This document summarizes Brian Butler's presentation on challenges and opportunities in higher education and edtech. Butler has over 10 years of experience in international education and has founded companies like CourseChunks and Summit Global Education. The presentation discusses issues like rising costs and student debt burden in US higher education. It also notes opportunities to innovate through new models and technologies that can address skills gaps. Potential areas discussed include lifelong learning platforms, virtual/augmented reality tools, and focusing more resources on vocational training alternatives to traditional 4-year degrees. The document provides an overview of recent edtech investing trends and the large potential market size. It encourages attendees to think ambitiously about problems in higher education and how new businesses could create meaningful impact

1. Welcome!
Miami EdTech

2. Brian Butler
10+ years international education
Entrepreneur | Teacher
www.CourseChunks.com
www.SummitGlobalEducation.com
Linkedin / Twitter: @briandbutler

3. Today’s Discussions
1. Branding challenges in EdTech
2. Higher Education challenges

4. Before
we get started…

5. https://miamiedtech.slack.com

6. I have been
curating a
collection of
articles and
videos
to help with your edTech startup!

7. CourseChunks.com

8. CourseChunks.com

9. CourseChunks.com

10. CourseChunks.com

11. CourseChunks.com

12. You can copy
or ADD to
any of these collections!

13. What
RESEARCH
would YOU
like?
let me know… and Ill curate a
collection for you!

14. ok,
let’s get started…

15. Today’s Discussions
1. Branding challenges in EdTech
2. Higher Education challenges

16. Higher Eduction:
Marketing Challenges

17. who are your
customers?

18. Student
Parent
School

19. Student
Parent
School
Professor
Department
Admin

20. Challenge: How do
you create a BRAND
that appeals to all
customers?

22. PURPOSE?
Impact?
Tech

23. Higher Eduction:
Innovation

24. Today’s Discussions
1. Branding challenges in EdTech
2. Higher Education challenges

25. What ideas do you have
for (any possible)
business in Higher Ed?

26. are your ideas
BIG
enough?

27. how will you
STAND
OUT
?

29. Chat Apps (Remind, ClassDoJo)
LMS (Canvas, Teachable, Edmodo, Schoology)
Q/A sites (Piazza)
Textbooks (Chegg, Rafter)
Tutoring (VarsityTutors)
Coaching Mentoring (InsideTrack, TheMuse)
Tech. skills (kids) (Tynker)
Tech. skills (adults) (Treehouse, Udacity)
Virtual Reality (NearPod)
Life-Long learning (Degreed)
Lesson Marketplace (Teachers Pay Teachers)
NOT THE CORE OF THE
COURSE CURRICULUM
Up until now, most of the successful edTech
innovation has been on the periphery
Periphery:

30. WHERE IS THE FACEBOOK /
GOOGLE
OF
EDUCATION
?

31. Question:
How to create a
company that
others cant copy?

32. Who saw this?

33. 1. proprietary technology,
2. network effects,
3. economies of scale

34. Network Effect:
all-or-nothing
(only Facebook, no Orkut, Myspace)

35. Economy of Scale:
marginal cost of zero
(software, rapid growth)

36. Start by looking for the
BIGGEST problems
you can think about!
SUGGESTION:

37. start with questions like...
What is “wrong" with
university education
in the USA?

38. How would most parents
answer this question?

39. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); IPEDS

40. The average sticker price of
college eats up more than 40
percent of a family’s paycheck.
In 2001, it accounted for less
than a quarter
Washington Post

41. Question:
Beyond cost, what else is
“wrong" with higher
education (university) in
the USA?

42. Student Debt!
• Overall only 57% of the 22 million Americans with federal student
loans are current on their payments; 43% are in default (3.6M),
delinquent (3.0M) or in forbearance (3.0M).
• There are almost 1,500 colleges and universities where the majority of
students who borrowed federal loans are making interest-only
payments on their loans, or no payments at all.
• For those who graduated between 2006 and 2011, more than 1/3
defaulted on their student loans, subjecting them to garnishments and
ruined credit.
• A greater number took on loans and failed to graduate due to financial
challenges; between 2013 and 2016, more than 30% of students
failed to settle their balances, triggering institutional holds and
collection agencies.
- University Ventures, Dec 2017

43. “U.S. student loan debt now equals the size of the
$1.3 trillion U.S. high-yield corporate bond market"
- Bloomberg, Dec 2017

44. what else?

45. University Education USA (problems):
Average cost of
private four-year
university $31,231
—up sharply from
$1,832 in 1972 (in
current dollars)
At public, four-year
schools, cost is
$9,139 — up from
less than $500 in
1971 in current
dollars, according
to the College
Board.
COST DEBT
U.S. student
loan debt now
equals the size
of the $1.3
trillion U.S. high-
yield corporate
bond market
Growing by $100
billion per year
MAJORS
The U.S.
graduates more
students in the
visual and
performing arts,
… than in
computer
science, math
and chemical
engineering
combined
SKILLS
Although close to 50%
of the population goes
through higher
education, only about
20% of jobs require an
undergraduate degree
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty,
emphasized that many
IBM jobs don’t need
degrees, but belong to a
novel category of “new
collar” employment.
They’re “entirely new
roles in areas such as
cybersecurity, data
science, artificial
intelligence and
cognitive business,”

46. Impact: Change in Attitudes
• This week’s issue of Time reports on a new survey by the
research firm Culture Co-op:
• “78% of Gen Z-ers say getting a four-year degree no
longer makes economic sense.” They are likely to jump
for emerging faster + cheaper alternatives.
• Purdue’s Mitch Daniels gets it, recently
telling Bloomberg that “the market won’t stand for this,
and at some point, the public is going to start
demanding that universities lower costs. So let’s not be
last.”
- University Ventures, Dec 2017

47. Inequality
• Cal State Long Beach estimates that off-campus students
who don’t live at home need close to $18,000 a year in
addition to the cost of tuition, or nearly the salary of a full-
time minimum-wage worker.
• Last year, researchers at Cal State estimated that nearly
one in nine students is homeless. Even more couldn’t
afford food on a regular basis (a problem at UCs, the
California community colleges, and campuses from
Hawaii to New York).”
source: https://story.californiasunday.com/cost-of-college

48. Too many kids going to university to
study “wrong" subjects:
• Over the past 25 years the total
number of students in college
has increased by about 50
percent.
• But the number of students
graduating with degrees in
science, technology,
engineering and math (the so-
called STEM fields) has
remained more or less constant.
• Moreover, many of today’s
STEM graduates are foreign
born and are taking their
knowledge and skills back to
their native countries.

49. Too many kids going to university to
study “wrong" subjects (continued):
• The U.S. graduated
89,140 students in the
visual and performing
arts, more than in
computer science, math
and chemical
engineering combined
and more than double
the number of visual
and performing arts
graduates in 1985.

50. Alternatives to Universities:
• Additional trade schools, and not four-year college degrees, may
be a better bet for U.S. workers, according to new economic
research.
• The amount of vocational training available relative to the size of a
country's manufacturing sector may reduce income inequality, and
improve the fortunes of workers earning below the top 10 percent
of household incomes, the data show.
• "Pushing more students to B.A. granting colleges may no longer be
the most efficient way to deal with the challenges caused by the
decline in manufacturing employment," wrote Joshua Aizenman,
the economics chair at University of Southern California. He did
the research with academics at New Zealand's Victoria University
of Wellington.
• And declined it certainly has.
source: CNBC

51. Benchmarking: Germany
• Germany's education system, the researchers said, better
fits the needs of modern manufacturing, which requires
more upper-secondary and vocationally trained labor.
• In the U.S., on the other hand, "there are too many four-year
colleges serving too many students, and too few institutions
with greater focus on vocational education and training,"
Aizenman said.
source: CNBC

52. Topic:
Finding Ed-Tech
INVESTORS
Where to look?

53. Ed-Tech Investing (2017)
• After a lull in 2016,
venture activity for U.S.-
based edtech startups in
2017 saw a resurgence of
investment capital. So far
this year, these
companies raised over
$1.2 billion across 126
deals. By contrast, in
2016, investors put $1
billion into 138 deals.
• At $1.2 billion, this year’s
funding total is the
second-highest tally,
following 2015 (which
saw $1.4 billion invested),
since EdSurge began
tracking U.S. edtech
investments in 2011.
source: EdSurge

54. Ed-Tech Market (potential)
• The education market is big. We’re talking $5-trillion-
globally-per-annum big. Yet edtech has been completely
overshadowed by other red-hot investment opportunities,
not only from the fintech industry, but others. For example,
in 2015, more was invested in Uber alone than the entire
edtech industry.
• But now the cat is out of the bag. The rise of a new
education and learning world has begun with investment
in edtech set to reach $252 billion globally by 2020.
source: TechCrunch

55. http://universityventures.com

56. https://www.asugsvsummit.com

57. Did you know…
There is an APP
store for
Education?

59. Canvas LMS (open source)