Projecting the impact of a Trump administration is difficult. It’s likely that some level of change is coming to nearly every policy sector. In few places, though, is the anticipation of change more palpable and more anticipated than in education.
Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, a scion of the wealthy and conservative DeVos clan, is a charter and voucher advocate with precious few ties to public schools. The Trump camp has also signaled a willingness to shift student lending back out of the federal government, representing a profit bonanza for banks with little benefit to borrowers. It is also expected, for example, that many of the Obama era regulations and requirements that hobbled for-profit colleges – requiring colleges to accurately track and report job placement rates, for example – will be eliminated.
Although the specifics may yet be unclear, or even years away, the anticipation of change is already apparent.
On November 17, CNN Money reported, “Stocks of for-profit education companies spiked the morning after Election Day, and they've continued to outperform the overall market ever since Trump's win. Both DeVry (DV) and Strayer (STRA) are up about 23%. The University of Phoenix parent company Apollo Education Group (APOL) has risen nearly 8% since November 8, and Capella University's (CPLA) stock is up about 15%.”
And other education innovators and entrepreneurs who have been buoyed by early statements from the Trump transition team. One of these statements promised the new administration would enact, “...relief from U.S. Department of Education regulations that inhibit innovation. A Trump Administration also will make post-secondary options more affordable and accessible through technology enriched delivery models.”
It’s not as though the Obama administration was anti-innovation or barred the door to education technology – the Obama White House even created an office of education technology.
Nonetheless, surging stock prices and promises of “relief from…regulations that inhibit innovation” have invigorated education technology advocates and innovators who have already built the edtech market into a global, multi-billion-dollar behemoth.
According to an analysis this year by Flybridge Capital, the worldwide edtech market is a $1.3 trillion space. And another report, this one by EdTechXGlobal in partnership with IBIS Capital, said global education spending is, “now over $5 trillion, 8x the size of the software market and 3x size of the media and entertainment industry…”
The size of the marketplace and the new Trump-inspired energy have focused policy and industry attention like never before. And much of that attention has settled on NY EDTECH WEEK – the global education innovation festival at NYU taking place later this month which will be the first major education conference since the election.
“There’s significant energy around the new administration’s education leadership and policies and what that might mean for the education technology community,” said Jonathan D. Harber, Co-Founder of StartED, a company running the NYU Steinhardt Edtech Accelerator and producing NY EDTECH WEEK. “We have a vibrant community of education innovators who are eager to address the world’s largest education problems, to brainstorm new potential policies, and to showcase technology solutions.”
That future will, no-doubt also impact the fledgling edtech startups that will be featured at the conference. Companies that, investors hope, will make their marks financially and pedagogically.
Versity U., for example, will pitch investors and influencers at the December festival on their platform to help students plan, prepare for and pass board exams in the healthcare industry. Like other hopefuls, they will aim to find a place among students and whatever new workforce or education policy may emerge.
Admission Table, another startup in the NYU accelerator and being highlighted at NY EDTECH WEEK, has a tech product that uses artificial intelligence to create a chatbot for university admissions offices.
That may be exactly the kind of thing Trump’s transition team was thinking about when they described, “post-secondary options [being] more affordable and accessible through technology enriched delivery models.” Education and education technology leaders are eager to find out.
It’s too early to tell whether these companies – or similar innovation being hatched elsewhere – will reshape the education modus operandi or whether forthcoming Trump policies will play any role in their successes. But that has done little to suppress the energy and appetite for the anticipated changes. Regardless of whether they arrive by policy shift, heavy investment or tech-driven innovation, the leaders who are on their way to NY EDTECH WEEK are literally betting that big change is coming.
As a well-known progressive television commentator likes to say on her show, “watch this space.”