Inside the EdTech Reform Circus

Today, I begin what I hope will be a useful look inside the circus of technology-based higher education reform. My goal is to see higher education through the eyes of education technology evangelists, corporations, startup companies, innovation gurus, consultocracy elites, reform funders, and investment capitalists. What are the main issues in higher education? What are their proposed solutions? Who are the major players? How are they related and whom do they represent? The idea is to better understand how this influential group is shaping the higher education reform agenda, map the ties that bind them, and unpack the ideologies that guide them.

My plan is to begin attending the various conferences, summits, meetings, and panel discussions devoted to identifying problems in higher education and presenting "innovative" solutions. This should be relatively easy for the time being, as many of the take place in the District. I'll start next week by attending an event called "Hack the University," co-sponsored by the New America Foundation and Arizona State University. For the record, I'm not opposed to change, and I don't believe colleges and universities are perfect. I also recognize that there are individuals active in this space who genuinely care about the future of higher education. However, I am concerned about how the conversation is dominated by individuals with no real experience with the realities of higher education work, many of whom stand to benefit, either personally or professionally, depending on how the reform agenda is framed. For example, a tech company that assigns badges based on mastery of certain competencies is likely to support any number of events critiquing the use of credit hours as a metric of learning.

I decided to take on this project last night, after scrolling through the list of speakers for the Education Innovation Summit. This is not the first time I have walked down this path, but I'm hoping to stick with it. The reality is that this is a huge undertaking, a bit like trying to wrap your arms around an elephant. To help launch the project, I'm beginning here a list of the major players, which I'll continue to update.

Education Technology Evangelists:
Jeff Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education
Anant Agarwal, President of edX
Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University
Daphne Koller, Coursera
Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Henry Christensen, Harvard University
Daphne Koller, Coursera

Corporations:
Kaplan
Pearson
Blackboard
DeVry Education Group
Apollo Education Group
Desire2Learn

Startup Companies:
2U
Codecademy
Udacity
Coursera
edX
Khan Academy
inBloom
Knewton

Innovation Hubs:

Arizona State University

Consultocracy Elites:

McKinsey and Company

Reform Funders:

Gates Foundation

Lumina Foundation
Thiel Foundation

Investment Capitalists:
GSV Capital

Think Tanks:
Clayton Christensen Institute

Experiments:

The Minerva Project