Thought Leaders in Online Education: Quizlet CEO Matthew Glotzbach (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If you were to rank subjects which are the biggest draws, what would those be?

Matthew Glotzbach: Over half of the college students in the US use Quizlet on a regular basis. Over two-thirds of the high school students in the US use us. We see a wide distribution of different types of uses. Language learning is still a strong category for us, but by no means is it a majority. We get used in a lot of sciences, both in the hard sciences as well as the social sciences.

Because of the flexibility and the open nature of the platform, it’s really a wide breadth of usage. The core academic subjects make up a large portion of our usage. I’m always challenged to find a subject that someone isn’t using Quizlet to study for.

Sramana Mitra: What are open areas as you look around in the online learning space? If you were starting a company today, where would you position around?

Matthew Glotzbach: Education is changing dramatically and very quickly, especially post-secondary education. In the last few months, the global pandemic has accelerated that change. That business model of post-secondary education is really being challenged.

An area that I see very little effort being put into is this idea of what the future of credentialing looks like. The way we thought of an academic credential is you go to an accredited four-year institution. You take all the requisite courses and then you receive this bundled credential that says you went to this institution and met all the prerequisites.

Although I don’t see that going away, I see a huge need for micro-credentialing. There are a lot of people now who are starting to provide the learning experiences and the training to give someone those skills and abilities. There’s an amazing product and technology opportunity to be the new credentialing body for those credentials.

If I didn’t go to a four-year institution, how do I prove to an employer that I have the skills in a way that makes me employable? How do I go and say, “I actually go to a traditional university, but I’m going to do it online. Also, I’m going to do some self-learning.” I want to put all those into a unified stack that says I’m qualified to take a job at a tech company.

We’re just at the beginning of that. Fast forward years from now, that will exist. Right now, we’re relying on the old traditional systems of credentialing or we’re relying on the employers in the case of job readiness skills to test and verify that someone knows something. 

Sramana Mitra: I agree. This is a very precise requirement. I was thinking along the lines that you’re talking about. We have a huge acceleration due to this COVID situation in retail workers losing their jobs. A lot of that is not going to come back.

At the same time, there is tremendous need in the healthcare field, whether it’s taking care of elderly people or nursing. It’s not doctors. The training requirements are a lot less intense than what a doctor would need. 

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Quizlet CEO Matthew Glotzbach
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