Why private companies are crucial to innovations in online education
Chip Paucek
February 16, 2023
The CEO of 2U, a company that helps colleges run online programs and owns the edX platform, responds to criticism against his sector.
As President Biden said in his recent State of the Union address, “Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us.” Yet in the past two decades, the U.S. has fallen from second to 16th compared to other countries in the percentage of adults ages 25 to 34 who’ve earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.
This shows the status quo is not a recipe for solving the near-term labor shortage or engineering the innovations needed to be competitive globally long-term.
As the world undergoes massive technological innovation, the traditional approach of relying solely on government-run institutions is no longer sufficient to meet the diverse needs and demands of the 21st century. We must not only allow — but insist — that our leading technology companies deliver innovation to education.
