2020 was the year when digital learning and teaching solutions in higher education finally took off. This decade will see the sector thrive.

In our previous piece we argued that universities have neglected teaching and learning for decades. As tuitions and external costs have risen, education has remained the same and support has remained flat. Students in the UK are paying ￡17bn+ for tuition each year with less than 45% of that spent on actual teaching. A vast majority of this teaching spend is on staff salaries towards lectures and tutorials, and a tiny percentage on academic advising, individualised support and almost none on learning technologies.

The challenges of B2B university teaching and learning startups

There has been no a shortage of student friendly solutions attempting and failing to enter and scale in this market during this period. For example, Open Educational Resources, representing free, open licence text, media and other digital assets have been increasing in quality and breadth of offer for the last two decades, sparked by the MIT OpenCourseWare project. However while many educators acknowledge exorbitant publisher textbooks fees, which students pay out of pocket on top of tution, a very small percentage has embraced OER to help students limit textbook expenditures. Similarly promises of adaptive personalised learning have come and gone as many ambitious startups have failed to overcome bureaucracies, academic inertia and incumbents' control of the market.

Against so many startup failures tailoring towards students, there has been one market segment that universities have embraced at scale over the last decade which has aligned with their own core interests - assessment. A series of successful assessment solutions have grown in the market designed to help universities and educators protect academic integrity of their institutions. They include unicorn TurnItIn, recently acquired Examsoft, Examity and Honorlock with their anti-plagarism, automated assessment and proctoring solutions.

So who then is helping students? The rise of B2C solutions

While universities have neglected technology in teaching, students have not neglected it in learning. The previous decade saw a slow and steady rise in student-focused and funded technology solutions covering study materials and guides, flashcards, homework and study solutions, test prep and tutors. As Covid closed off many university centred communication and support channels for students, external market solutions saw their next wave of hyper adoption. Many already relatively mature businesses, began to behave like fast growing startups again.

Chegg, the global student support leader saw a huge 64% increase in year on year revenues end of Q3 2020 reaching 6.6m subscribers, while CourseHero cemented its unicorn status in Aug 2020 and Quizlet became a unicorn claiming 50 million monthly active users. Top Hat strengthened its journey towards unicorn status with its third textbook publisher acquisition start of January 2021 - a concept previously unimaginable of a tech company, buying a publisher and not the other way around. Lastly Varsity Tutors became the most recent unicorn in this space with its upcoming SPAC acquisition announcement.

The challenges of B2C and missed opportunities for universities

While driven by necessity, the rise of B2C study solutions has not been without its problems. Long lists of articles and educators publicly criticise study platforms as places students come to cheat and look for answers to homework, instead of actual study guidance. In a particularly troubling field of essay writing - the 'essay mill' industry has become at least a $100m+ empire.

It is easy, however, to criticise students without looking at the bigger picture. The need to look for external support and temptation to cheat have also in large part been fuelled by a lack of a supportive university system. As the B2C study support market grew, with US students today alone spending an unbelievable $1bn+ on just the top 4 platforms, universities ignored the space and instead of collaborating decided to become its enemies. In doing so universities have missed out on major opportunities to become customers, shape development of these solutions and most importantly ensure support is evenly distributed. Alongside huge tuition and book costs, not all students are able to afford Chegg or private tutors which further increases inequalities. In parallel while external study platforms are the ones with millions of datapoints on student learning and knowledge, universities barely know anything about their students' learning.

What does the future hold?

We believe that the shock of Covid is changing university perceptions towards supporting students need. The rise in usage of external study support platforms is a clear sign that universities are failing their students. It is a wake up call to educators, administrators and universities leaders. Through our conversations with many university leaders we strongly believe that now is the time when universities will step in to improve the student academic offer. They are so many ways to do this and we are excited to see the rise in companies like Labster (virtual science labs), Aula (learning experience platform) and engageli (engaging live video learning platform).

There are many more opportunities in this space we look forward to seeing develop in the coming years and we look forward to sharing these in our upcoming publications. Until then if you are a higher education leader or an ambitious startup in this space and would like to inform our work - we would love to speak.

Photo credits: Image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4