OPPORTUTNIY DEEP DIVE

The global education market is slated to reach an estimated $8 trillion in value by 2030 from $6 trillion in 2022.

Education is the great equalizer. But access to quality learning has been far from equitable, resulting in severe disparities in wealth, economic growth and advancement across the world.

Today thanks to the use of technology, especially the access to AI technology, education is experiencing the biggest evolution since the printing press was introduced in the 15th century.

Public spending in the education sector is reducing overtime and showing critical signs of failures. One of the most evident aspects of this failure is the extremely challenging skills gaps many companies are facing in the market.

SKILLS GAP

According to Korn Ferry’s “Future of Work,” the skills gap is a trillion-dollar problem. The U.S. alone will miss out on $1.748 trillion in revenue by 2030. This is a significant amount of money to leave on the table for companies already scrambling to reinvent themselves in a post-pandemic, remote-friendly world.

Some companies ( Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc..) are leveraging their market dominance positions by increasing the salaries of developers and highly skilled technical people, but most of the companies today are struggling to hire, and upskilling the workforce due ineffective way of measuring the skill gaps, and finding good quality effective upskilling programs.

Despite the explosion of EdTech investments, and the multitude of courses and tools available, today only few companies take education and upskilling seriously.

The acceleration of the mismatch between the skills of the job position and the candidates, is forcing many companies to start their own internal training programs.

VERTICAL EDUCATION

Often, these programs are tailored to their workforce needs, and we believe that sooner or later, every company will need to have an education strategy.

In this scenario, and as this process develops, in order to deliver real value, edutech organizations need to start verticalizing their focus, especially when it comes to adult education.

We can not expect to simply take an “old model”, bring it online and hope that it will work.

Traditional education platforms, and large education aggregators, like coursera and udemy, have opened the market opportunity, now is time for vertical players to reinvent how education, or better said, industry-focus learning solutions will be designed.