Coronavirus and the Rise of the EdTech Industry

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The current health crisis can have lasting effects on the growth of the online education sector.

Coronavirus and the Rise of the EdTech Industry
The preventive measures to contain COVID-19 have changed the landscape of the online education market. Photo: Istock
Reading time 3 minutes
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Before the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and its recently announced status of pandemic, governments, businesses, universities, and other educational institutions are taking precautionary measures. In the United States, flights to and from Europe have been suspended for 30 days. Italy has given the order to close all businesses except pharmacies and supermarkets, Spain has declared a state of alarm, closing schools, universities, libraries, and activities that are not of first necessity.

“The same chaos that the virus is causing in countless industries is also making us focus on the possibilities of the online world for everyone from graduate students to my three-year-old daughter, who could begin her online education.”

For their part, American businesses such as Walmart, Apple, and Olive Garden, are updating their policies regarding days of disability from illness. Also, more and more universities have joined the effort to stop the virus from advancing. Harvard, Washington State University, Universidad Pontificia de Perú, Tecnológico de Monterrey, and other universities in the Americas have asked students to leave campus. Some have suspended classes and moved to distance education options supported by technology, but is this feasible? How would this influence the higher-level educational experience on a large scale?

What do experts say?

The geosocial landscape produced by the natural course of the pandemic is not negative everywhere: China, the country of origin of the virus, begins to see the effects of a recession, 600 thousand teachers and 50 million students already have returned to classes… online. According to Robert Hsiung, CEO of the Chinese division of the EdTech company Emeritus, the conversation about educational technologies as an option in the face of a health crisis like this, no longer revolves around whether they work or not, but how quickly and efficiently the technologies can be implemented. “The same chaos that the virus is causing in countless industries is also making us focus on the possibilities of the online world for everyone from graduate students to my three-year-old daughter, who could begin her online education,” explains the entrepreneur to the Hechinger Report. Hsiung added that there is currently a massive demand for high-quality online experiences; all businesses at all levels are working to create new solutions for online lessons. This is opening the way for the creation of new companies with the potential to become leaders in online education, especially when extraordinary circumstances, such as a health crisis, demand it.

This can lead to permanent changes in educational strategies, even after the pandemic cedes. For Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, once universities develop the ability to meet the needs of their students via remote technology, there is not much reason to return to previous models. In the same vein, John Katzman commented that such events are the ones that make the line between face-to-face and virtual educational experiences increasingly tenuous. But outside of theory, who is developing these educational projects?

The new players in the EdTech arena

The distance education technology sector has had explosive growth in recent months. The recruitment levels of educational technology firms have been so high that the creation of 3,000 new jobs is projected in the sector. The investment in the Edtech sector amounts to 18.66 billion dollars globally, counting investors such as Facebook, Matrix Partners, and GGV Capital. India is one of the countries where the most significant growth of EdTech firms is taking place. Ronnie Screwvala, the owner of upGrad, reported that his company’s staff doubled this year and that he projects tripling it by 2021. In the last two months alone, when news of a possible epidemic with pandemic potential began to spread, the company hired more than 200 graduates and post-graduates from 20 different universities.

Simplilearn, with offices in San Francisco and Bengaluru, grew to serve 3 million users in the United States and other international markets; the company projects increasing by 20% more during 2020. Vendantu initiated the concept of real-time personalized tutoring and has amassed earnings of $85 million, shaping itself to quadruple its growth and adding 30% to 40% more employees this year. Coursera, one of the most established educational technology suppliers, was already valued at a trillion dollars even before the first coronavirus outbreak. As part of the effort to operate the resource of distance education as a global response to the health crisis, it has begun to offer a wide variety of free courses to universities that close as a preventative measure to contain the virus. The universities that register for this online service will have access to the teaching materials offered by Coursera until July 31 of this year, with the option of extensions according to the relevant risk assessments. The students that are enrolled in individual courses up to July 31 will have access to the content free of charge until September of this year.

In the face of the imminent closure of universities around the world to observe health protection measures, the technological progress since the last pandemic, H1N1, is becoming increasingly evident. Today, technical resources are available to maintain not just one or two online classes but to provide the structure for distance education to entire universities. When the health crisis gives way, these structures will remain and mark the step to a breakthrough in the way we deliver learning.

Sofía García-Bullé

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0