Posted by There are two parts to this story.
First, EdTech stands for educational technology, which refers to online learning in higher education and K-12/primary education.
It has never meant to represent corporate, despite vendors and some of my fellow analysts thinking otherwise.
Secondly, vendors in the EdTech sector (and there are those who play corporate too) missed so many chances when the big HEY DO THIS was staring them in the face.
The EdTech dilemma
Back in the late 90s, I was working on a doctorate on how lesser-known universities/colleges could compete with bigger names, such as Duke and Harvard, through online learning.
The distance learning angle – popular in higher ed, where someone is talking into a video camera, while other students are seeing them on a TV or a screen.
Yep, it was a massive loser for learning – but successful for insomnia and not paying attention.
I bring up the late 90s because it was so clear that universities that need revenue, after all, could achieve positive results, compete effectively with bigger-name schools, attract students (a key revenue channel), and succeed.
To no one’s surprise, universities/colleges never saw the potential of online learning (e-learning).
Granted, Blackboard, just one of the few, developed an LMS for higher education, primarily, and Moodle rumbled around (designed specifically for Academia).
On the corporate side, learning system vendors – and companies themselves – failed to see the marriage potential between the two.
Able students, graduating with a degree (100% online, no ILT on-site) (something universites back in those days didn’t do) with a willingness and capabilities (assuming EdTech provided asynchronous based courses – still the predominant form of learning – online with the corporate segment and I’d argue vastly superior to synchronous based – which EdTech heavily uses), to enter the job market for those companies of need for workers.
That marriage still isn’t even close to being there in 2026.
Yes, today is an employer market, with students (and others) unable to find jobs with companies using AI in recruiting (ignoring hallucinations), and just a push from many pundits that a college degree isn’t needed because of what is presented to students.
The Fix
There is a band, a group of smaller colleges, making changes to the degree angle.
This band offers a B.A., which can be completed in three years.
The goal is to shorten the window for completion and, I assume, to advance the premise that by providing content relevant to landing a job, skills-focused content, and lower tuition costs, more folks will go to college.
What they are doing is eliminating those General Electives that nobody likes, and jumping right into your program.
There are challenges here: anything from the business school, for example, requiring students to take a test to get in (ignorance of potential).
Assuming that is yanked out, the GEs can be overhauled, with students deciding if they wish to take them – after all, students do change their minds on what they want to study – but that’s for another day.
Next up is the Master’s degree, where universities are again debating whether to shorten the time.
The problem there is that most universities that are aware of the shortened B.A. will not admit those students to a Master’s program because of the shorter number of years.
Think of that logic.
A perfect example of how small colleges can save themselves from possibly shuttering (a sad reality) is to push 100% online learning, tied to a vendor that buys into the approach of having companies agree to accept these students if their skills align with the opportunities.
It’s a marketplace of sorts – a guaranteed job (entry level or even start with a project), a willing audience, and yes, wage compensation (based on the company’s choice).
Skills are tied directly to this marketplace of sorts, with students agreeing to take X number of courses and continue to develop skills on an ongoing basis as part of their personal and professional growth (something L&D hasn’t been strong at, and, nevertheless, the #1 reason people leave companies).
The fact of the matter is that companies are restructuring and downsizing while also hiring.
I look at a university like St. Michael’s, which is on a slippery slope in terms of financial aid and student attrition.
They have not, IMO, adapted to the potential and possibilities, even though they cite a high rate of students graduating and getting jobs.
They seem to have a progressive university president who is trying all kinds of things to boost.
Here is a university (a small college in Vermont) that screams potential with a learning system vendor in the Edtech industry, and having already contacts and agreements in place with companies – the latter isn’t in existence, but it could be.
And should.
Skills result in Success
A constant push among ‘clients’ and vendors who put in lots of skills management capabilities, and those talent development platforms are adding opportunities tied to skills.
If the desire and perspective of companies is wrapped around skills, again, a high trait with L&D and HR folks, then why are they limiting it, when an audience eager to learn is standing by, ready to go?
AI is going to take jobs.
People need to be completely clear on that, and even in retail, the thought that this sacred cow could never be replaced by AI has, at least with one company, gone that route.
Yes, they have two employees, hired by AI, who handle several tasks, but AI drives the business as a whole, from negotiating with suppliers to deciding on what items to sell.
And yes, it makes mistakes – due to hallucinations.
The point here is that, while we are at a very early stage, AI is landing in a segment of face-to-face retail and frontline workers.
Who is to say that in three years, those two humans will not be needed, as AI advances?
This is why colleges/universities need to adapt quickly to the realities of AI (right now, it is just slugville), and why vendors in the EdTech segment need to establish a marketplace of companies ready to hire.
Even if those companies need blue-collar workers, or, say, construction folks.
Technical colleges are the usual providers of those skills, but there’s nothing to say a college/university couldn’t do the same.
Bottom Line
Take one part – small or mid-size colleges (heck, big could do it too – but I think an ego-driven attitude of superiority complex will limit willingness), one part vendors in EdTech, and one part arrangements in place with companies willing to hire those students, who have the skills required and needed for the job: as a marketplace.
There are no fees here, just as there are no fees for ‘opportunities’ that vendors have in place with those clients who want to offer this to their learners.
This is where the future of the industry for skills growth, development wrapped around learners is heading – AI is causing this disruption, make no mistake about that.
Who, I ask, is willing to step up to the plate?
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