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The Triple Failure of 2U, EdX, and Axim
- manav 2y agoWouldn't it be 2U's $800M mistake?
- ClarityJones 2y agoOr, perhaps the lender(s).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jollofricepeas 2y agoWhat a great write up! The EdX brand was amazing. It’s sad what it’s become. I don’t know too much about classcentral but I hope that the blog post was written in the interest of seeing MOOCs thrive.
- raybb 2y agoI've been following classcentral for a few years. They make money from affiliate commissions but as far as I can tell it hasn't stopped them from producing decent quality coverage of the MOOC industry. I like their occasional writeups of new MOOCs coming out though it's been a while since I took one because I'm currently wrapping up a full time masters.
- orsenthil 2y agoExcellent write up, Dhawal Shah. You have been bringing the happenings of the MOOC world to general public in a very good way.
- lupire 2y agoEdX sold for $800M and is running an open platform? Sounds like it was incredibly successful.
- yieldcrv 2y ago> In 2021, the unprofitable 2U bought edX, an unprofitable non-profit, for a staggering $800 million How do you sell a non-profit? Or, more specifically, how do you purchase to gain control? Board members aren't supposed to sell board seats or do anything for self enrichment
- red_phone 2y agoI don’t know how this transaction went down, but it’s very likely they didn’t purchase the organization itself, but rather its assets. The surviving organization would then dispose of the resulting cash in a mission-oriented fashion and shutdown thereafter.
- yieldcrv 2y agoYeah, the article’s phrasing makes it ambiguous I like that non profits can be asset stripped, I just wouldn’t call the thing sold to be a non-profit
- ethbr1 2y agoI gather that non-profit board membership doesn't pay very well. Consequently, when the non-profit in question has something valuable (like market share or branding), there are some misaligned incentives.
- jrochkind1 2y agoBoard members at a non-profit cannot profit from sales of corporate assets. if that's what you mean.
- ethbr1 2y agoThere's direct payments, and then there's the infinite number of ways to receive indirect compensation.
- jrochkind1 2y ago
- wrentopher 2y agoWorked for 2U. It was the most incomprehensibly incompetent place you could imagine. Terrible people with zero real skills all backstabbing each other.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoThis sounds increasingly common in US corp culture, it was reasonably common when I worked there (when times were good) but perhaps now even more so.
- hilux 2y agoI interviewed a few years ago. Did not get an offer. It all seemed very white, a very salesy culture, and with very inflated titles.
- zo1 2y agoHow would you feel if I complained about a company being a bit "too brown"? Since when did we normalize this subtle racism towards white people?
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoi think he's referring to the collar (not the skin) as in white collar work vs blue or brown collar.
- zo1 2y agoValid point - if that was the intention then my bad, bit of an overreaction.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI really don’t think this is the case
- hilux 2y agoThe US is a white-majority country where the power and money are disproportionately in the hands of white people. When a company (in education!) that makes lots of noise about diversity obviously favors hiring white people, it's noteworthy. If we were in some brown-majority country where white people were excluded from money and power, yes, that would be noteworthy. Call it out! The US, despite what Trump tells his MAGA followers, is not that country.
- fsckboy 2y ago2U's due diligence might have missed that they weren't getting Walter Lewin's popular material, he's not bankrupt, still going strong!! https://www.youtube.com/@lecturesbywalterlewin.they9259/videos https://www.youtube.com/@lecturesbywalterlewin.they9259/vide... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWnfJ0-xXRE&list=PLyQSN7X0ro203puVhQsmCj9qhlFQ-As8e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWnfJ0-xXRE&list=PLyQSN7X0ro...
- grobbyy 2y ago2U did no due diligence. A minimum might have been to contact the author of the platform to check on IP issues (or anything else). This never happened. Lots of other things never happened either. What they bought had little resemblance to what they thought they were buying. They got fleeced by MIT and Harvard. Wasn't the first and won't be the last. There's a sucker born every minute
- ecshafer 2y agoI don't really like how any of the MOOCs run, and I think my issue is that they are not run like universities, they are run like job training centers. They all have the Same courses and the same degrees. Other than a few actual schools like Georgia Tech with OMSCS which actually seems to be trying to innovate to give degrees online at a fraction of the on-campus cost, they also don't seem to be trying to actually give degrees. A successful MOOC in my mind isn't one that will have some credits for an online certification for programming or nursing that can transfer to a Real school. A successful MOOC is one where I can take a course on Ulysses or Semantics or Mathematics or Plato or whatever just like I could in a real undergrad, but without the same financial and time constraints. I want to be able to spend $5000 taking classes that I find interesting, and accidentally have an English degree Or spend $5000 and really focus and get my degree in X.
- a2tech 2y agoWell I can tell you that the university of Michigan has exactly what you want. And the professors teach the same class in person as well as online (with some modification to fit the format).
- derbOac 2y ago> my issue is that they are not run like universities, they are run like job training centers I think part of the tricky thing is that this is what HR/employer/MBA-type cultures increasingly see a degree as. So why not just go right to that? I don't agree with this perspective, to be clear, but if you look at it from a certain viewpoint it's not too difficult to see why there would be pressure to approach with that tack. You might even go a step further and argue that if these things are failing as the article states, it might say something about the viability of that hyperspecialized perspective on degrees. Or maybe not.
- mu53 2y agoI think the only reason this doesn't happen is economics. If someone were to "fix" the education system and start giving out bachelors for less money, the value of bachelors degrees would go down. In part, because more people would have them, but also because schools have systems to prevent abuse such as fraud. If you just want to take a class, there are plenty of MOOCs that give the lectures, exercises, and tests out for free. Another reason is that different universities may emphasize different things as part of the curriculum. Lets say a philosophy degree at harvard emphasizes Greek philosophers, but a philosophy degree at UT emphasizes post modern philosophers. Taking a class at one doesn't transfer to another. Mixing classes at different universities simply doesn't work because you weren't educated at the university so why should you get a degree from that university? The way I see it is that if you just want to get educated the resources are out there, but if you want degree, you gotta go to school.
- Marciakhan 2y ago[dead]
- HDThoreaun 2y agoA bit harsh on axim I think. I'd like to see some details about where the money has gone other than "grants" before declaring it a failure.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoI agree it could have been more detailed, but sitting on 7/8ths of your money with seemingly no plans does not inspire confidence.
- grobbyy 2y agoI don't. The place is full of worst thieves and con artists from edX, and very few people who are competent or care.
- HDThoreaun 2y agoI'd like to hear more about this and how you know it.
- chis 2y agoMOOCs have provided incredible value to society and it's unfortunate that we're only able to view them through the lens of profit/loss. I wish that universities would have committed to providing these products despite cost just as a halo project to improve their public image.
- PaywallBuster 2y agotime for Axim buy back edx for 5 cent on the dollar
- insane_dreamer 2y agoif the original eDx can take the $800M and make a new open and free ed content platform (like the original idea of MOOCs before vultures like 2U starting trying to monetize it), then I'd say its a win for Harvard and MIT. 2U going bankrupt may also be a win.
- kapitanjakc 2y agoOpen edX is available. Although it's just a platform, you'd need to create your own courses.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYeah, they'd have to use the $800M to repopulate it with content.
- DanielVZ 2y agoThere is a ton of content in multiple platforms powered by Open edX. Huge initiatives and universities around the world are using it.
- tkgally 2y agoCan anybody who has enrolled in an online-only degree program comment on the experience? I retired last year from teaching full-time at a conventional university. All of my teaching was in-person until the last few years, which were online because of the pandemic. My impression, after I got used to the new format, was that online is fine for small discussion-based seminars but that it is harder to keep students engaged in larger classes, especially students who are new to university study. I really liked the potential of online at first—it was exciting to lead meaningful academic discussions among students located in several countries—but as time passed I started to wonder about how well it can really work for university education.
- 2snakes 2y agoI am halfway through an online degree in ICT. We had a Instructional Design course that went over the differences. There is a textbook that has a chapter on it called Trends in Instructional Design but it is pricey. My position is adult learning works better online to reorganize cognitive schemas but children benefit from social learning theory. It is something like 1-5% complete MOOCs, they really need some kind of personal feedback. But generative AI may change this too. Look at Math Academy for example (Skycak has a book about it) (and they don't use gen AI for the tutoring either). https://www.justinmath.com/books/ https://www.justinmath.com/books/
- wodenokoto 2y agoI didn't know edx was bought by a company that went on to go bankrupt. I have two courses on edx that I consider exceptional, and worry I might lose access to them. What are your thoughts on that?
- hintymad 2y agoI used to take a lot of courses on cousera and EdX. I still take some here and there, but not as many as before. Some of the courses are amazing and unbelievably rewarding, like Daphne Koller's Probabilistic Graphical Models, Robert Sedgewick's Analytical Combinatorics, and Gerald Sussman's course on system optimizations. I'm very grateful for such learning opportunities. Unfortunately over time, I also found that these courses had diminishing returns for the following reasons: - Due to the nature of MOOC, the assignments are largely either multiple-choice questions or programming assignments that merely asked students to fill in some blanks in some functions (there are a few exceptions of course). What a descent US university does really well is challenging students with tough yet insightful and inspiring assignments. That's how students learn deeply and retain the knowledge, at least for me. Merely listening to lectures and ticking off a few ABCDs hardly helps real learning. - Lack of feedback. A university course assigns TAs, gives tutorials and office hours, grades assignments with detailed feedbacks, and it is so much easier to form study groups and have high bandwidth discussions. MOOCs try their best to offer such help, but they don't work as well or at least not as conveniently. - Many courses are watered down. For instance, Andrew Ng's ML course on Coursera is far less rigorous than that (229? I forgot) offered in Stanford? The course is great for students to gain some intuition, but I'm not sure if it's good enough for one to build solid ML foundations.
- mFixman 2y agoI completely agree that trying to get an education/certification model with no feedback and simple, robotic questions is completely useless. What's even worse is that almost none of the MOOCs used the strengths from online classes. There are other ways to learn than a hour-long video of a person talking to a webcam. It's funny how a big part of Andrew Ng's classes is waiting for him to write text with mouse as if he were using the world's worst whiteboard; he could have prepared properly-drawn figures in advance.
- mannycalavera42 2y agostudents are more engaged with the lesson when the teacher handwrites compared to when teacher uses slides / ready-made material
- lynx23 2y agoAnd, almost to demonstrate the digital divide, almost every MOOC there is lacking true Accessibility, therefore making it even harder for blind and visually impaired people to piggy-back on existing education infrastructure.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- mdavid626 2y agoNot suspicious at all. Buying it for 800M and then going out of business. Good deal for edX.
- alecco 2y agoAttention span is dropping like a stone. I think MOOCs should re-format more like Tik Tok and web video games. Maybe have an interactive AI professor as a guide.
- momo_O 2y agoDeep learning requires attention span. I fear that shifting to a TikTok style education is just another lead towards an Idiocracy.
- jakozaur 2y agoThe title is misleading, it may suggest Harvard or MIT lost $800M. In fact, Harvard and MIT invested $30M each and sold EdX for $800M to 2U: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-06-29-2u-buys-edx-for-800m-in-surprise-end-to-nonprofit-mooc-provider-started-by-mit-and-harvard https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-06-29-2u-buys-edx-for-800m... So, likely, Harvard and MIT made some money. It's 2U who lost the money. It's the public that suffered from the loss of EdX. <sarcasm>As hedge funds with schools attached, they are doing extremely well.</sarcasm>
- whoitwas 2y agoRIP. I always wondered what was going on with edX. They were great back in the day. I was introduced to the Stanford CS curriculum through them. At least MIT OCW lives on! Don't see that going anywhere ... unless somehow they sell to some shitty private company and invest the profit into nothing.
- the__alchemist 2y agoMitX math and science classes are (were?) outstanding. The few I tried from other participating universities were a grade below in quality. Then EdX/MitX just... stopped publishing new content. I learned (re-learned?) math and science from these and Khan; fundamentally changed my life. Too good of a resource to last? At least Khan's still kicking.
- regisb 2y ago(Copy-pasting here my post comment) As a member of the Open edX technical oversight committee, and a long time core contributor, I’d like to comment on the future of Open edX — the open source project. I’m not an employee of Axim or 2U though, so I can’t say anything about their plans. As OP explained, Axim is the only “cash-rich entity” to have emerged after the edX acquisition. They retained control of the open source Open edX project, and are now in charge of its maintenance and improvement. That is with the support of many open source contributors, of course. For those who don’t know, Open edX is the piece of software on which runs edX.org, but also MITx and many other open online learning platforms around the world. It’s a big software project that has managed to carve a niche in a complex ecosystem. The analysis that Axim is mostly a grant-giving organisation is very far from the reality. Yes, Axim is allocating part of its endowment to grants, though I don’t have much insight into this aspect of their mission. What I do know, is that Axim is also investing a very substantial amount of time and money in the development of the open source project, and that is no trivial feat. You can make your own opinion by checking the project activity on GitHub and the Open edX forum. To put things simply, the open source project is undergoing an important transition where we have fewer dedicated engineers (because of the layoffs at 2U) but much better project management and focus (because the project roadmap is no longer dictated by edX). There’s also a lot of internal debate of where the project should be headed, strategically speaking (I have my own opinion, which you can find elsewhere). None of this would be possible without Axim and its financial independence. This transition is long and complicated, and it’s not one we can accelerate just by throwing money at it. Also, I like to think of education as a complex ecosystem that improves in incremental steps. AI and personalised learning might play a role in that process, but they are most certainly not a panacea. It would be meaningless to invest these $735 million in such a narrow scope. Instead, it makes much more sense to to build a stable foundation for the future of open online learning. In a nutshell: don’t give up on Open edX just yet, the best things are yet to come :)
- raybb 2y agoWhere can I find your opinion on how the project should be headed?
- 2y ago