The GSV Big 10: Addicted to Learning

Choosing Choice, the Chicago Way, and Open AI as the World's Largest Education Company...

Chart of the Week

"American universities spent $60 billion in federal funding in 2023, more than 30 times what they spent in 1953, accounting for inflation." – Rob Henderson on X

The Big 10:

1. A South Carolina college faces closure after nearly two centuries — unless it scrounges up $6 million by April deadline | New York Post

   Demographics, psychographics, and ethnographics all have contributed to an acceleration of college closures. With 50 colleges shutting their doors in 2024, that’s about double the average level of the past couple decades. The concept of the “reverse college fair” where other universities come onto the campus of the terminal institution might become increasingly common.

2. Exclusive 🦉 “Education Super App” — Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn announces next product on TBOY | The Best One Yet Podcast

   We’ve always been simpatico with Luis Von Ahn’s vision for learning. We love businesses that are addictive and don’t cause cancer which clearly Duolingo has achieved with 40 million daily active users. Making learning fun is the only way people will do it every day. Next up for Duolingo….chess!

3. College grads say they are confident about jobs but cautious about economy | Higher Ed Dive

   Despite the inescapable hysteria that the World’s going to Hell in a hand basket, 87% of upcoming college graduates are confident about getting a job. Troubling, more than half of these graduates will likely get a job that doesn’t require their expensive degree. With the half life of skills shrinking from 30 years in 1980 to 5 years today, college graduation is just an intermediate step on a lifelong learning journey.

4. Can Elite Higher Education Reform Itself? | AEI

   The issues that exist with Elite Higher Education have been brewing for many years with the Trump Administration a catalyst to force a conversation. Patient heal thyself would be wonderful albeit not realistic but burning down 400 year old institutions isn’t the answer either. You get better or you get worse, but you don’t stay the same.

5. Meeting the moment: A response to Robert Pondiscio’s essay on AFT’s "American Educator" | Thomas B. Fordham Institute

   Randi Weingarten is a fighter with a prominent voice in the education ecosystem. Whether I agree or disagree with what she says, for us to improve our education system, we need 360 degrees of perspective. For 49 years, the AFT’s motto has been “Education for Democracy and Democracy in Education” which is a great place to start.

6. Trump Admin to Harvard: Where Is Your Antisemitism Report? | The Free Press

   Despite it being over 1.5 years after it was created, the Harvard Anti-Semitism task force has only produced a preliminary report on what it’s doing to address anti-semitism on campus. President of Harvard Alan Garber has said Harvard won’t comply with the Trump Administrations demands, the Trump Administration has responded by withholding $2.2 billion of funds and starting process of revoking Harvard’s tax exempt status. My Spidey Sense tells me that as powerful as Harvard is, change is a coming.

7. Assessing the Role of Intelligent Tutors in K-12 Education | Stanford HAI

   The real point of this article is the study Stanford did with Carnegie Learning and the War Child Alliance to correlate short term inputs with long term student outcomes. Key is the study found that with as little as two hours of student interaction, researchers could determine learning trajectory. So, versus the traditional get the data after the fact when it’s too late to do anything about it, there is the opportunity to intervene when it can make a difference.

8. Socialists Seek Control of New York Schools | WSJ

   It’s hard to believe anyone wants to emulate the performance of Chicago Public Schools, but that’s the warning from the WSJ’s editorial to leaders in NYC. To remind readers, less than one third of students in Chicago are proficient in reading and there are 32 schools where there isn’t ONE proficient student. One symptom of the dis-functionality is that 40% of the “students” in Chicago Public Schools are absent…pretty tough to learn if you aren’t even in class.

9. Ohio’s School Choice Success Story | WSJ

   School Choice is on a roll benefiting from public support and compelling student achievement data. Texas opening up choice for 1 million students is the biggest win yet, and while the entrenched status quo says “give us more time and more money” the American Public has said, “250 years is long enough, we need change NOW.”

10. 🎙️ Ep. 42 · OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar | Ed on the Edge | Dash Media

    Sarah Friar has had a remarkable career as an influential Wall Street research analyst, a public company CEO at NextDoor and now the CFO of arguably the largest education company in the World—OpenAI. Please enjoy the interview I did with her at the 16th Annual ASU GSV Summit earlier this month.