The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically transformed the education market. E-learning – the primary sector of educational technology (EdTech) – has become vital during lockdown, as schools and universities shut their doors and 1.2 billion children were deprived of an in-person schooling experience.
Education moving online is a multifaceted trend. It includes the rise of language learning apps, online vocational education, involvement of digital tools in early education, use of video-conferencing tools for lectures and the blossoming of online MBA programmes. There are various online platforms, from top-tier universities sharing their courses to language apps and virtual tutoring. What unites all of these tools is that the use of them surged in 2020.
Some of the biggest international EdTech players include 2U (a cloud distance learning platform), Pluralsight (an online platform for education in IT), iTutorGroup (an online language-teaching platform) and Age of Learning (an online learning platform for children). The combined capitalization of these four platforms alone stands at almost $5 billion. And the giants of Big Tech, including Google, have launched their own educational offerings in an effort to provide a much-needed service while training potential future employees.
Even before the pandemic, Research and Markets estimated that the online education market would reach $350 billion by 2025. After the boom in online education last year, this number might need a reconsideration.
For instance, Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of online learning platform edX, described a 15-fold increase in new students during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Yandex Practicum – an online learning platform from the Russian tech giant Yandex that recently expanded to the US – saw an 813 percent increase in revenue in the past year. And the online learning platform Coursera raised almost $520 million amidst the pandemic with a reported $5.9 billion valuation.
Investments in EdTech generally soared last year: 2020 showed a 94 percent increase in investments in the market. Asia is the leader in that regard, accounting for 71% of global EdTech investments since 2017.
Emerging markets are also seeing this market expand. That includes Russia, where EdTech grows by almost 25 percent annually, showing a dynamic early stage of development.
Vocational education is one of the most thriving sectors in Russian online learning, being second only to the US market in terms of its growth rate. Russian EdTech player Skillbox launched the first online bachelor’s degree in the country last year and is expanding ino online vocational training.
“The future belongs to digital and IT professions, and it is very difficult for universities alone to be able to respond quickly to the constantly changing market demands and to satisfy them,” said Dmitriy Krutov, the CEO of Skillbox. “Right now we’re seeing a marked trend of traditional institutions cooperating with EdTech to develop relevant, industry-focused education programmes.”
In addition to its existing programmes, Skillbox is launching an online MBA with Saint Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management, as well as several online master’s programmes in partnership with Russian universities. Skillbox has also expanded to Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and other markets in the region.
Russian EdTech’s Skyeng announced that it also moving into the fast-growing vocational education segment by investing RUB 350 million (nearly $5 million) into creating an online university for digital professions. The new project, called Sky.pro, will use an income share agreement model under which graduates agree to pay back a percentage of their income for a fixed number of years.
Although universities around the world have slowly begun to transition back offline, the growth of EdTech is not likely to stop. Generation Z is choosing short-term courses across various institutions over a commitment to a single university, while the trend for lifelong learning is encouraging working adults and other non-traditional students to go back to school. As people steadily choose the flexibility of online services in the wake of the pandemic, one thing is clear: online learning is here to stay.
