This article has been syndicated from TechCrunch.
By Rip Empson (Writer, TechCrunch)
As Ned Flanders would say, education in the U.S. is in “a dilly of a pickle.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the cost of education has become unsustainable.
Student loan debt is over $1 trillion, unemployment remains high for the recently graduated, and non-traditional students — older people, single mothers, workers looking to re-train — are returning to academia and learning programs in droves, putting even more competitive pressure on already-scant on-site resources.
Higher ed institutions struggle with the cost of expanding to meet demand. Yale, for example, recently decided to add 250 students to its incoming class, which came with a price tag of a quarter of a billion dollars.
Luckily, a number of startups are tackling the problem, which, along with the maturation of online content distribution, are helping to lower the cost of both higher, primary, and continuing education — both making it easier for teachers to do what they do best as well as transforming learning into something that’s more engaging and personalized for students. Startups like Khan Academy, 2tor, ShowMe, Udemy, Udacity, Grockit, Coursera, and StraighterLine are all beginning to show how easy it is to flip the educational process – in other words, to use video and advanced web platforms to make learning more affordable and effective.
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Co-founders (and couple) Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin started by sinking $20K from their savings into Lynda. They were profitable, Heavin says, within a few weeks, and they haven’t taken a penny of outside funding since. And that’s not for lack of offers, as both founders hinted that sizable investment offers have been put on the table on a number of occasions, but the company has been content to fly under the radar and rely on word-of-mouth marketing, subscribing to a “if you don’t need money, don’t take it” policy.
» Read the full article at TechCrunch.
