Degreed Buys Its Former CEO's New Company and Puts Him to Lead a New Strategy

Degreed.com announced this month the acquisition of the talent academy platform, Learn In, and the return of Co-Founder David Blake as CEO. The transactional amount of this acquisition — the fourth of Degreed — was not disclosed. Interestingly, David Blake was the Co-Founder and CEO of Learn In. According to the company, "Blake’s plans for the future of Degreed were divergent with the current direction, so an amicable decision was made that he return to the company as CEO and execute that vision." Dan Levin, who has been Degree's CEO since April 2021, will step down, apparently in an "amicable" transition of power. "Just as Degreed created the LXP market, Learn In has begun for talent academies," said David Blake, the new CEO of Degreed. "Now together, we have the product and technology to help our customers deliver business capabilities at scale with continued innovation in the learning and skills space." Learn In helps companies establish internal talent academies, supplementing the features of Degreed LXP (Learning Experience Platform), including a prepaid learning stipend card, a skills marketplace, a custom program builder, a tuition benefits manager, and dedicated coaching. "As Degreed and Learn In come together, it will offer a more integrated opportunity for organizations like ours to engage employees and build a broader range of skills—from curious, ‘in-the-moment’ learning through to deeper reskilling and credentials," said Gina Jeneroux, Chief Learning Officer at BMO Financial Group. According to TechCrunch, "Blake said that he disclosed all conflicts and recused himself from representing Degreed during the negotiation process. He solely represented himself as the CEO of Learn In, while Degreed’s board of directors represented the other side. Even still, it’s hard to completely extract bias from any financial deal, particularly one as tangly as this — the two companies have shared investors including GSV, Firework Ventures and Album VC." Degreed raised $32 million in June 2020 in a round led by Owl Ventures. Its total capital raised to date is $182 million. Learn In launched in April 2020 with $3 million in seed financing and attracted $13 million in April 2022.

2U Inc. Receives an Offer of $1 Billion with a Premium of 50%

Amgen Foundation Will Invest $30M on Open edX-Based LabXchange Platform

Web3 Learning and Talent UK's Neol Attracts $5.2 Million from Investors

Americans Support Student Loan Forgiveness Up to $10,000

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the government should prioritize making college more affordable over forgiving existing student loans, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll. Meanwhile, a narrow majority of Americans support forgiving up to $10,000 in federal student loans. But support wanes for a larger amount. In detail, the main findings point out to the following: A majority (55%) of Americans support forgiving up to $10,000 of a person’s student loan debt. Fewer Americans support forgiving up to $50,000 (47%) in student loans and forgiving all student loan debt (41%). Roughly four in ten Americans support extending the current federal loan pause without forgiving any loan debt (42%) and ending the loan pause now without forgiving any loan debt (41%). A wide majority of those with student loans support each of the three proposals asked about: forgiving $10,000 of student debt (84%), $50,000 of student debt (78%), and all student debt (68%). Americans and those with student loans alike prefer the government to make college cheaper than forgive student loans, according to the poll. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that if the government does forgive some student loan debt, it should be for graduate and undergraduate debt, as opposed to just undergraduate debt (30%). A majority of Americans with student loan debt say they have not made any payments since the pause began. Instead, most say they have taken this opportunity to catch a financial break. Nearly half (47%) of Americans with student loan debt say that the federal student loan pause has improved their mental health. This poll — conducted over 1,022 Americans between June 3 and 5, 2022, with an oversample of more than 400 student loan borrowers — took place as President Biden plans an announcement on federal student loan forgiveness.

NASA Launches a Community and Education Initiative to Accelerate Open Science

NASA introduced its Open-Source Science initiative (OSSI) last month, which intends to build an open science community over the next decade and share software, data, and knowledge (algorithms, papers, documents, ancillary information) in the scientific process. One of the key components of the program is TOPS (Transform to Open Science), which provides visibility, advocacy, and community resources. "From 2022 to 2027, TOPS will accelerate the engagement of the scientific community in open science practices through events and activities," explained NASA. Next year will be designated as the "Year of Open Science." The goal will be to "spark change and inspire open science engagement through events and activities that will shift the current paradigm." One of the projects will be an Open Science online learning platform, which will deliver courses about this subject for internal and public use. The launch of the first learning modules is scheduled for October 2022. [Disclosure: IBL Education, the parent company of this news service, has been selected to develop that educational platform using Open edX technology after an RFP process.]   I'm delighted to be working with @theAGU and @ibleducation to deploy an online learning platform and launch the initial catalog of #OpenScience mini-courses for the #NASATOPS mission! https://t.co/gjYPamTEBc — Lorena Barba (@LorenaABarba) June 8, 2022 Video: Keynote from Prof. Lorena Barba on Open Science

German Learning Platform CoachHub Raises Another $200 Million

Open edX & Learning Platforms Newsletter | May – June 2022: 2U, Coursera, Moodle, Degreed, Cornerstone, Canvas LMS, Class.com…

Online Learning Newsletter | May – June 2022: Andreessen Horowitz, Metaverse, UC San Diego, 1EdTech Consortium, Universities…

A Report Shows that Businesses Must Dramatically Improve their Open Source Software Security

Many organizations are currently ill-prepared to effectively manage security risks resulting from the use of open source applications, according to new research from The Linux Foundations and Snyk, a leading company in developer security. Organizations also lack strategies to address application vulnerabilities arising from code reuse. The report, titled The State of Open Source Security, was released today during the "Open Source Summit North America", which will attract thousands of executives of the industry to a packed conference in Austin, Texas, this week [The report in PDF]. The study suggests industry naivete about the state of open source security today. Specifically, the report — based on a survey of over 550 respondents and data scanned 1.3B open source projects — notes: Over four out of every ten (41%) organizations don't have high confidence in their open source software security. Less than half (49%) of organizations have a security policy for OSS development or usage (and this number is a mere 27% for medium-to-large companies). Three in ten (30%) organizations without an open source security policy openly recognize that no one on their team is directly addressing open source security. The average application development project has 49 vulnerabilities and 80 direct dependencies (open source code called by a project). The time it takes to fix vulnerabilities in open source projects has steadily increased, more than doubling from 49 days in 2018 to 110 days in 2021. Forty percent of all vulnerabilities were found in transitive dependencies. Only 18% of respondents said they are confident of the controls they have in place for their transitive dependencies. "While open source software undoubtedly makes developers more efficient and accelerates innovation, the way modern applications are assembled also makes them more challenging to secure," said Brian Behlendorf, General Manager at Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). "Software developers today have their own supply chains – instead of assembling car parts, they are assembling code by patching together existing open source components with their unique code. While this leads to increased productivity and innovation, it has also created significant security concerns," said Matt Jarvis, Director of Developer Relations at Snyk. The goal of the report is to raise awareness and leverage these findings to further educate and equip developers, empowering them to continue to build fast, while staying secure.

Moodle Commercial Provider Open LMS Integrates Zoom-Built In Tool Class.com

Moodle-based Open LMS announced this month a partnership with Class.com to offer an integrated tool to K-12, Higher Ed and the workplace. This solution will allow Open LMS users to launch synchronous sessions without leaving its environment with the Zoom-built in platform Class.com. "With this partnership, we also aim to simplify the technology purchasing journey," said Open LMS. "The fact that Moodle is open source meant that the Class team could experiment with it in various ways and that they could work with Open LMS to leverage the power of the Moodle platform," explained Phill Miller, Managing Director at Open LMS, in a blog post. Class recently purchased Anthology's Blackboard Collaborate virtual conferencing tool, which is one of the products that Open LMS provides as integrated technology.      