e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: LinkedIn

  • Why LinkedIn Matters

    A few folks have asked me to elaborate on why I think LinkedIn is the most interesting—and possibly the most consequential—company in ed tech.

    Imagine that you wanted to do a longitudinal study of how students from a particular college do in their careers, or the effect of social media for brick and mortar in a particular local geographical location for strategic placement of services that local market is lacking. In other words, you want to study long-term outcomes. How did going to that college affect their careers? Do some majors do better than others? And how do alumni fare when compared to their peers who went to other schools? Think about how you would get the data. The college could ask alumni, but it would be very hard to get a good response rate, and even then, the data would go stale pretty quickly. There are governmental data sources you could look at, but there are all kinds of thorny privacy and regulatory issues.

    There is only one place in the world I know of where bazillions of people voluntarily enter their longitudinal college and career information, keep it up-to-date, and actually want it to be public.

    LinkedIn. (more…)

  • LinkedIn: I Told You So (Sorta)

    In December 2012, I tweeted:

    https://twitter.com/mfeldstein67/status/276406235564220416

    At the time, Coursera was the darling of online ed startups. Since then, it has lost its way somewhat, while Lynda.com has taken off like a rocket. Which is probably one big reason why LinkedIn chose to acquire Lynda.com (rather than Coursera) for $1.5 billion. I still think it’s possible that they could acquire a MOOC provider as well, but Udacity seems like a better fit than Coursera at this point.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: LinkedIn is the most interesting company in ed tech.

  • LinkedIn Releases College Ranking Service

    I have long thought that LinkedIn has the potential to be one of the most transformative companies in ed tech for one simple reason: They have far more cross-institutional longitudinal outcomes data than anybody else—including government agencies. Just about anybody else who wants access to career path information of graduates across universities would face major privacy and data gathering hurdles. But LinkedIn has somehow convinced hundreds of millions of users to voluntarily enter that information and make it available for public consumption. The company clearly knows this and has been working behind the scenes to make use of this advantage. I have been waiting to see what they will come up with.

    I have to say that I’m disappointed with their decision that their first foray would be a college ranking system. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that these sorts of things have zero utility, they suffer from two big and unavoidable problems. First, like any standardized test—and I mean this explicitly in the academic meaning of the term “test”—they are prone to abuse through oversimplification of their meaning and overemphasis on their significance. (It’s not obvious to me that they would be subject to manipulation by colleges the way other surveys are, given LinkedIn’s ranking method, so at least there’s that.) Second and more importantly, they are not very useful even when designed well and interpreted properly. Many students change their majors and career goals between when they choose their college and when they graduate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 80% of undergraduates change their majors at least once, and the average student changes majors three times. Therefore, telling high schools students applying to college which school is ranked best for, say, a career in accounting has less potential impact on the students’ long-term success and happiness than one might think.

    It would be more interesting and useful to have LinkedIn tackle cross-institutional questions that could help students make better decisions once they are in a particular college. What are the top majors for any given career? For example, if I want to be a bond trader on Wall Street, do I have to major in finance? (My guess is that the answer to this question is “no,” but I would love to see real data on it.) Or how about the other way around: What are the top careers for people in my major? My guess is that LinkedIn wanted to start off with something that (a) they had a lot of data on (which means something coarse-grained) and (b) was relatively simple to correlate. The questions I’m suggesting here would fit that bill while being more useful than a college ranking system (and less likely to generate institutional blow-back).

  • Say What? Buzzfeed follows up on D2L story with solid reporting

    In a post last month I questioned the growth claims that D2L was pushing to the media based on their recent massive funding round. A key part of the article was pointing out the lack of real reporting from news media.

    It is worth noting that not a single media outlet listed by EDUKWEST or quoted above (WSJ, Reuters, Bloomberg, re/code, edSurge, TheStar) challenged or even questioned D2L’s bold claims. It would help if more media outlets didn’t view their job as paraphrasing press releases.

    I should give credit where it’s due: Education reporter Molly Hensley-Clancy at Buzzfeed has done some solid reporting with her article out today.

    In response to detailed questions from BuzzFeed News about figures to back up its claims of record growth in higher education and internationally, the company released a statement to BuzzFeed News, saying “As a private company, D2L does not publicly disclose these details. The past year has been one of record growth for D2L, culminating in the recent $85 million round of financing.” A representative declined to make the company’s CEO, or any other executive, available for an interview related to the company’s growth.

    The stonewalling didn’t come as a surprise to former employees with whom BuzzFeed News spoke.

    “The picture they’re painting of growth is not accurate,” said one former employee, who left the company within the last year and asked to remain anonymous, citing his confidentiality agreement with the company. “If you look at actual metrics, they tell a different story. They’re very likely not seeing growth in higher education.”

    (more…)

  • D2L raises $85 million but growth claims defy logic

    Yesterday D2L announced a second round of investment, this time raising $85 million (a mix of debt and equity) to go with their $80 million round two years ago (see EDUKWEST for a useful roundup of news and article links). While raising $165 million is an impressive feat, does this funding give us new information on the LMS market?

    First, here are the claims by D2L as part of this round of financing, from EdSurge:

    The deal comes on the heels of what the company calls “a year of record growth in the higher education, K-12 and corporate markets.” John Baker, founder and CEO, says the company currently serves 1,100 institutions and 15 million learners–up from 850 and 10 million, respectively, at this time last year. The company also recently opened offices in Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

    That’s a 29% growth in the number of institutions and a 50% growth in the number of learners in just one year. Quite impressive if accurate.

    Yet the company went through a significant round of layoffs in late 2013 that let go more than 7% of its workforce, and according to both LinkedIn data and company statements they have had no significant growth in number of employees over the past year.  (more…)

  • An Employee View of Textbook Publishers and Ed Tech Companies

    Update: For reference, 2U has pointed out to me that they were recently recognized by Glassdoor as the 17th-best medium-sized company to work for in 2014. With an average score of 4.2 (based on 21 reviews), this puts them on top of the other ed tech companies discussed here. The only other education company on the Glassdoor best places lists is Edmentum which, oddly, only has a 3.1 average rating based on 37 reviews.

    Second Update: All the education companies that have scored well on Glassdoor are coming out of the woodwork now. W.W. Norton has pointed out to me that the have a 4.2 average rating, based on 47 reviews. That puts them tied for first among education companies (that I know of) with 2U.

    One way to get a sense of how the companies whose products you depend on are doing is to talk to their employees. This is particularly helpful at times like this, when huge changes are underway. So I thought it would be interesting to take a survey of the employee reviews on Glassdoor of some of the major companies in the industry. The results are revealing, if not entirely surprising.

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