An Underused Tool For Job Recovery

As the U.S. economy continues to hiccup, large-scale entrepreneurship is a badly needed remedy. In transitioning hundreds of thousands of people to self-employment and job creation through entrepreneurship, incubators look like an extremely helpful tool. But we need to produce more of the most effective incubators. >>>

Featured Videos

DeVry And Apollo Struggling, With A Few Bright Spots

According to research by Ambient Insight, the global market for online education at schools and businesses is projected to grow from $32.1 billion in 2010 to $50 billion by 2015. Despite rosy projections, tighter government regulations have slowed new student registrations at many for-profit companies. The government restrictions aim to control some of the ways in which for-profit educators have gotten students to sign up for courses. For-profit courses can be very expensive, and some have failed to deliver on their promise of better employment opportunities. Further, student loan default rates are an estimated three times higher for for-profit school loans compared with loans taken by students enrolling in nonprofit schools.

>>>

Sramana Mitra’s Talk At TEDxHarkerSchool

Here is the recording of the speech Sramana Mitra gave to an audience of students interested in entrepreneurship at TEDxHarkerSchool in October:

Sramana Mitra Speaking At TEDxHarkerSchool In San Jose On October 22

TEDxHarkerSchool is an event for high school and college students arranged to help foster youth entrepreneurship through inspiration and learning from successful entrepreneurs. Sramana Mitra’s talk is entitled, “The World Is Your Oyster.” Other speakers include Guy Kawasaki, Kevin Surace, Karl Mehta, and Rahim Fazal. You can find more details and register today here.

As Enrollment Declines, Apollo Group And DeVry Look For Expansion Strategies

Driven by the tighter government regulations, declining student enrollments in the for-profit education sector continued to be a cause for concern. A quarter since the gainful employment regulation came into being, new student enrollment has fallen by more than 15% over the year. To help drive growth, the industry’s players are looking out to acquisitions.

>>>

The Cost Of Higher Education: A Proposed Solution

The cost of higher education has become a hot topic, especially in light of the outrageous levels of youth unemployment in America and Europe. The average price of tuition at American four-year colleges, in constant 2007 dollars, climbed from $8,552 in 1980 to $20,154 in 2009. Outstanding student loan stands at over a trillion dollars at the moment, and thought leaders like Peter Thiel have taken aggressive positions against education bought at these prices.

I happen to be a believer in higher education, but the cost issue is a real one, and it needs a solution. This post is a reflection on the subject.

>>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Monarch Media, Santa Cruz, California

Online education and training continue to grow in popularity. It costs less for students to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees online. Employers, too, save money by arranging for employees to take training courses online and on their own time.

Monarch Media has provided e-learning solutions, including online and mobile courses, educational software development, learning management systems, and instructional design for more than 13 years. The Santa Cruz–based company serves a client base across both the private and public sectors. The top target segments are educational publishers, universities, government agencies, nonprofits and corporate training departments, and the company follows a traditional business-to-business approach. Within the educational publishing market, Monarch Media focuses on serving large and mid-sized companies ranging from the largest in the industry, such as Cengage Learning, Elsevier and the National Institutes of Health to specialty publishers like ETR Associates, a provider of specialized public health training materials. Monarch Media also plans to launch new product lines of skills training courses for mobile delivery.

>>>

Competition In Learning Management Heats Up

In my most recent post on the talent management sector, I said that talent management companies were increasingly leaning toward learning systems. Taleo (NASDAQ:TLEO) acquired Learn.com and another talent management vendor, SumTotal Systems, acquired Learn.com’s rival, GeoLearning. All these acquisitions in the learning space had left SuccessFactors (NASDAQ:SFSF) with no learning partner and forced the company to make its own acquisition in the space. Let’s take a closer look.

>>>

1M/1M: Video Message Based On Recent Talks

I have been giving a lot of talks lately, and interacting with hundreds of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship development leaders around the world. Here is an YouTube video synthesizing some of the core points of these discussions on bootstrapping, positioning, and lean startups:

1M/1M: Online Education Module Of The Curriculum Is Ready

Readers, we have just released the online education module of the 1M/1M premium curriculum. In it, you will find a synthesis of the various trends and opportunities that I see at this point, along with case studies and video lectures. The opportunity is clearly huge in multiple dimensions, and I am convinced that many businesses can and will be built in this segment over this decade.