Ben Wallerstein & Jacob Stieglitz:

Asia accounts for nearly half of the mobile learning revenues in the world. Thousands of hagwons, or “cram schools,” line the streets in South Korea, which has about 15 percent of the global tutoring market. Parents spend an average of $1,000 per month on private tutoring — an estimated 20 percent of the monthly cost to raise a child there. In India, 7.5 percent of consumers’ monthly spending goes toward education. Affluent Chinese households devote 9.5 percent, and the Vietnamese spend a whopping 40 percent.

The U.S. consumer-education market is, in contrast, anemic. Parents in the middle-income bracket spend just 1 percent of their expenses on education. The highest tax bracket spends 3 percent. It’s not that U.S. parents are apathetic: GreatSchools.org, which provides school ratings, is one of the nation’s most viewed websites, but search Google for “algebra help” and you may not be served a single ad. That won’t hold.

Cristiano Antonelli was one of the first researchers to use the phrase “leapfrogging” to describe the concept that countries can speedily adopt new technologies by skipping intermediate technologies used in more developed countries (e.g., copper wire). The U.S. may be poised for its own leapfrog moment as big brands and new delivery models enable consumers to experience — for the first time — supplemental learning online.