Three more reasons why US education is ready for investment

Jake Bryant and Jimmy Sarakatsannis:

Shifts in the education landscape are opening doors for investment.

The US market for educational products and services, across K–12, higher education, and corporate learning, is more than $1.75 trillion, and growing. While that figure alone warrants attention from investors, much of this market has historically been difficult for investors to access. K–12 and higher education are largely seen as public goods for the government to provide. Corporate learning has been the responsibility of employers, which often have little appetite for innovation. For-profit companies and investors have mainly played supporting roles and have found a few opportunistic ways to provide resources where providers of learning required support.

Today, because of stagnation in learning outcomes and other shifts in the education landscape, schools and corporations are rethinking how they teach and train—opening the door for private investors and for-profit education providers. In 2015, deal activity involving education companies hit an all-time high of $7 billion (up about 25 percent from 2014), with the annual private-equity deal count remaining steady from 2014 at around 100.