the past three years, catalyzed for many by the critical role distance […]

Looking Back to See Forward: Observations on K-12 Budgets and M&A in 2023

Current Federal budget and ESSER funding dynamics may mask rougher period ahead For those desperately trying to get from Point A to Point B during the holidays, you may have missed that Congress finally passed its 2023 budget, nearly three months after the start of the October 1 fiscal year. (If only we ran our […]

2022 Key Deal Highlights and Predictions for 2023

Tyton Partners 2022 Transactions Tyton Partners Delivers Another Record Year We are pleased to announce that Tyton Partners Investment Banking Division has completed a record number of transactions in 2022, with 24 deals completed across the PreK-12, Higher Education Technology and Services, Post-Secondary Institutions, and Corporate L&D and Staffing markets. Despite the global dealmaking slump […]

Tyton's Reflections for 2023 in K-12

One of the joys of our work at Tyton Partners is that we get to balance a specific sector focus – education – with a highly diverse range of stakeholders. In our K-12 practice, that ranges from keeping a pulse on parent sentiment to evaluating teacher needs and district-level priorities, and our interactions across K-12 […]

2022 Education Investments: The Year in Review

Our analysis of 2022 deal activity through November 30 confirms several anecdotal observations we have made during the year. While valuation multiples may have contracted, M&A activity in the education sector has remained robust and even increased in volume. At the same time, there has been a notable decline in venture-stage investments. These patterns are […]

IT Professional Learning: A New Chapter

Last month, Simplilearn, the California- and India-based provider of online professional IT-related training to consumers and businesses, raised $45 million from a consortium led by GSV Ventures at an undisclosed valuation, possibly approaching $500 million. The company’s largest shareholder is the Blackstone Group. Simplilearn partners with universities and businesses to offer boot camps, certificate programs, and […]

Founder's Five: Rohan Pasari, Cialfo

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Rohan co-founded Cialfo in 2017 with Stanley Chia and William Hund to help students around the world expand their […]

Training Industry: 4 Reasons Why Prioritizing Personalized Employee Skill Building Boosts Retention

Article originally published on trainingindustry.com. Following years of an overheated labor market, organizations are as focused as ever on reducing costly attrition. The challenge is knowing where to focus efforts to have the biggest impact. It’s often easiest to concentrate talent management initiatives on blanket retention strategies like employee surveys or improved compensation and benefit […]

Founder's Five: Dan Feshbach, TeachTown and Multiple Hub

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Dan Feshbach founded the company that eventually became TeachTown in 2009 when he saw the dearth of education resources […]

Let's Talk About Equity in Higher Education EdTech

Over the past few weeks, we have enjoyed seeing many of you in person at an assortment of recent in person events including EDUCAUSE, OLC Accelerate, and the UERU National Conference. It is energizing to experience in-person conferences again; however, looking across these convenings, session topics and participation, we realized that collectively as a field, […]

K-12 Investing: A Three-Dimensional Approach

Investors continue to put money to work behind efforts to fix K-12 education both inside and outside of schools. There are three principal drivers behind this activity: 1) fixing what COVID-19 mitigation policies broke; 2) improving COVID-19-revealed weaknesses inside public schools; 3) creating solutions to work around the public K-12 school system. All three avenues […]

Could Language Learning Be the Hot New Employee Benefit?

Online language apps exploded in popularity during the pandemic, but maintaining that momentum could prove an ongoing challenge as consumers begin to tighten their belts. Since reaching its all-time trading high in September 2021, Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL) shares have declined more than 47%, despite demonstrating continued growth in paid subscribers suggesting investors may be nervous […]

Ufi Future of Work: Key Learnings from VocTech Market Activity Q3 2022

Ufi Future of Work: Q3 Report 2022 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development.   In this latest report, we assess the dynamics and activity within the VocTech market from July – September 2022. This report includes: Essential trends affecting […]

Founder's Five: Felix Ruano, Subject

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Felix Ruano and his co-founder, Michael Vilardo, founded Subject in October 2020 to increase the availability of high-quality online […]

Avoiding the Trap of Too Little Too Late

The challenges facing higher education are well understood: a demographic cliff of traditional-aged applicants, a declining proportion of full-pay families, and a growing skepticism of the value of (ever-more) expensive post-secondary degrees with resulting student consumerism. Add to this rapidly rising technological complexity, deferred maintenance on deteriorating physical assets, escalating administrative costs associated with student […]

The Wisdom of Crowds: Four Education Investing Trends that are Thriving

There were fewer headline-grabbing deals announced in September, though the $121M transfer of Softbank’s stake in Kahoot! to General Atlantic was notable. While the transaction might say more about Softbank than Kahoot!, it does underscore the staying power of edtech that another large, global venture investor is entering the sector in such a meaningful manner. We are also pleased to highlight […]

Founder's Five: Noam Gerstein, the bina School

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Noam Gerstein co-founded the bina School in 2021 as an international online primary school and kindergarten that enables children […]

Choose To Learn 2022: More than 50% of Parents Say It’s Time for a More Student-Centric Approach to our K-12 Education System

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, October 26, 2022 – Today, Tyton Partners, in collaboration with the Walton Family Foundation and Stand Together Trust, released a new report, Choose to Learn 2022, that looks at data collected from more than 3,000 K-12 parents and more than 150 K-12 suppliers across all 50 states in the United States. The report […]

Choose to Learn 2022: K-12 Landscape Map

Our K-12 landscape map comes from our report, Choose to Learn 2022. It presents the network of education delivery sites and supporting “infrastructure” that comprise a child’s education and helps us imagine a more student-centric future. Across this map, there are a wide variety of in- and out-of-school experiences, as well as the community networks […]

Choose to Learn 2022

Choose to Learn 2022: Connecting in- and out-of-school learning in a post-pandemic world Across K-12, families have theoretically always had choices: namely, where their child goes to school and how they spend their time outside of school. But these choices present too many compromises. Families value school—it can be cost-effective, convenient, credible—but they rarely depend […]

Founder's Five: Darren Catalano, HelioCampus

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Darren Catalano founded HelioCampus in 2015 to empower decision making at all levels of higher education. Darren Catalano started […]

School Disrupted: Investigating K-12 District Public School Enrollment Trends

With support from Stand Together Trust and the Walton Family Foundation, we published School Disrupted 2022, the second iteration in our ongoing series focused on K-12 enrollment trends. School Disrupted, a three-part publication, details how families are making post-pandemic educational decisions for their children and the impact on school enrollment patterns and parents’ future aspirations. This month, we recap […]

Founder's Five: Tracy Palandjian, Social Finance

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Tracy Palandjian founded Social Finance in 2011 together with co-founders Sir Ronald Cohen, and David Blood driven by the […]

Frontline Sells to Roper Technologies: EdTech Hits Middle Age

Last month, we launched the first in a three-part series titled “School Disrupted,” describing the ways in which the K-12 market has been fundamentally altered by pandemic mitigation measures. Our own survey of parents identified a 9% decline in families enrolling their children in traditional public schools versus the prior year. This migration away from traditional public-school […]

Retooling the Relationship Between Workers and Employers: Transformative Models in the Future of Work

This panel features Andrea Mainelli (Tyton Partners), Beth Cobert (Markle Foundation), Yigal Kerzenbaum (ETF@JFFLabs), and Leila Makarechi (Merit America). We discuss the relevant insights about: How the public/private partnership are driving change in the future of work The challenges they’re facing in collaborating to drive scale How they are tackling some of the toughest issues […]

School Disrupted Part 3: What Parents Know (Don't Know) Impacts Schooling Decisions

This is Part 3 of a three-part publication on K-12 enrollment trends by Tyton Partners supported by Stand Together Trust and the Walton Family Foundation. Our work draws on two nationally representative surveys of more than 6,000 K-12 parents conducted in May 2022. Part 1 of School Disrupted 2022 estimated that district public school enrollment […]

Founder's Five: Aaron Walker, Camelback Ventures

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Aaron Walker founded Camelback Ventures in 2015 in New Orleans, home of the first camelback-style homes whereby families of […]

School Disrupted Part 2: Multi-site Schooling as a Bridge Between Traditional and Student-Centric Learning

This year, Tyton is publishing School Disrupted 2022 in collaboration with Stand Together Trust and the Walton Family Foundation. In this report, we have extended our work from School Disrupted 2021 to explore how families continue to navigate traditional and alternative school models. Drawing on two surveys of more than 6,000 K-12 parents, School Disrupted […]

Founder's Five: Myles Hunter, TutorMe

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Myles Hunter co-founded TutorMe in 2015 along with USC classmate Alex Convery and technical co-founder Victor Kotseruba, with the […]

School Disrupted 2022 Study Finds District Public School Enrollment Has Dropped Nearly 10% 

Tyton Partners launches a new report series in partnership with Stand Together Trust and the Walton Family Foundation on how the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to disrupt K-12 enrollment trends. BOSTON, September 20, 2022 Tyton Partners, the leading global investment banking and strategy consulting firm exclusively dedicated to the rapidly evolving Global Education Sector, has […]

School Disrupted Part 1: Pandemic-Driven Decline in K-12 Public School Enrollment Continues

This year, Tyton is publishing School Disrupted 2022 in collaboration with the Walton Family Foundation and Stand Together Trust. In this report, we have extended our work from School Disrupted 2021 to explore how families continue to navigate traditional and alternative school models. Drawing on two surveys of more than 6,000 K-12 parents, School Disrupted […]

Founder's Five: Madeline Kerner, Matriculate

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Madeline co-founded Matriculate in 2014 with a mission to empower high-achieving, low-income high school students to make the leap […]

Aligning Mission, Margins, and Market in Higher Education

In the face of declining undergraduate and graduate enrollment, taking a proactive approach to program portfolio planning is critical in order to align with changing regional workforce dynamics, ensure student success, and ultimately secure financial sustainability.   According to National Clearinghouse data, there were 9.4% or 1.4 million fewer undergraduate students enrolled in higher education as […]

Unlocking Employee Retention: Leveraging Skill Building to Promote Internal Mobility

In June, we shared a strategic response to upskilling and reskilling in today’s uncertain labor market. To expand on this topic, below we explore why reskilling and upskilling are important tools for addressing employee retention.  Organizational rationale for prioritizing skill building typically focuses on preparing employees for the “future of work”. Trends like automation and digitization […]

Remodeling K-12 Classroom Solutions

It’s an exciting and hopeful time of year, as millions of students return to school to continue their learning journey. While some students are chasing their last few days of summer vacation, others have already completed several homework assignments delivered through their school’s classroom learning platform. In fact, this year’s classroom learning platform may also […]

Founder's Five: Jackson Boyar, Mentor Collective

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Jackson Boyar co-founded Mentor Collective (formerly Shearwater) with James Lu Morrissey in 2015 with the mission of leveraging mentorship […]

Ufi Future of Work: Key Learnings from VocTech Market Activity Q2 2022

Ufi Future of Work: Q2 Report 2022 Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development. In this latest report, we assess the dynamics and activity within the VocTech market from April – June 2022. This report includes: Essential trends affecting the ecosystem […]

Reading the Tea Leaves: Investors Make Bets in the Face of Uncertainty

Experts are stumped. Even as GDP declines and some companies announce layoffs, the U.S. continues to add jobs, with many more positions left unfilled. Though edtech venture investing has visibly cooled, related M&A activity continues to be robust. This continues to hold true even as it begins to lean more heavily toward consolidation than the establishment of new platforms. […]

Founder's Five: Daphne Koller, Coursera and Engageli

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Daphne Koller co-founded Coursera in 2012 with fellow Stanford Computer Science professor Andrew Ng with a mission to provide […]

Founder's Five: Peter Samuelson, Ardeo Education Solutions

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Peter Samuelson founded Ardeo with a mission to help loan repayment assistant programs (LRAPs) become more accessible to schools […]

Founder's Five: Ruben Harris, Career Karma

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Ruben Harris, along with co-founders Artur and Timur Meyster, founded Career Karma in 2018 as a tool to help […]

H1 2022 Deal Highlights + A Look Ahead

Tyton Partners Posts Record First-Half of 2022 Deal Closings We are pleased to announce that Tyton Partners Investment Banking division has completed another record number of deals in the first half of 2022 with a total of 12 transactions. Tyton has unlocked significant value for our sellside clients, consistently achieving top quartile outcomes for private, […]

Making an Impact: Investing in Education to Improve the Lives of Millions

Considered unrealistic a decade ago, investors today earn market-rate returns while producing measurable positive benefits for society. With the rise of sustainable investing and environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies in recent years, more investors seek to align their capital with their values. The growth has been astonishing. More than $17 trillion – or $1 […]

American Rescue Plan's $122B Makes Its Mark

Given the size of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund – and its looming September 2024 deadline – the utilization and impact of these funds has been a point of national interest. One recent Wall Street Journal headline painted the picture of a K-12 sector unable to make use […]

7000+ Faculty & Administrators Share Their Views on Equity Gaps and Opportunities

Today, we published three reports which highlight how the higher education system misses the mark for students, especially those from historically under-represented groups and those with financial needs. Especially for Black, Latino, and Indigenous students and students with financial needs, the college experience continues to be a challenging one. Thanks to the participation of 7,400 […]

Reports: Nationwide, Large-Scale Studies Find New Evidence on How Schools Are Closing Outcome Gaps

Tyton Partners publishes three reports highlighting how higher education institutions struggle to support students in the post-pandemic era and what is working to close equity gaps.1 2 BOSTON, July 12, 2022 Tyton Partners has released the annual updates of Driving Toward a Degree, Hitting Their Stride, and Time for Class, highlighting how the higher education […]

Hitting Their Stride: Building Momentum Through High-Quality Implementation and a Commitment to Change

The developmental education reform movement is at a crossroads. While significant shifts in institutional and state policy have worked to dismantle the prior problematic approaches to developmental education, aggregate survey data from the past three years shows little change in self-reported awareness and adoption of key elements of the reform movement. Additionally, the fallout from […]

Time for Class 2022: The State of Digital Learning and Courseware Adoption

Since 2014, Tyton Partners has monitored the dynamics of the higher education instructional materials and digital learning market to understand the needs of instructors, institutions, and students and to monitor how suppliers are evolving to meet those needs. This 2022 summary provides an updated view of how the pandemic has altered the landscape of teaching, […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2022: Closing Outcome Gaps Through Student Supports

Driving Toward a Degree is a research collaborative which helps institutions evolve their student supports.   In this year’s research, we designed a methodology to measure progress towards equitable academic outcomes by race and ethnicity, represented by data on how the needs of Black, Latinx, Indigenous (BLI) groups, and students with financial needs differ from those […]

Founder's Five: Chip Paucek, 2U

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Chip Paucek founded 2U with a mission to help colleges make high-quality online learning accessible, scalable, and sustainable. Chip […]

Ufi Future of Work: The Jobs Frontier 2022

Ufi Future of Work: The Jobs Frontier 2022: Catalysing the Future of Workforce Development Ufi Ventures and Tyton Partners are collaborating on an ongoing exploration of the opportunities for investors in the Future of Workforce Development.   In this annual report, we offer a review of the frameworks, trends, and analyses we work with for […]

This Is Not Your Grandfather's SAM

Over the past two years, we have commented repeatedly on the enormous impact on education caused by various pandemic mitigation measures. School closures, lost socialization, and poorly executed remote instruction have disrupted learning progress for millions of students. Remediating the resulting shortfalls is likely to remain the major focus of K-12 public-school spending for years […]

Founder's Five: Matthew Pittinsky, Parchment

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Matthew Pittinsky invested in Parchment in 2011 to solve problems he first experienced as a co-founder of Blackboard. Matt […]

Founder's Five: Tom Davidson, EVERFI

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Tom Davidson co-founded EVERFI in 2008 with the belief that all students deserve to have equal access to critical […]

Founder's Five: Rachel Romer Carlson, Guild Education

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Rachel founded Guild in 2015 based on a belief that there had to be a better way to connect […]

Founder's Five: Gregg Scoresby, CampusLogic

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions. Gregg launched CampusLogic in 2011 (his third start-up,) with the goal of transforming student financial aid from a series […]

Upskilling and Reskilling in an Uncertain Labor Market: A Strategic Response

Economic uncertainty has led some experts to warn that the hot job market may soon cool. However, the jury is still out as several bearish indicators (from the perspective of employees, who are at a job marketplace disadvantage should there be a recession and the labor market cools) are counterbalanced by those that are more […]

Building a Strategic Institution vs. a Strategic Plan that Sits on a Shelf

More times than we can count, we have heard university leaders say, “We don’t want to build a strategic plan that just sits on the shelf.” This sentiment underscores what has been a perennial weakness to the strategic planning process – lots of work goes into producing a document that contains aspirational statements and goals […]

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

As we exit the pandemic, workforce reskilling and upskilling sectors continue to see strong interest. Rapid dislocations in the labor market fueled by everything from emergent technologies to supply chain disruptions have created demand for skills instruction among both consumers and employers that is inspiring rapid innovation in both corporate and consumer training. For all […]

Tyton K-12 Spotlight: SEL Panel & New Research on Enhancing the Teacher Experience

As the first year of “back-to-school” learning draws to a close, we want to take the opportunity to highlight some of the work our team’s been focused on in K-12. One of the aspects we love about this job is serving as a conduit for parents, educators, businesses and thought leaders, bringing their perspectives to […]

Improving Instructional Resources to Enhance the Teacher Experience

There is a crisis in U.S. schools: Teachers, the most important ingredient in a child’s learning,1 are demoralized. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, one in six K-12 teachers reported that they were likely to leave the profession. During the pandemic, this number increased to one in four.2 While many factors impact teachers’ experience and success in […]

Supplier Benchmarking Toolkit: A supplemental resource to Improving Instructional Resources to Enhance the Teacher Experience

There is a crisis in U.S. schools: Teachers, the most important ingredient in a child’s learning,1 are demoralized. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, one in six K-12 teachers reported that they were likely to leave the profession. During the pandemic, this number increased to one in four.2 There are many avenues to better support and […]

Three Impact Investing and Philanthropy Thoughts for Spring

At Tyton, we are now starting to think about the longer-term future in ways that we weren’t a year ago. And the next chapter for impact investment and venture philanthropy in our specialist areas of education and workforce looks fascinating and challenging.  A key reason for looking ahead is that we are moving “from pandemic […]

Tapping Untapped Talent

The downward pressure on the labor force due to demographics, the pandemic, and lower rates of participation continues to force employers to streamline hiring processes and relax job requirements. This pressure is especially acute in talent-starved industries like information technology. These dynamics have given rise to companies using skills-based training and assessments or fostering partnerships […]

More Investors Discover K-12

Investor interest in the education sector remains strong. While early indications for 2022 suggest that the power dynamic could be swinging back in the direction of buyers, macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty are not discouraging the volume of education deals coming to market.  Areas of greatest interest currently are not surprising and include early childhood and […]

Great Expectations: The Growing Prominence of Employment Pathways

Despite the occasional stalwart holdout, the consensus among most higher education stakeholders is that colleges must deliver a labor market return that justifies the rising cost of attendance and often the high degree of indebtedness incurred by students and their families. For more than 50 years, the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) has surveyed […]

Can Supplemental Academic Service Providers Bridge the Teacher Hiring Gap?

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused nationwide drops in K-12 academic benchmarks, with impacts on literacy rates perhaps being the most alarming indicator. Schools’ concerns about the lack of hands-on, in-person instruction, coupled with high levels of vacancies in teaching jobs have been covered broadly by the media. How schools are going to get students back […]

Where is the Textbook Revolution this Dad was Promised?

Across the last few years, the market for instruction materials in higher education has undergone a realignment of epic proportions. Widespread outrage over materials costs has caused publishers to introduce new, lower pricing models, led professors to explore free resources, sometimes funded by philanthropic projects, and forced many students to forgo textbooks altogether.   The net […]

The Landscape Shifts: HMHC Goes Private

Even as mask mandates fall away, we continue to see the lingering effects of the pandemic in all areas of the education market. New priorities for institutions and a new sense of agency on the part of parents and learners are reshaping old markets and creating new ones and we continue to see these themes […]

Labor Shortage - The Tipping Point for Skills Over Credentials?

Like the acceptance of online learning in post-secondary and K-12, the pandemic may also be a tipping point for employers hiring based on the candidate demonstrating the actual skills needed for a role, rather than broader credentials such as college degrees.  Nicholas Java The U.S. labor force participation has declined by millions since the beginning […]

The K-12 Institutional Tutoring Gold Rush of 21-22

As the K-12 institutional supplemental academic services market explodes in the wake of the pandemic and available federal stimulus funding, it recalls a similar period in the early 2000s tied to the No Child Left Behind (“NCLB”) Act. That window of opportunity didn’t quite materialize and persist as many had hoped. It is important to […]

A Time for Building

This month we highlight a shift we are beginning to see in the education deal market. Asset prices are facing pressure across the broader economy due in no small part to a stock market that may be anticipating an inevitable hike in interest rates. While this may begin to shift some leverage from sellers to […]

Building a Student-Centered Approach to Digital Learning

The 2020 emergency transition to remote learning and subsequent ubiquity of courses delivered online has students wanting to hold on to the best parts of the digital learning experience, including flexibility in where and when they learn. Faculty, having used a broad range of digital tools and approaches, want to hold on to the digital […]

Impact Investing in 2022 - A Look Ahead

We want to look to 2022 with hope. While the pandemic will continue, with a fair wind we will move from “epidemic” to “endemic” and we will start to get back to the in-person discussions, debates and human interaction that add so much enjoyment to our everyday, even as we continue to help clients grapple […]

Tyton Partners Releases Report Highlighting Digital Learning Recommendations

Today’s higher education system produces persistent gaps in student outcomes for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other historically minoritized and low-income students. When outcomes data are reviewed by race and income, the gaps are stark. Minoritized students are less likely to attend a postsecondary (two- or four-year) institution, and those who do are less likely to […]

Education Investing in 2021: The Reckoning

As pandemic-fueled demand drove education revenues and deal prices to record levels in the first year of the pandemic, key questions we were asked repeatedly by investors in both diligence and banking assignments were: Is the growth sustainable? Is the market demand for the products sustainable and will the current level of enthusiasm among investors […]

2021 Deal Highlights and a Look Ahead

A Record-Setting Year for the Tyton Partners Banking Practice Provides Strong Momentum and a Favorable Outlook for 2022 2021 proved to be another record year for Tyton Partners Capital Markets, with 20 deals completed across the PreK-12, Post-Secondary, and Corporate L&D global markets. The current near-term macroeconomic conditions remain favorable for M&A with robust deal volume, […]

Equity, Engagement, Emotional Learning to Drive the Year Ahead in K-12

As we enter 2022, we continue to think about trends across the K-12 ecosystem. What signals are temporary, and when are we witnessing a more permanent shift? The past two years have produced an influx of capital, but what happens once the dollars are allocated? These are questions we ask ourselves daily. Our team share […]

What Could Shape Higher Education Over the Next Twelve Months

With a second year of Covid under our belts and talk shifting from “pandemic” to “endemic,” it seems an opportune time to reflect on how some of the changes brought about by the virus may persist. Which altered practices are temporary, which are here to stay, and how should decision makers plan for a future […]

Survey: Parent Awareness and Economic Barriers Shaping the Future of Supplemental Learning Pods

Final report in Tyton Partners’ three-part series investigating the scale and scope of alternative education models concludes with an optimistic view of the future of SLPs As schools strive to achieve a “new normal” following the 2020-2021 academic school year conducted primarily remotely, the continued adoption of supplemental learning pods (SLPs) is impacted by whether […]

Finding Your Place 2021: Social Emotional Learning Takes Center Stage in K-12

As students return to a more traditional “brick and mortar” school setting following a year of learning in a predominantly remote setting, school leaders are confronted by the overwhelming impact of the pandemic on student mental health and well-being. Not surprisingly, many school districts have responded by placing increased attention on the value of social […]

Big Themes from ASU+GSV

Despite the challenges still associated with gathering in person, this year’s ASU+GSV Summit was a great success, allowing old friends to reunite and adding faces to names for new ones. We were pleased to have had a large presence at the conference, including participation in several panels, and were glad to have met with so […]

Survey: Parents Say Pandemic Learning Models to Remain into New School Year

Despite recent announcements that many of the nation’s largest school districts will return to fully in-person instruction for the 2021-2022 school year, almost half of parents say they won’t discontinue many of the remote and hybrid learning models adopted in response to pandemic-related school shutdowns. That is according to findings from the second publication in […]

Workforce in Flux: Racial Equity and the Workforce

The moral and economic imperative to close racial equity gaps is gaining warranted and newfound momentum across the workforce sector. If you attended JFF’s Horizons conference last week, you probably noticed the explicit focus on the intersection of racial equity and workforce issues weaved throughout the conference’s main sessions. Perspectives on how race factors into […]

Closing the Perception to Practice Gap Can Improve Equity Across Student Lifecycle

A family of reports from Tyton Partners examine how academic institutions can implement practices that increase equitable outcomes in higher education Tyton Partners has released the annual updates of Hitting their Stride, Time for Class, and Driving Toward a Degree which collectively examine the evolving gap existing between the perception and practice of equity¹ across […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2021: Caseload, Coordination, Student Engagement, and Equity

Driving Toward a Degree is a research collaborative for increasing student success across the higher education landscape. Since 2016, data has been collected and analyzed via longitudinal primary research to understand the state of institutional practices and technology adoption that facilitate holistic student support. The goal is to offer insights to help institutions evolve their […]

Time for Class 2021: The State of Digital Learning and Courseware Adoption

Since 2014, Tyton Partners has monitored the dynamics of the higher education digital learning and courseware market with the goals of understanding the needs of institutions, instructors, and students and investigating how suppliers are evolving to meet those needs. This 2021 summary provides an updated view on how the pandemic has altered the landscape of […]

Hitting Their Stride 2021: Equity, Outcomes, and the Impact of COVID

The decline in Fall 2020 higher education enrollments—especially at community colleges— has been well reported.¹ However, the impact of higher drop, fail, and withdrawal (DFW) rates among enrolled students and the increased need for learning recovery are just now becoming apparent. Results from the 2021 Hitting Their Stride (HTS) survey add to the understanding of […]

Survey: Parents and Caregivers Increasing Agency Over K-12 Schooling Choices

Tyton Partners releases “School Disrupted,” a three-part series investigating the scale and scope of alternative education models and the future state of K-12 in the wake of COVID-19 Parent agency increased dramatically as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country during the last year. Without notice, households were forced to change behavior, schools to transform […]

The LXP Market Emerges

LXPs are more than a fad. They represent an investible EdTech category that is quickly becoming central to corporations' efforts to upskill and reskill employees.

The New Gold Standard in EdTech Investing

As we enter the second quarter, it seems increasingly clear that the pace of deal activity established in the second half of 2020 is likely to continue through 2021.

Beyond the Noise: Is the SNHU-Kenzie deal the new “new thing”?

The higher education landscape is shifting in big and small ways.  On the one hand, the pandemic...

Workforce in Flux: Outcomes-driven training takes off

Outcomes-driven training is an old idea, but one with newfound momentum as investors, workforce intermediaries, government agencies...

The Year in Review – A Tale of Two Pandemics

Even as we sprint into a new year, this month we take a quick look back at the year that was in the education investment landscape. While much of the investment activity volume took the form of debt to support businesses through the pandemic, enthusiasm and interest in the sector remained strong. And, with considerable […]

Making the Grade: The State of K-12 Funding – Is There Enough?

Last Wednesday, Joe Biden was sworn in as our 46th President. Discussions immediately centered on what the new administration would do to carry the nation to the other side of the crisis. His response was swift: a massive $1.9 trillion proposal that highlights direct aid to American institutions – among those, K-12 education, which has […]

Beyond the Noise: COVID-19's Impact on Course Completion Rates Will Widen Equity Gaps

This month, we share new insights from our ongoing series of faculty surveys regarding the impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning in higher education.  Nearly a year into the global pandemic that has forced higher education to rethink and shift how instruction is delivered, faculty – especially those teaching introductory-level courses – are […]

Time for Class COVID-19 Edition Part 3: The Impact of 2020 on Introductory Faculty and Their Students

This past fall, higher education faculty across the country, after having worked throughout the summer to rebuild and redesign courses, showed up to “keep teaching” for their students, primarily in hybrid, highly-flexible and online courses. As we close in on the one-year mark of the pandemic, 852 faculty teaching introductory courses are calling for urgent […]

Tyton Partners View: The White-Hot Market for Alternative Credentials

This month we highlight the alternative credential market, which has experienced accelerated growth during the pandemic as consumers have sought everything from self-edification to labor market reskilling. Over the past several years in both our consulting and banking practices, Tyton Partners has been at the heart of the development of this emergent phenomenon in a variety […]

Beyond the Noise: The Rise of Alternative Credentials

This month, we share our perspectives on the growing market for alternative credentials and consider the role specifically for higher education institutions. The demand for faster, cheaper pathways to employment creates enormous opportunities for colleges and universities, but these opportunities also raise significant questions. Understanding where these programs properly fit, whether adjacent to or inside […]

Making the Grade: The State of the Sector Heading into a New Administration

It is speculation season as we navigate the transition from one presidential administration to another, with the added wrinkle of the as-yet undecided composition of the U.S. Senate. While a great deal of press coverage has been devoted to policy predictions, only a handful have addressed implications for those providing products and services to schools […]

Assessing the Impact: Looking Forward and Back

As this tumultuous year of 2020 draws to a close, we have been reflecting on the events of the past year and what 2021 brings for impact investing in education and the future of work. Looking back, we are encouraged by the role impact investors played, whether in nurturing grantees and investees through this difficult […]

Beyond the Noise: Is Higher Ed Countercyclical or Not?

In September we announced the addition of two highly respected higher education executives, Greg Finkelstein and Michael Goldstein, to the Tyton Partners team in conjunction with the launch of a new initiative aimed at providing a greater range of services to colleges and universities. The Center for Higher Education Transformation is an initiative of the […]

Tyton Partners View: October 2020 Education Deals

In September we announced the addition of two highly respected higher education executives, Greg Finkelstein and Michael Goldstein, to the Tyton Partners team in conjunction with the launch of a new initiative aimed at providing a greater range of services to colleges and universities. The Center for Higher Education Transformation is a joint offering between […]

Making the Grade: Professional Learning to Support our Educators During Remote Learning

The first day of school looked starkly different this year for teachers and students nationwide. As districts continue to face uncertainty around how and where learning will happen, teachers are doing their best to engage students and deliver high-quality educational experiences. As teachers are stretched ever further by rising expectations, all stakeholders, from parents to […]

Tyton Partners View: September 2020 Education Deals

With most students from K-20 still predominantly remote, this month we decided to focus on the hottest “learning” platform in education – Zoom. More specifically, we wonder to what extent the eponymous platform can become a durable presence in the market beyond this Covid period. It is a question we know many of you are […]

Beyond the Noise: Is the Board Serious?

Like you, we have had a busy start to the proverbial new academic year.  Our clients, colleagues, and friends throughout higher education are working harder than ever to navigate this most uncommon back-to-school transition.  A few noteworthy items from us: On September 23rd, we announced the launch of the Center for Higher Education Transformation. The […]

Time For Class COVID-19 Edition Part 2

This summer, college and university faculty across the country planned for a fall like no other. After the rapid and unprecedented movement to emergency remote teaching this spring, faculty were collectively exhausted. Yet they started to prepare for a fall that they expected to include a combination of online and hybrid modalities while awaiting guidance […]

2020 Career Navigation Technology Market Scan

The continuing economic crisis of 2020 revealed some bare truths that persisted even before COVID:  21st century workers, especially lower and middle skilled, will need to navigate career paths more defined by variety and near-constant change than consistency. Building a stable, sustainable working life across the many jobs and industries that make up a contemporary […]

The Emerging Technology Skills Attainment Ecosystem

Over the past several years, our firm has developed a significant amount of expertise and ecosystem insight around alternative credential and bootcamp programs, corporate/professional training, digital skills talent acquisition, and the broader workforce development sectors. The COVID situation has accelerated the adoption of models with high student/employer ROI and clear line-of-sight to an employment or […]

Making the Grade: A Potentially Transformative K-12 Back-to-School Season

With the return to school upon us, the K-12 community still has more questions than answers. Rather than subside, many challenges related to teaching and learning have intensified and rather than align, many key stakeholders – and priorities – have clashed. Underneath all the noise and frustration is a universal truth: all children need and […]

Tyton Partners View: August 2020 Education Deals

With summer now behind us, it is a deal-closing sprint to the calendar end of this most unusual year. Through all the tumult, the markets have remained active. More than 50 M&A and investment deals were announced August, led by Cambium Learning’s nearly $800 million acquisition of Rosetta Stone; an additional dozen deals had equity […]

Beyond the Noise: Equity-minded Learning Analytics

As we begin a fall term unlike any before (and hopefully unlike any again) we wish you a safe and smooth start to the academic year. If we can be helpful in any way, please do not hesitate to reach out.  This month, we are focusing our newsletter on equity in higher education. The combination […]

Assessing the Impact: Trends and Transactions Where Mission Meets Margin

Tyton Partners has been deeply involved in the global education and training ecosystems for many years, frequently operating at the intersection of mission-driven private capital and philanthropy. While education has not been as top-of-mind for impact investors, family offices and foundations as other sectors, it is now becoming increasingly prominent. The pandemic and the movement […]

Workforce in Flux: A New Normal with Emerging Opportunity

In May, we detailed a few of the open questions relating to the impact of COVID-19 that we knew would be relevant for our workforce and corporate training networks. This month we’re back with updated views on those same questions, based on fresh data and several months of dialogue with companies and organizations on the […]

Beyond the Noise: University of Arizona Steps into the Ring

As higher education experiences a summer unlike any other, we wish you all a smooth start to the upcoming term. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be helpful as you manage and implement change. We are devoting the bulk of our newsletter this month to the dramatic announcement from the University […]

Time For Class 2020 Resource Collection

Since 2015, Tyton Partners has tracked the state of higher education digital learning,  courseware and digital adoption via Time for Class, the largest longitudinal study of faculty and administrators focused on digital learning strategy, tools, and practice. Our 2020 release is designed for institutions and includes a series of short research briefs on targeted topics […]

Making the Grade: Parents' Perspective on the State of K-12 Learning

In the past two weeks, the debate over K-12 schools reopening has captured the nation’s attention. The current administration has made its position clear – schools should prepare to fully reopen this fall – and is introducing plans to incentivize this outcome with a Republican-sponsored stimulus package. Fundamentally, K-12 learning is in a tenuous state. […]

Hitting their Stride 2020: Developmental Education Reform Current State

The 2020 Hitting Their Stride (HTS) survey reveals growing adoption and awareness of proven developmental reforms as well as many faculty and administrators describing changes underway on campus. However, despite these positive reports, the perceived levels of change and implementation do not always align with on-the-ground reality. To get past the critical tipping point from […]

Finding Your Place: The Current State of K-12 Social Emotional Learning

As schools and districts plan for a return to school in the fall of 2020, social emotional learning has a critical role to play in helping students cope with the trauma of the past few months and overcome the learning loss that occurred in the spring.  Over the past year,  Tyton Partners has been working […]

Time For Class COVID-19 Edition Part 1

This spring, higher education institutions engaged in a rapid and unprecedented movement to remote teaching and learning that exposed a new cohort of faculty with no prior experience teaching online to the use of digital learning tools and techniques. Counter to the prevailing sentiment in the popular press, this transition left many faculty with a […]

Making the Grade: Update from Teachers on Spring 2020 and a Look Ahead

Back in April, we shared early insights from teachers as to how they and their students were contending with the abrupt transition to remote learning. As an historic school year draws to a close, we wanted to check back on teachers’ spring experience and their perspective on their community’s plans for the 2020-2021 academic year. […]

Beyond the Noise: Debriefing the Great Transition to Remote Learning

In this newsletter, Tyton Partners is pleased to share early insights from a national survey of faculty regarding the key challenges they and their students faced this spring as they undertook a rapid transition to remote learning. The preliminary findings paint a picture of a sometimes disorganized response to a pandemic that exacerbated underlying inequities […]

Making the Grade: The K-12 Supplier Perspective

Building on our previous outreach to parents, K-12 teachers, and early childhood educators, we solicited feedback from K-12 executives to better understand how they have steered their organizations though the current challenges and the initiatives they have implemented to ensure continued service to districts, educators, and students. We have highlighted selected findings below; more detailed […]

Beyond the Noise: Uber-uncertainty

The current coronavirus pandemic has created a series of specific and difficult challenges for higher education. Through its advisory practices, Tyton Partners is committed to helping institutions navigate the short and long-term ramifications of these challenges. To that end, this months’ newsletter marks the start of a new cadence for us and over the coming […]

Making the Grade: The K-12 Funding Conundrum

One of the questions we hear most often talking to K-12 stakeholders these days is, “What will happen to K-12 budgets?” As you know, this one simple question masks an incredibly complex set of conditions and criteria that must be parsed to be able to answer it credibly at the federal level, let alone at […]

Making the Grade: Early Childhood Education Operating Realities and Perspectives in the Current Crisis

We hope you had a pleasant weekend and a productive start to the week. Today, we offer perspective on the early childhood education community, including insights drawn from a pulse survey of ECE leaders and teachers conducted late last week. Building on our previous surveys distributed to parents and K-12 teachers, we solicited feedback from […]

College Parents Weigh in on Fall Enrollment

While the severity of this crisis cannot be underestimated, we are inspired by how organizations are shifting their stance from “managing through” to “managing out of” the crisis.  In that spirit, we have three items to highlight in this week’s newsletter: A Summary of Higher Ed Suppliers’ Actions – The first is a refreshed link […]

Making the Grade: Teacher Perspective on the State of K-12 Remote Learning

Last week we shared initial perspectives on where we believe the K-12 sector may be headed in the near term. This week we offer insights drawn from teachers who are working to support their students in remote learning environments. Building on our survey to parents last month, this past week we surveyed PreK-12 educators nationwide […]

Making the Grade: Early Thoughts on Where the K-12 Sector Is Headed

Last week we shared data from a pulse survey of parents of PreK-12 students across the U.S. to better understand the current state of their children’s remote learning experience. We hope you found it valuable and we plan to check in with parents again shortly. As we continue to track activity across the ecosystem, we […]

How the Higher Education Supplier Community is Responding to COVID-19

We hope this note finds you and your family safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. We also hope that your communities – both personal and professional – have proved helpful in navigating the current transitions. It is in that spirit of community that we are reaching out to you and our higher education networks. […]

K-12 Parents' Perspective & CARES Act Update: How the K-12 Community Is Responding

Since our note last week, conditions in the K-12 community continue to shift on a nearly daily basis. Eight states have now announced school closures for the entire academic year with most others closed at least through April, if not longer. For many, the specter of a fully remote spring semester is a growing reality. […]

Initial Updates: How the K-12 Community Is Responding to Covid-19

We hope this note finds you and your family safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. We also hope that your communities – both personal and professional – have proved helpful in navigating the current transitions. It is in that spirit of community that we are reaching out to you and our K-12 networks. For […]

Tyton Partners Investment Banking – 2019 Highlights & 2020 Predictions

After a strong end to 2019, which included several high-profile transactions and a continued investment in building our practice in Europe and China, we enter 2020 with 9 active deals under LOI, and a dozen new mandates to kick off the new year. This is complemented by a pipeline that remains robust notwithstanding the uncertainty […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - 2019 Year in Review

Happy new year and hope you have had a wonderful start to the 20’s. After tracking more than 350 deals in the education sector in 2019, we thought we’d take you for a quick spin highlighting the year’s key investment dynamics and deal volume. And, we offer perspective into what we see as continued areas […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - December 2019

The sprint between Thanksgiving and 2019 year-end is officially on, and with it, companies and investors striving to get those last 2019 deals done. We hope to have a few of our own announced shortly and look forward to sharing more in the new year as we embark on a number of new sell-side mandates. […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - November 2019

As we bear down on the holidays, we find the sector particularly active on the deal front, with a number of compelling platforms in or coming to market. We expect many of you remain busy and hope that you will be able to carve out time for turkey later this month. Early last month, we […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - October 2019

Hope you have had a good transition into Fall. As we review the September deals, the lighter volume of activity is offset by both the size and strategic dynamism of those investments announced. Perhaps most notable, student-centered edtech darling Chegg continued its evolution by jumping fulling into the education delivery market via its acquisition of […]

Hitting Their Stride: The Next Chapter of Developmental Education Reform

Developmental education has long been a critical issue in higher education. Historical approaches required students to take a multi-semester sequence of non-credit-bearing courses. The year or more spent in developmental education left many students discouraged and financially strapped. Those who dropped out left with high levels of debt and no college credit to show for […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - September 2019

Hope you had a wonderful end to the summer and are well prepared for the mad dash to the end of the year. August was a somewhat quiet month, punctuated by a few notable deals including Cambium Learning’s acquisition of AIR’s K-12 testing business, Coursera’s first acquisition to bring more robust pedagogy to its evolving […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - August 2019

One of the most notable events across the past month occurred in the waning days of July as 2U experienced a significant decline in its stock price coming out of its earnings call. As we highlight below, while the headlines may have appeared grim, the underlying story is one that should reassure investors of the […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - July 2019

Bernie and Liz Aren’t the Only Ones Tackling Student Finance The predicament facing higher education is well chronicled: its costs continue to rise ahead of inflation and well ahead of direct government subsidies, forcing tuition prices higher even as its student population grows more diverse, less affluent, and less able to pay full price, without […]

Sector Deal Dynamics – June 2019

Educational publishing is a sector roiled by change. Last month’s head-turning announcement of the planned merger of McGraw-Hill Education and Cengage Learning was yet another stark reminder that the emergence of digital technology is continuing to lower barriers to entry in the educational content market, creating the same types of pressures on entrenched players and […]

Tyton Partners Releases Time for Class Toolkit to Guide Higher Education Professionals in the Expansion of High Quality Digital Learning

Source: Press Release BOSTON, MA (May 21, 2019) – Tyton Partners has released the Time for Class Toolkit, a set of research-based briefs designed to support institutional dialogue, decision-making and action around instructional practices and digital learning tools, especially adaptive courseware. The kit was built using data from Time for Class, a national longitudinal survey […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - May 2019

Deal news this month reflects a phenomenon that we have been tracking for some time – an accelerating level of activity in the online program management (OPM) sector. Of course, 2U’s $750 million acquisition of Trilogy represents the most dazzling example. But Zovio’s purchase of Fullstack in April and TutorMe this month, Red Venture’s purchase […]

Online: Constructive or Destructive?

Much discussion of late has been focused on the place and practice of online education among traditional institutions. Earlier this year, in the pages of The New York Times, University of Michigan professor and public policy analyst Dr. Sue Dynarski highlighted research suggesting that fully online programs do a particular disservice to the neediest students. […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - April 2019

This month Tyton Banking had the privilege of advising Fullstack Academy in its sale to Bridgepoint Education for $17.5 million in cash and 2.5 million shares of common stock. Fullstack offers remote and in-person career training programs to consumers focused on software engineering, and recently partnered with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to launch coding bootcamps for […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2019: The Evolution of Student Supports in Higher Education

This report follows Tyton Partners’ 2015 two-part series Driving Toward a Degree: The Evolution of Planning and Advising in Higher Education, the 2016 publication Driving Toward a Degree: Establishing a Baseline on Integrated Approaches to Planning and Advising, and the 2017 publication Driving Toward a Degree: The Evolution of Academic Advising in Higher Education. 2019’s publication titled, Driving Toward […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - March 2019

February education transactions underscore traditional university’s desire for comprehensive solutions, suggesting further consolidation of the technology-based services landscape. Meanwhile, Private Equity demonstrates continued interest in subscription-based administrative software. Rapid change in the employment market continues to drive deal counts and grow ties between education offerings and employment services. We hope these observations provide insights into […]

Sector Deal Dynamics - February 2019

For this monthly deal round-up we took a look at knowledge services metrics from 2018. In the data we see evidence of a robust, vibrant, and perhaps most importantly, stable market. Venture and M&A deals are taking place in fairly equal quantities — suggesting steady maturation of winning approaches into sustainable businesses — and across […]

On the Radar: Honing in on Collaboration for Holistic Student Supports

The Bottom Line Years ago, siloed student supports were the standard, while holistic student supports were merely a blip on the higher education radar. Today, increasing numbers of institutions are aiming to achieve integration across supports to serve the whole student. Drawing from our 2018 Driving Towards a Degree survey that reached over 3,300 administrators, […]

Updated Courseware in Context (CWiC) Framework Launches with New Guide to Courseware Adoption and Refined Accessibility Attributes and Quality Indicators

BOSTON, MA (Sep 19, 2018) – An update to the Courseware in Context (CWiC) Framework was released today. The CWiC Framework is an open, field-owned suite of resources designed to help postsecondary decision makers make informed selections of digital courseware products, and support effective adoption and implementation of these solutions. It was developed and initially […]

A State Approach to Bridging the Gap in Early Childhood Education

The Bottom Line By kindergarten, 90% of a child’s brain capacity develops, yet per pupil funding for public Pre-K programs is just over a third of funding available in K-12.  The outcome is often limited access and participation in early childhood education (ECE) programs and unmet curriculum and educator professional development (PD) needs. Ultimately states […]

The Cinderella Story of Online Learning in Higher Education

The Bottom Line In the fading glow of March Madness, we turn our attention to another kind of Cinderella story: the untold impact of online courses (versus online programs) on enrollment growth and more importantly completion rates for colleges and universities.  There are now more than three million students enrolled in at least one online […]

Who's the next winner in the shifting K-12 curriculum market?

The Bottom Line Poorly understood shifts in basal textbook spending, particularly in hard-to-track open territory states, have created confusion among large publishers and their investors as the market has become less predictable. And the shift to digital, which was once thought to represent a financial boon to the leading publishers, has instead created openings for […]

ACCESS DENIED: Why Courseware Accessibility Remains a Challenge

THE BOTTOM LINE Remember when UC Berkeley began pulling down public access to more than 20,000 videos, podcasts and other instructional materials from YouTube, iTunes and the university’s website? It has been almost a year since the university, in response to a DOJ order, began removing all content that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. […]

2018 Tyton Global Growth 50

Tyton Partners has officially launched the 2018 Tyton Global Growth50, a recognition of dynamic growth-stage companies across all markets in the global education sector. In a space enamored with new, the Tyton Global Growth50 celebrates sustainability. The list recognizes the top 50 organizations achieving impact at scale through a combination of strong financial performance, market […]

What does the WGU audit mean for adult learners?

The Bottom Line As we head to Philadelphia for EDUCAUSE this week, we’re struck by the symbol of the Liberty Bell as we contemplate the fractured state of higher education’s service to the adult learner.  The recent OIG findings threaten to dismantle the progress WGU has made in scaling an education model that is achieving […]

Closing the Employment Opportunity Gap: An Innovative Approach

The Bottom Line Barriers to entering or advancing in the United States labor market have created economic insecurity for millions of Americans. This population, many of whom are women, minorities, and immigrants, often lack the skills and opportunities to find meaningful and / or sustained employment. They struggle with acquiring the level of training or […]

The Employment Technology Fund

An Innovative Approach to Closing the Employment Opportunity Gap The Employment Technology Fund (“ETF” or the “Fund”) is an innovative impact investing initiative of the New Venture Fund (“NVF”), made possible with funding from these leading foundations – The JoyceFoundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walmart Foundation. ETF’s purpose is to invest […]

The Swiss Army Knives of Student Success Technology

Bottom Line In search of the Swiss Army knife – the technology product that does everything well – institutions have struggled to realize the promise of an integrated technology solution that dramatically improves academic advising. Drawing largely from a 2017 survey that reached over 2,200 administrators and advisors across 1,400 institutions, as well as interviews […]

Will the Office of Federal Student Aid Find Opportunity Amidst the Loan Crisis?

Bottom Line In late June, Arthur Wayne Johnson was appointed as head of the Office of Federal Student Aid at the US DOE. Challenges abound for Johnson with 750,000 college-bound high school seniors failing to submit the FAFSA despite being eligible for aid and nearly 3 million students abandoning their postsecondary education due to financial […]

Alternative Pathways: Are They Set Up for Success?

The Bottom Line A rapidly expanding collection of companies and organizations are operating and launching Alternative Pathways programs to accelerate individuals’ economic and employment mobility. While drawing on elements of more traditional education-to-employment programs, Alternative Pathways programs (APPs) explicitly prepare participants for validated, in-demand workforce opportunities, often in a much shorter timeframe, and sometimes at a […]

Finding a Fit: The Evolution of Student-Centered Financial Aid

A publication focusing on identifying challenges and emerging solutions related to technology in the U.S. financial aid system. Challenges and complexities within the financial aid process have a significant impact on students’ ability to pay for and complete school. Nearly 3 million students drop out every year for reasons related to finances.  Beginning in 2016, […]

Time for Class 2017

The Time for Class series was first published in 2015 to share findings from Tyton Partners’ 2014 surveys of over 2,700 postsecondary faculty and administrators on their use and perceptions of digital courseware.  This paper is an update to the Time for Class series and includes findings from two fall 2016 surveys of a national […]

Path to Employment: Maximizing the Impact of Alternative Pathways Programs

A two-part publication highlighting how alternative pathways programs can accelerate employment prospects for low-income adults In the latter half of 2016, Tyton Partners conducted national research on behalf of The James Irvine Foundation regarding innovative education-to-employment opportunities for low-income adults. The goal of this initiative was to better understand the emerging ecosystem of Alternative Pathways […]

Purdue Acquires Kaplan: An Inconvenient Truth About Academic Efficiency

The Bottom Line Purdue’s acquisition of Kaplan University has been the subject of much debate. Punditry aside, a look at the data offers a different perspective on the rationale for the combination: academic efficiency. Kaplan University’s online instructional delivery and related student support spending is nearly 4.5x lower than Purdue’s. Sure, graduation rates are lower, […]

Is Digital Learning Delivering?

The Bottom Line The impact and efficacy of digital learning is being vigorously debated.  The challenge is that digital learning is used to support a range of strategic priorities across postsecondary institutions.  Administrators report that its greatest impact is on improving scheduling flexibility and access for students.  When executed well, this enables higher graduation rates. […]

What Strategies Will Help Your Company Scale the Peak?

The Bottom Line The assessment and curriculum markets have each experienced less than 5% CAGR since 2013. However, an emerging set of integrated offerings – those that tightly embed assessment within curricular offerings – have grown at 5x that rate. Are you playing in the right segment of the market? Traditional assessment providers are struggling […]

Does Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand is Doing?

Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing? The number of campus stakeholders involved in academic advising is growing — making efforts more holistic, but more complicated. Are advising stakeholders on the same page at your institution? Trying to figure out how best to improve student outcomes at your institution? If you’re […]

Market Update- Q1 2017 Skills Training Bootcamp

BOOTCAMPS ATTRACTING INVESTORS AND STRATEGIC ACQUIRERS Skills training bootcamps have seen explosive growth, driven by compelling employment outcomes and a high student return-on-investment. The success of this innovative model has drawn the interest of capital providers, strategic acquirers, private lenders, and the Department of Education. We expect continued growth, but also anticipate the competitive landscape […]

Balancing the Equation in Employment Technology

The Bottom Line The millions of dollars invested in technology solutions to help U.S. adults find and sustain employment disproportionately favor those targeted at high-skilled, white-collar opportunities, but this may change. Why? The Employment Technology Equation Tyton Partners’ analysis of the employment technology landscape, informed by a comprehensive review of more than 500 suppliers active […]

Impact at Scale: The 2016 Tyton Growth50 Winners

We are excited to announce the 2016 Tyton Growth50, which recognizes the top 50 organizations achieving impact at scale. Our effort with this initiative is to highlight dynamic companies that have pushed beyond the start-up phase and offer insight into what is required to sustain and extend market success across the education sector. In reflecting […]

Let the Games Begin!

THE BOTTOM LINE Tyton Partners analysis indicates that this year’s game-based learning investments will grow by more than 20% over last year. What is game-based learning, and what investment potential does it offer?   INVESTORS ARE PLAYING GAMES Since 2013, more than 300 investment deals with an estimated value of $3.5 billion involved companies that […]

Stalled on Student Success

The Bottom Line Institutions find themselves in one of four categories on the road to achieving an ideal advising situation for their students. Where is your institution on this road? Institutions Face Several Barriers on the Road to Ideal Advising Tyton Partners recently conducted its first annual postsecondary planning and advising survey of more than 1,400 administrators, faculty, […]

Catching Up With the Class of 2015: Q&A with BloomBoard CEO Jason Lange

Tyton Partners has officially launched the second annual Tyton Growth50, an annual recognition of dynamic growth-stage companies across all markets in the education sector. In a space enamored with new, the Tyton Growth50 celebrates sustainability. The list recognizes the top 50 organizations achieving impact at scale through a combination of strong financial performance, market penetration, […]

Breaking the Adaptive Learning Black Box

The Bottom Line Adaptive teaching is breaking the black box of adaptive learning. What is it and why does it matter? Beyond the Black Box – Adaptive Teaching Tyton Partners’ long-standing evaluation of adaptive learning models and adoption dynamics in higher education has revealed many gaps and opportunities. One critical evolution in the space has […]

The 2016 Tyton Growth50

Tyton Partners has officially launched the second annual Tyton Growth50, an annual recognition of dynamic growth-stage companies across all markets in the education sector. In a space enamored with new, the Tyton Growth50 celebrates sustainability. The list recognizes the top 50 organizations achieving impact at scale through a combination of strong financial performance, market penetration, […]

Learning to Adapt 2.0: The Evolution of Adaptive Learning in Higher Education

Over the past four years, adaptive learning has gone from an ill-defined concept in postsecondary education to an important category of teaching and learning technology. Definitions of adaptive learning have been proposed and rejected, with the term often dismissed as “marketing-speak” among skeptical buyers. Despite the confusion surrounding this technology, a promising road lies ahead […]

The Tyton Growth50: Catching Up with the Class of 2015

What does it take to go from start-up to scale in the education sector? In 2015, Tyton Partners launched the Tyton Growth50, an annual recognition of dynamic growth-stage companies across all markets in the education sector. In March 2016, we had the chance to sit down with leaders from three of those inaugural winners during our […]

Not Your Grandfather’s Career Services

The Bottom Line Tyton Partners’ tracking of postsecondary education investment deals highlighted an attractive category for the investor community in 2015: career services. By our count, companies supporting individuals’ transition from education to the workforce received the highest number of investments. What’s the common thread investors are looking for? Each year, Tyton Partners tracks equity investments […]

The Tip of the Iceberg in Adult Education

The Bottom Line Companies and investors are always searching for a blue ocean in the education sector. Why aren’t any of them diving in here? Beneath the Surface of the Adult Education Opportunity Tyton Partners’ analysis of the adult education ecosystem, informed by a national survey of more than 1,000 program administrators and instructors, reveals […]

Signaling Student Experience and Accomplishment

The methods for signaling individuals’ capabilities and competencies are rapidly changing, even as little consensus exists about the value and validation of these alternative methods. In one area, however, leaders from the postsecondary and workforce community do agree – student transcripts do not convey the information and insight they should for students or employers. As postsecondary institutions […]

Learning for Life: The Opportunity for Technology to Transform Adult Education

A two-part publication series on instructional technologies within adult education The number of US adults lacking basic skills in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and digital literacy is substantial – nearly one in six US adults maintains low literacy skills, while nearly one in three possesses low numeracy skills – and the consequences are debilitating. […]

Driving Toward a Degree 2015: The Evolution of Planning and Advising in Higher Education

A confluence of factors, including a shift to performance-based funding and declining student enrollment, has led to an increased focus on student retention and on-time graduation at postsecondary institutions. In response, over 100 vendors in the integrated planning and advising services market have introduced products aimed at improving student retention and graduation rates. These product […]

Help Tyton Partners and Select Growth50 Companies Go to SXSWedu 2016!

As the education sector continues to grow, businesses are learning how to transition from start-up to scale, preserving the integrity of their mission while achieving broad-based awareness and financial stability. Building on our Growth50 initiative, Tyton Partners is excited to have assembled a diverse panel of edtech entrepreneurs to host a panel discussion at SXSWedu […]

Do you have an Adaptive Learning Product?

Adaptive learning continues to evolve. Is this evolution leading to more adoption and improved outcomes? Tyton Partners is working in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Post Secondary Success team to, better understand the market for adaptive learning technologies for higher education. Our goal is to disseminate findings broadly to the field with […]

Planning and Advising Provider Landscape

Through our research with 20+ institutions and 120+ companies supporting institutions around student success and retention, we have identified 9 product categories that institutions can employ for planning and advising.  The graphic below shows a subset of 40+ companies that are at various stages of maturity but have demonstrated product breadth with an offering in at […]

Atoms, Elements and A Scaling Framework

The world doesn’t need another list, right? Wrong, or at least that’s what we thought when the Tyton Growth50 was hatched earlier this year. Based on the early engagement and reaction we’ve had with folks in the field, our instincts were correct. The education sector did need another list, but one focused on those organizations […]

Time for Class: Lessons for the Future of Digital Courseware in Higher Education

A three-part publication series on digital courseware in higher education Pressure is mounting in the postsecondary education ecosystem to improve the quality of teaching and learning, while increasing accessibility and affordability for students. It is widely accepted that educational outcomes are better when instruction is personalized to students’ needs and objectives and effective personalized learning […]

The Tyton Growth50: Our Inaugural List of the Most Important Growth-Stage Companies in Education

The education sector – stretching from early childhood through to corporate, professional and life-long learning – is in the midst of an epic period of investment activity and national discussion. A steady stream of tenacious entrepreneurs and emergent product and service models are pushing up against long-standing practices and institutional systems. Driving and achieving scale […]

Is Your Institution Ready to Pursue Integrated Academic Planning and Student Advising?

U.S. post-secondary institutions spend over $1 billion annually on academic planning and advising and, despite this, on-time student graduation rates and freshman retention rates have not improved over the last 10 years. It is safe to say that the current approaches of most institutions are not working and yet identifying and implementing improved practices is […]

Lynda.com Teaches Patience

Patience is a virtue when it comes to investing in education.  Lynda.com’s sale to LinkedIn for $1.5B is the latest in an increasingly long line of large transactions in the education market.  About this time last year, Renaissance Learning was acquired for $1.1B.  Two unicorns inside of twelve months.  In education.  Unbelievable. Some are concerned about valuations […]

Evidence of Learning: Understanding the Supplier Ecosystem

In the past several years, record amounts of investment capital have financed new companies serving – and targeting – US colleges and universities. These efforts often seek to enhance or shift established practices and processes, injecting innovative models and ideas into the existing postsecondary landscape. Across the Evidence of Learning framework, the diversity of stakeholders […]

Evidence of Learning: The Case for an Integrated Competency Management System

A shift in expectations is occurring among core postsecondary education stakeholders – students, employers, and institutional administrators and faculty – regarding the “evidence of learning” required in today’s world and its effective validation and presentation. The ability of individuals to present their evidence of learning should be a hallmark of our society’s increasing orientation toward […]

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