This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 1/21/22 - podcast episode cover

This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 1/21/22

Jan 21, 202238 minSeason 1Ep. 12
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In this Week in Edtech, we cover:

1) Lawsuit Alleging Price-Fixing at Top Universities
- NY Times

2) Phil Hill's Coverage of the Shrinking Non-Profit University Ecosystem
- Phil on Edtech

3) India cracks down on OPM providers in Higher Ed
- Times of India
- Economic Times

4) LEAD Becomes the First Indian Edtech Unicorn of 2022 with a $100m round
- The News Minute
- Techcrunch

5) Around the World
- US: GSV Elite 200 Edtech companies Released
- UK: MyTutor acquires coding platform Fire Tech
- Africa: Egyptian Edtech Orcas Raises Round$10M Future of Learning fund from Future Africa
- LATAM: Ubits raises $25m to create the Netflix of corporate training

6) Education Labor Force
- 74Million: Report shows that there is no 'big quit' in education, but specialized positions are still hard to fill

We also play a game of 'fill in the blank' with questions like "University Presidents should feel _________ given the barrage of negative recent headlines about legacy Higher Ed" and take questions live from the On Deck Ed Tech fellowship.

Transcript

Ben Kornell

Hi, everyone, welcome to This Week in ed tech for January 21 2022. It's been another big week for education in edtech. As we ramp into the 2022, Sprint,

Alexander Sarlin

as always, on this week in ed tech, we're gonna go through our big five headlines of the week, play a short game, and then we're going to do something a little different today, we actually have a special live in studio audience with the ondeck ed tech fellowship. It's an amazing group of Ed Tech insiders and leaders. So if you want to learn more about that it's at beyond deck.com. And you're gonna see here some questions from some great ed tech folks at the end of this episode.

Ben Kornell

But before we get started this week, we had Martin Luther King Day, and in honor of the man himself, we wanted to share two great quotes that inspire us. So I'm going to start with the first quote, the function of education, therefore is to teach one to think intensively and critically, but education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.

Alexander Sarlin

And one more great MLK quote from about education, quote, everybody can be great because everybody can serve, you don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve, you only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.

Ben Kornell

So inspiring. With that we're going to kick off our headlines today. First, from the higher education desk. I've got a story and Alex has a story. on higher ed, there's a lawsuit that is alleging price fixing for 16 elite colleges including Yale, MIT, Caltech, brown, Duke, etc. It comes down to need blind admissions, is it need blind or is it not. And I learned that colleges and universities in America have an antitrust exemption when it comes to

price. So think about major league baseball or NFL having antitrust exemptions around labor contracts. Same with what you pay for your schooling. But the kind of caveat with that is, it needs to be need blind, your price should not be dependent on your ability to pay. And this lawsuit has shown that there's quite a variety of holes in that policy at these universities and ultimately win or lose for this case, we're seeing a trend that universities are losing the public debate about the cost of

college and its ROI. And for our second Higher Ed Story, Alex,

Alexander Sarlin

for a second Higher Ed Story, we wanted to highlight a really interesting article from The Great ed tech journalist and writer Phil Hill, Phil Hill follows very closely about sort of enrollment trends over the years. And what he did this week was something super interesting. He took the nonprofit four year sector and which if you look at the entire sector, it's been flat, but it's been growing slightly and then slightly flat over the last

year. But what he did is he took out some outliers, which are the mega size, online universities, Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Liberty University. And when you take out those giant outliers, it's actually shrinking the nonprofit for your university space has actually been shrinking since 2015. It's a really interesting finding that really it takes it takes a sort of data data nerd, like Phil Hill to really put

this together. And he's opened it up as a as an open source chart, it's really worth looking at because you start to see in very stark terms, what is sort of coming our way in terms of college admissions, we know there's a demographic problem. We know there's been some loss of faith with a lot of students that that college is the only way to advance in your career, but you can really see it so highly recommended. And I think it's a it's an interesting finding. What do you think, Ben?

Ben Kornell

Yeah, I mean, the question that's coming up for me is, Can existing brick and mortar U universities pivot in a way that addresses both these scandals around the cost and the ROI and this kind of incredible opportunity for virtual learning. And you know, when you take out the Western Governors of the world, it shows that this market pie is not being addressed by the brick and mortar schools. So it makes me more skeptical about their ability to pivot and meet this

audience. So overall, demand actually seems really high for like post secondary, but ability to serve is really shifting. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin

disproportionally going to colleges that address adult learners, working learners, parents as learners. There, I think there's just it's another nail In the coffin of the idea of the traditional learner being the only major important demographic in higher ed. So Ben, what's our next headline?

Ben Kornell

All right, so hot off the presses from our gaming desk. Microsoft is paying 68 point 7 billion in cash for Activision Blizzard won, like, Wow, $68.7 billion is a lot of money. And in their press release, they talk about not only advancing their gaming division, but this being a building block for the metaverse. And you know, as you've heard on this podcast before, we're really interested and excited about the metaverse and that intersection with

education. And we're also excited about gaming and the intersection with education. And I think this could be a really important move. I also will say backstory Activision has been under a lot of heat with their CEO under fire for sexual harassment and their kind of overall year to year performance has been up and down. So Microsoft, which many don't realize is actually a quite a big player in K 12, and higher

ed, enterprise sales. Their consumer gaming business is definitely going to get a boost here. But the ability for them to crossover is leagues ahead of activations ability. And so 68 point 7 billion tells you one, this is a huge move, but to Metaverse is coming, it's coming fast. And this is not just a Facebook poorly planned ad campaign.

Alexander Sarlin

Agreed I you know, I think Microsoft is sort of the the secret. Remember of that Fang group of giant ad tech company, or giant tech companies that actually really do have some influence over education and Microsoft. When Microsoft bought Minecraft a few years ago, one of the first things it started to do with it is actually build out an education product around it, which it

offers to K 12 schools. This purchase gives them Call of Duty World of Warcraft, enormous gaming properties, as well as enormous virtual worlds literally built in the unreal and the unity engines that can be used in a Metaverse capacity. So you can imagine a future world where you students learning about World War Two, learn it from within Call of Duty. And it's really not that strange thing to imagine. That's exactly what Microsoft did with

Minecraft. It made it you know, it allowed students to build pyramids in Minecraft and study Egypt or build models of models of history. Imagine that in a top triple A gaming world. It's a pretty exciting move. And I think we should all keep our eye on what Microsoft starts to say about how this purchase may play into its future education plans.

Ben Kornell

Yeah, it's just a reminder to you that Google and Microsoft are the two largest edtech companies in the world. We don't think of it that way. But in terms of penetration, in terms of dollars in terms of reach and products, we should be watching those. So talking about the biggest companies in the world moving to one of the biggest markets in the world.

India continues to pop up regularly on this podcast in our news, two big movements, one that probably should throw some caution on the Indian market. And another that only shows the

enthusiasm. First is that India is cracking down on OPM providers in higher education from The Times of India but also news out of the UK, there's reports about government basically telling universities that they are not allowed to partner with for profit entities to offer their courses online, under their kind of licensure and certification. And so what it could be is that they still partner, but it is under separate or independent

licensure. Or it could be that the universities themselves launch rival ad tech offerings that are owned by them and are nonprofit. This raises the specter of what's happened in China in terms of that interplay between government and ad tech regulation. But on the other side of the coin, lead, which is an edtech unicorn basically got a huge investment that doubled its valuation from 500 million to a billion, just nine months

ago, it was 500 million. They have a K 12 product that helps learners drive their own learning and growth. But you know, it is a question about how hot the India market is they are only running at an $80 million revenue run rate. What's your take on what's going on in India? Alex? I'm particularly interested on the OPM side with your experience there, but also like on this funding side.

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah. So I mean, in terms of the funding, I think with China cracking down in this way that I think really put an enormous chill on investment there and people just don't know what to make of the Chinese edtech market. That puts even more emphasis on India as by far the largest education market on Earth is a relatively unregulated market compared to

other countries. It's a market that where, you know, India really cares about education, the parents spend a lot of money on their children's education, the tests, there are enormously determinative of students lives. So I think everybody in the EdTech investment space is just hungry to find the next Indian mega company, the next buy

juice. And they're looking at companies like Lee that are growing fast, that maybe are not actually quite as deserving of that valuation yet given their business metrics, but they're saying we want to get on a rocket ship as it's rising. And anybody who's really getting traction in the Indian market is somebody we need to keep our

eyes on. So I think VCs are in a little bit of a arms race, as you've said, betting, you know, to get the right investments in the right place, as the Indian edtech market just sort of explodes. What do you think?

Ben Kornell

Yeah, I think this is a learning moment for our audience, like one, if you're valued at a billion dollars, that doesn't mean someone's willing to pay you a billion dollars in cash for your entire company, that basically means that people are willing to fund you at a certain amount of value for your entire company. But often, you have to grow into that value. So the idea that they would increase from 500 to a billion in just nine months, that's not quite what's

happening. And number two, is there's an arms race, as you mentioned, in India, and GSV is coming to play. And what we've seen is out is probably the biggest ad tech player in India right now. And kudos to them for being on the early side, in and on it. But I think GSV is making a statement here that they're willing to go big in India. And then the third is, this just goes to show how important total

addressable market is. And a venture capitalists investment calculus, if the TAM is huge, it really changes the numbers and the ballgame. If your tam is small, even if your revenue is good, it doesn't become like a homerun hit possibility. So I just think it's a good learning moment for our space. And anyone who cares about ad tech, you need to be paying paying attention and learning more

about India. And also proper caveat, Alex and I are not experts on the Indian market before we can get a guest who can help us deep dive. But we are learners, and we are paying full attention to India. So I'm gonna flip it over to you on headlines number four, our finance B

Alexander Sarlin

and our finance B, we're just going to do a quick ping pong of some really interesting things that happened in edtech. Funding and acquisitions this week. First GSV, we just talked about released what they call their elite 200. That's 200 edtech companies that are on the rise within a sort of it, which will then do a pitch competition at

the ASU GSB conference. If you click on that, and that link in the show notes, if you want to see some edtech companies that are sort of small, but have some attention being paid to them right now. How about you, Ben?

Ben Kornell

First off, I've got my tutor acquiring fire tech in the UK. Let the coding bootcamp roll ups begin for 22. Basically, anyone who wants to be a player in this space needs to have a broad course offering. And that's what my tutor is going for. over you, Alex.

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah, so one that caught my eye. It's a relatively small round, but an Egyptian ed tech company called orcas raised about $2 million in a pre series A and you know, the reason this sort of caught my eye is there's really starting to be some interesting traction in what they call the rest of the world, non India, China, US Europe, markets. And it's nice to see some rounds getting a little bit bigger and getting some traction in an area where

the need is enormous. And there's not that much attention, which is Africa. On a related note, something passed my desk this week about a $10 million dedicated ed tech fund from a firm called Future Africa that's actively attempting to jumpstart investment on the continent. And their explicit goal is to make Africa the biggest tam for edtech. Obviously, that would not happen with any individual country, even Nigeria, which has

the most population. But if you think of Africa, African education, writ large, there is a lot of underserved students and workforce development there. So I'm keeping my eye on Africa. What about you, Ben?

Ben Kornell

As you know, I'm watching La Tam and inland M ubit. snagged a $25 million funding round there, the corporate Netflix for corporate training. One I always laugh when anyone is the the Netflix of or the Uber of, but when you dive into the numbers, their growth is astounding. And what it shows is that not only is the K 12 sector in Latin America, leaping forward leveraging ed tech, also the corporate side AI

is really pushing forward. And we basically just in our around the world in India, you know, Nigeria and Africa writ large. And this is based in Bogota, Colombia, I think what we're seeing is that a lot of the innovative applications for edtech tools are happening in markets where the kind of in person infrastructure has never existed, and it just allows them to leap forward in meaningful and massive ways.

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah. And I think, you know, frankly, the the COVID pandemic has also accelerated edtech innovation in some of these countries, because it's proven that students are enough students have access to internet services, to phones to the type of infrastructure that can make education work, even though they're I think there have been doubts about that in

the past. One more headline hot off the presses handshake, one of the leading ad tech startups that actually does job networking for recent college graduates just got a major round of funding today $200 million, round from Kochi management and valley and Peregrine with a number of different investors behind can shake as well, at a valuation of $3.5 billion dollars. That is a very serious increase in valuation for handshake. So that's an exciting news item as well. Ben, what's our final headline?

Ben Kornell

Well, we've been updating you every week on what's going on with COVID. And specifically, the labor shortage. Chad Alderman has a new piece. He's from the edge genomics lab at Georgetown University. So first, like props to you, man, Edu nomics lab, how cool is that. But ultimately, he's looking at data from districts. And he's saying, There is not a big quit and education, schools have specific labor challenges. But this overall narrative is challenging

of teachers dropping out. I think two caveats on this one is, the data is not very up to date, this is from 2018 to November 2021. So ultimately, what's really happening right now, it's hard to ascertain because most districts aren't sharing that data for this school year. And number two, is, you have a lot of incentives for tenured teachers to hang around and continue to push through.

It's really the pipeline of new talent of substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, and special ed, that are really showing the fracturing. And Chad calls that out. But I do think that it's important, you know, we paint some broad brushstrokes about

these crises. But actually, when you get down into it, there's pockets in segments where, for example, special ed eight times the vacancy rate of all other, so if we don't have a plan to address those specific pockets, as I heard the other day, that physics teachers, something like a 20% vacancy rate, these are impossible to solve. By just creating more of a human pipeline, we're gonna have to understand how Ed Tech can step in and help accelerate these gaps in labor. That's from the K

12. Desk. Alex, anything before from you before we go to our games.

Alexander Sarlin

Now, I just wanted to add, I couldn't agree more even you know, despite the findings here that there's no big quid I predict we are going to be hearing about the teacher shortages in K 12 schools, including specialists like special ed teachers, for years, and it's going to be a mainstay of Ed Tech conversations at tech conferences, there's really going to be a shift towards how can we fill gaps in labor, there's no way that teachers in these two years of the pandemic are going to stay in the

classroom. And then same numbers they they have been and we've covered this other weeks. No, let's move on to our game.

Ben Kornell

So this week's game is called What's the word? And Alex and I get to fill in the blank on some sentences from today's headlines. I'll go with the first one. Ed Tech watchers should be blank about all the large rounds going to Indian companies. What's your word? Alex?

Alexander Sarlin

I think they should be cautiously optimistic. I think the Indian tech system is definitely growing. There's a lot of hunger for the product. And there's a lot of amazing entrepreneurs doing great things there. But there may be a little bit of overheating as well, just because, again, with China dropping off the board, I think people are just desperate for Indian Ed Tech to work. What's your word?

Ben Kornell

Humble is the word that I would use at Tech watchers should be humble. Ultimately, two things. One is we don't know how this market is going to play out. And so how other markets have behaved is really only indicative signal. But if we've learned anything about education is that there are so many market specific dynamics. And number two is there's so much to learn from what's happening in India, that it will play out in other markets as well the trends that we're seeing there and so bring

that humility. All right number to Alex.

Alexander Sarlin

Number two is university presidents should feel blank, given the barrage of recent negative headlines about legacy higher ed.

Ben Kornell

All right, I'm gonna go with frustrated. I think the majority of university presidents are ready to pivot. They're ready to go for these new markets. They're watching Western Governors, they're thinking about scaling their impact, and they are struggling to change their organizations fast enough to meet this need. What about you? Yeah, I'm

Alexander Sarlin

gonna go even, I'm gonna go even harder there. And I say university presidents should feel frantic, maybe anxious, given the barrage of negative recent headlines about legacy higher ed. And the reason I say that is, universities have a well earned reputation for not moving that quickly for not being able to change business models or lower prices or address different student

markets. And I think that if you're behind now, and you're looking at these negative headlines about demographics about, you know, price fixing, about students wanting to do different things, rather than go to school and signing up and lower numbers than ever, I think you should be ringing the alarm bell within your university, that you need a strategy and that some of the traditional politics of faculty senate that want to keep the status quo

really need to be removed. I look at leaders like Michael Crow at ASU, Paul LeBlanc at Southern New Hampshire. And what they've really done is reorganized the entire institution around innovation and around serving their learners directly, and moved a lot of things out of the way to make that happen to start that now from scratch, it might take a while.

Ben Kornell

Or after the COVID pandemic subsides, the future of remote and hybrid learning is blank.

Alexander Sarlin

So I would say after the COVID pandemic subsides, the future of remote and hybrid learning is bright. I'm very bullish on that the COVID pandemic is not just going to be a blip in our memory in terms of education. I think it's going to be an inflection point when Ed Tech and remote education became mainstreamed by force. Basically, how about you, Ben?

Ben Kornell

I think my word is going to be inequitable, I originally was thinking essential, you know, we've got to figure it out. I'm really worried about the access and quality of delivery and the variability across different income ranges, geographies, and so on. And so I really worry that remote and hybrid learning will be a tool for rapid gains in more fluid areas. And it could be either under utilized or poorly implemented in places that are serving lower income students. So hopefully we can

change that around. Hopefully the word is essential. But I would say today, it looks inequitable. Number four, Alex

Alexander Sarlin

10 years from now, when people look back at the emerging trends in the 2022 ad tech landscape, they will describe this year as blank.

Ben Kornell

I'm gonna go with Dow malicious. I think that 2022 is the year that we deconstruct organizational structures in education, and the beginning of educators kind of owning the work product and learners owning the learning organizations. I am a skeptic when it comes to crypto and I am a bullish when it comes to community. Dows. What about you, Alex?

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah, so I struggled between two different answers here. But my final answer is 10 years from now, when people look back the emerging trends they will describe this year as the Year

of the Teacher creator. What I mean by that is that I think the combination of the teacher shortages, the rise in homeschooling the changes in how people sort of look to learn that they're looking to learn from practitioners is creating this huge wave of companies and individuals who are trying to teach learners directly what they know from wherever they are, they may be an influencer, they may be a within a practitioner within a company, they may be a retired teacher,

they may be teaching something that's outside of their subject that they're not technically certified to teach. But I think we're I just think we're getting to a place where the idea of a traditional teacher being the only people that we can learn from is going to basically die fully this year, and you're going to see a whole range of people jumping in as teachers or as educators that we wouldn't have defined as educators in the past. How about our last one?

Ben Kornell

Last one in honor of Martin Luther King, those who care the most about closing gaps and educational equity should be focusing their attention on blank.

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah, so my answer to this is about is alternative pathways and maybe a slightly controversial but I believe that you know, all of the political Question about free community college and all of these plans that have sort of hit the skids in all the political mess that we're dealing with. I think what's going to pan out from some of this is the idea of students from underrepresented backgrounds or from some disadvantages, socio economic

disadvantages. When they look at the price tags of state schools, they look at the price tags of private schools, and then they look at some of the offerings that are out there, the lower cost alternatives online, the programs, apprenticeships, the programs being offered by companies, the difference is so stark in terms of the time commitment, the value for your hour and the price, that I think, you know, we just have to make sure that there's pathways

for shorter colleges. And you know, the rise of Southern New Hampshire and Western Governors, I think is also a testament to that right colleges that can actually adapt and make their own sort of alternative pathways are going to succeed in huge numbers and colleges that don't adapt are not going to be addressing inequity. How about you, Ben?

Ben Kornell

Yeah, for those who care about closing gaps in educational equity, I think they should focus their attention on labor. There's a great article in EdSurge, just this week, around reconstructing and reimagining the teacher role. Educators are essential to education. And I think we know what AI what tech can do, there's no replacement for a great teacher who cares for children creates a great learning environment and supports learners in their journey. But the job as it is today is undoable and

unsustainable. And so how might we reimagine that role as one of the key building blocks of delivering a great education to every child, I'm always buoyed by the fact that we have so many great teachers in every school in America, we're really just needing to activate them and take things off their plate that maybe technology or centralized

services could do. And so I think that's a moment that we're in and we'll be learning from other markets that figuring out how to do that faster than you do in the US.

Alexander Sarlin

That's a great answer. So with that, we're gonna move on to our live questions session where we take live questions from the ondeck ed tech Fellowship Community. What is our first question?

Jesse Silverberg

This is Jesse Silverberg. I used to lead the coaching and talent development team at Minerva, and currently work as an independent consultant for startups, universities, and foundations, on projects that advance learner centric approaches in higher ed,

and lifelong learning. I'm curious what insights we can gain when thinking about the two higher ed headlines side by side, we have these quote unquote, elite universities, who not only have hard caps on enrollment, but are also potentially further constraining access based on student's ability to pay through price fixing, what can and should these institutions learn from the Wu Ji use of the world who are driving overall four year

enrollment trends? What steps should they take in their direction,

Alexander Sarlin

here's my take on this and it's going to be this is going to be a little bit of a bomb throwing, take, just want to throw it out there. I think the first elite college that actually embraces a W GU SNHU, Purdue model of faster with support online, significantly cheaper, you only pay for what you actually do, is going to completely win. I think they're going to they're gonna really, really topple a lot of the prevailing assumptions about

elite education. I think if you look at what happened in some of the other online movements, the other ed tech movements, the first mover advantage is very big, if you're willing to really go out there and do something

different. And I think if I'm Dartmouth right now, right, and I know that I if I could offer a fully online degree for $10,000, a bachelor's, I'm going to steal so many amazing students from every other Ivy from every other top 50 school, I'll be How have I completely made choice about who, who I can let in if I'd like it, I'll get a huge underrepresented communities, i They'll run the table and everybody else will not even

know what to do. And I think they think they're locked in this business model where they have to charge 30 grand or more, and maybe they've made deals in the past to charge 30 grand or more, because there's no antitrust legislation. But anybody who breaks away and makes a run for it for that student and is able to give them a degree with more prestige than in Southern New Hampshire. I think they're going to run the table and I wish they would have the

Ben Kornell

guts to do it. Yeah, on that point, Alex, you know, this is why it's hard for companies with a legacy business to innovate because they'll cannibalize their core business, and they have a fixed cost. picture with all of their buildings and tenured professors and so on. And so it makes it incredibly hard to fully create that pivot. Where I go is really around aligning the financial incentives, and payment models.

I'm shocked that income share agreements haven't taken root, because you can offer a totally free undergraduate experience, if you believe that the upside is a step function for your students. And if they're willing to share in that upside, proportionally, you both win. I think it's the first folks who move towards a free model for a hybrid in person and online with

income share agreements. And the reason why I think brick and mortar schools are actually very well positioned for this is that alumni network is actually essential for boosting your income. And they have this leverage point that's beyond the learning that is the alumni network, that they could truly monetize with income share

agreements. So I would if I were talking to Dartmouth, I would say, don't blow up your physical infrastructure, make your program a two by two program where people can do two years online two years on campus, leverage your alumni network, and let's do income share agreements that help you earn your revenue back from the success of your graduates.

Alexander Sarlin

I hear that Ben and I think I've been surprised as well that I essays have been limited only to sort of boot camps and alternative pathways. That said, I think these types of half measures of two and two, even though that sounds amazing, but two and two are accepting credits from a tech companies like outlier or from, you know, being more accepting of community college credits, there's a lot of things that schools can do to sort of

edge towards it. I gotta say, I'm still I think that the school that has the courage to sort of Buck their own alumni to buck the expectation that there's so much sunk cost into those administrative costs, or in those giant buildings, I think the school that has the guts to do it is going to run

the table. I mean, that is what Southern New Hampshire did, they had no, no differential advantage when they started this, and they are now one of the top schools in the country by enrollment, I just think that there's there's so much upside in being the one elite university known to really offer value, not just alternative financing, really, the whole shebang. They'll have such an advantage that they'll make the money back, if they're willing to expand their class size.

Ben Kornell

If you look in the past, Alex, California for a long time was two by two with two years of community college and then you go, and California, the UC system is so big, that you could imagine just with that total addressable market alone, they could launch more WG EU type programs. So I think it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. If it is a winner take all first mover advantage. What a great moment for investors to get involved, by

the way. Yeah, it's going to be fragmented and everyone's going to kind of limp in not an exciting time for investors. But if you get that Dartmouth, going for it big, yeah, there has to be billions of capital to like, make that happen. So if you're the president, Dartmouth give outside a call. We're happy to be your advisor.

Alexander Sarlin

Actually, we have one final question, which is coming from the chat when it comes to facilitating education through the metaverse, particularly with Microsoft's acquisition of Activision. What are some of the biggest challenges regarding access and equity? How do we keep systemic in the inequities in the physical world from replicating themselves in virtual ones? Great question.

Ben Kornell

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting one in that paywall getting all the way down to the practical level, almost every edtech entrepreneur and founder is thinking about where the paywall is. Because if the paywall is upfront in front of your learning experience, you are inequitable, and if your paywall doesn't exist for the user, but you're trying to do b2b sales, then it is also inequitable, in part because school districts purchasing is reflects often the inequities of

our systems. So the metaverse question, is it will it be an open and free space, where access to the learning is not gated, but where the kind of customization and the modularization is where they monetize? Or is it actually functioning in a way of a sorting hat with paywalls and elite institutions persisting on that platform? You know, my skeptical view is that people go where the money is in these

platforms. But if we did have players who really thought about it Quiddity as the leverage points for differentiation, could they create fundamentally equitable Metaverse companies? I think that would be really exciting, too. So maybe what we find is that a Metaverse escape, we are able to fundamentally lower the cost of delivery and reduced barriers and monetize outside of the learning cycle.

Alexander Sarlin

Yeah, that's a great answer. I think the only thing I would add to that is when it comes to Metaverse, one of the differentiating factors for that particular type of Ed Tech compared to others, is that it requires this additional hardware, at least for now. And that hardware has created this really confusing. A world here where you have private schools that will buy Oculus is, you know, for their classrooms to do

something interesting. You'll have universities, certain universities that all sort of invest in this, and Stanford does a lot of virtual reality stuff. But community colleges or schools with lower budgets, or K 12 schools with with less money per student, that's not the first thing they're gonna think of. It's an unproven technology, they don't have the way to do

that. So I look at companies like transfer VR, or immersion, or, you know, companies that are starting to look at the ad tech, Metaverse space through the lens of actually like training rather than virtual field trips. And I think that might be a route in, because obviously, there's just an enormously different take on what Metaverse education would look like. If you're looking at it through a sort of a practical, how do you learn to how to actually do things in the world lens versus a very

fanciful? How do you take a sort of trip to ancient Egypt? And that's only gonna go into in a private school? So it's a little bit of a strange answer, because I don't know how it'll play out. But I think people need to figure out how to subsidize the cost of the equipment, and then create experiences that don't just cater to sort of extracurricular in school activities that actually cater to real needs, especially for workforce development.

Ben Kornell

Well, with that, we're going to thank our studio audience. Thank you on debt crew for coming. The ondeck ed tech fellowship, version two kicks off this month. And thank you, Charlie, for having us. Thank you, Savannah for organizing this. And thank you to our listeners for listening to this weekend ed tech. We'll be back next week when there's ed tech news. You'll hear analysis from us each week. Talk to you later. Bye.

Alexander Sarlin

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ed Tech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at ed tech insiders.substack.com

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