House Democrats Passed a Massive Spending Bill that Included Billions for Higher Ed

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed congressional Democrats' sweeping $1.85 trillion climate and social spending bill by a vote of 220 to 213. No Republicans voted for the legislation, dubbed as the Build Back Better Act (BBB). Representative Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat to vote against it. The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it's expected to undergo changes. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said the chamber "will act as quickly as possible." In addition to a large investment in clean energy on tax credits, the BBB legislation includes substantial funding to universal pre-K, provides child care subsidies covering 20 million children, and extends an expanded child tax credit for one more year. It also includes billions of dollars in new investments for higher ed: • $550 increase to the maximum Pell Grant, • $2.35 billion for Black, Tribal, and Hispanic universities, • $500 million for college completion and retention grants, • $20 billion for workforce development. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona [in the picture above] said in a statement that the passed act will be "transformative." He added: — "Free universal pre-K and dramatically improved access to child care, so all our children can start their learning journeys from the same starting line." — "Increased resources for HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic Serving Institutions and other institutions that unlock opportunities for students of color and unleash their potential in our communities." — "Expanded access to affordable college with increased Pell grants for anyone who dreams of getting a degree." — "A stronger workforce pipeline with workforce development resources, for better pathways to the middle class."

2U Eliminates the Annual Fees for Current edX Consortium Members

A Family-Owned, Private University in Spain Builds a Campus in a Modern Skyscraper

Harvard's Endowment Increases $11.3B to a Whopping $53.2B, Despite the Pandemic

Andrew Ng-Backed Education Company Workera.ai Raises $16 Million

The Palo Alto-based learning platform Workera.ai announced it raised $16 million in Series A. The funding was led by New Enterprise Associates and included existing investors Owl Ventures and AI Fund, as well as luminaries in the AI field such as Richard Socher, Pieter Abbeel, Lake Dai, and Mehran Sahami. To date, the Californian start-up has secured a total of $21 million, including a seed round of $5 million last October. Since the last quarter of 2020, the company claims that it has acquired over 30 customers, including Siemens, across industries like professional services, medical devices, and energy. Founded in 2020, Workera.ai offers personalized learning plans through targeted resources based on the current level of a person’s proficiency to close the skills gap. It tests and maps out with AI and machine learning the skill sets within a company, so the client knows what they have. The start-up says that its library has more than 3,000 micro-skills and personalized learning plans. The founders of Workera, Kian Katanforoosh, and James Lee, COO, previously worked with Andrew Ng, Coursera co-founder and creator of education start-up deeplearning.ai, and now Workera’s chairman. Now, Workera features itself as a deeplearning.ai company. Kian Katanforoosh, CEO at Workera, says that he will use the new funding to invest in more talent and build out new products. He explained on TechCrunch that he wants the company to better understand natural language processes at a granular level to assess people more precisely. The spending on AI skills is expected to surpass $79 billion by 2022.

"With OPMs, Colleges Forfeit Their Future," Explains Robert Ubell In His Latest Book

Mikel Amigot, IBL News | New York "Staying Online" is one of the first books to analyze the dramatic changes in higher education since the pandemic started in March 2020. Across 180 pages, the book covers the rise of MOOCs, OPMs, and the massive digital immersion of higher education due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In an interview at IBL News this week, Robert Ubell, Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, columnist, and author of the essay Going Online: Perspectives on Digital Learning, pointed out "the vast differences in the digital academic economy today, with online and on-campus enrolling different sorts of students, with relatively different faculty, different infrastructure, and far more expensive recruitment strategies." "Despite strong opposition, digital education has triumphed," he states.   IBL News: Would you summarize the main findings of your book? Robert Ubell: Staying Online is among the first books to recognize the dramatically changed higher ed landscape since the pandemic altered secondary education in the US and around the world. It covers the rise of MOOCs, OPMs, and the almost total immersion of every higher ed classroom in digital education at the height of the COVID-19 invasion. It traces the vast differences in the digital academic economy today, with online and on-campus enrolling different sorts of students, with relatively different faculty, different infrastructure, and far more expensive recruitment strategies. Despite strong opposition, digital education has triumphed.   IBL News: Where will online education be within one, five, ten years? Robert Ubell: As residential enrollment continues its steep decline–owing to falling high-school graduation rates in the US especially–online has stepped in to fill missing on-campus students with virtual ones. Today, about a third of college students are online, in 5 to 10 years, following the digitization of nearly every industry, it may represent nearly half, a totally unexpected climb from nowhere in just two decades.   IBL News: What are the most important disruptive initiatives? Robert Ubell: Surely, MOOCs have played a decisive role in expanding the breadth of higher education. Today, with more than 180 million learners worldwide. Last year, MOOC providers launched more than 2,800 new online courses and 19 digital degrees. OPMs, too, have witnessed a dramatic expansion. Last year, 300 new OPM partnerships were signed, and in the first quarter of this year, 109 new ones were launched.   IBL News: Would you share your view on the 2U-edX transaction? What does the deal mean for the industry and the learner? Robert Ubell: Harvard and MIT saw an exit strategy when 2U came calling, with hard cash to take the money-losing pit–edX–away. 2U's acquisition of edX doesn't represent a change in the online economy, so much as a recognition of 2U's financial power and Coursera's continued to climb above all other MOOC providers. It leaves two edtech giants at the top, exactly where they've been for years.   IBL News: What do you think about OPMs, and in particular, 2U? Robert Ubell: OPMs succeed in often generating far more enrollments than colleges on their own, but the payback is serious, handing over half of each school's online revenue secured by their OPM partners. When colleges turn to OPMs, rather than building their own digital capacity, they forfeit their future by neglecting to strengthen their virtual infrastructure, a competency they will surely require as online becomes the name of the game, not just for one or two master's degrees, but for hundreds of courses.   IBL News: What's best for low-income students in higher ed? Robert Ubell: Because online degrees allow low-income students to continue working while earning their degrees, digital education stands out as a key path for them to join the new economy. But they shouldn't be misled by for-profits that do not provide the skills they need to succeed in the post-industrial economy.

Blackboard Gone Forever? Investment Companies Continue Reshaping the EdTech Market

Two Equity Firms Buy Blackboard to Merge It with Anthology, a Company They Already Own

Howard University Partially Reopens After Being Hit with a Ransomware Cyberattack

The ASU+GSV Summit Attracts Thousands of Attendees in San Diego

With unprecedented measures against the COVID Delta variant — reflected in the request of double vaccination and PCR test for attendees — the leading EdTech conference in the world, the ASU+GSV Summit begun yesterday. Around 3,000 attendees flocked to San Diego's Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, where the three-day event is taking place this week (9-11 August). A mix of wealthy investors looking for opportunities, rising start-ups, successful and aspiring entrepreneurs, academic presidents, and managers paid $3,500 for the entrance — nonprofit organizations paid one-third of it. Organizers managed the event smoothly, without the need to enforce the mandatory rule of wearing masks. The exception happened during lunchtime in the large ballroom of the hotel where hundred of attendees stayed maskless. The atmosphere among participants was relaxed. ASU+GSV insisted on the message, advertised on large screens, "We're family", in an attempt to calm the anxiety due to COVID / Delta. However, some speakers canceled at the last minute, afraid of the Delta variant spread. Moderators of the panels avoid mentioning it, and those speakers were simply removed. The 12th edition of the ASU+GSV adopted a hybrid format, with many talks broadcasted through the app. Virtual registration was free. The video stream worked fine. The event features 600+ speakers on a variety of subjects tackling higher-ed, K-12, workforce, and global education concerns. The summit includes the GSV Cup pitch competition for pre-seed and seed-stage education technology startups for $1 million in prizes. More than 700 startups have been judged by over 150 venture capitalists across the globe. The top 10 will compete at the summit, and the audience will vote for the winners. Arizona State University (ASU) President, Michael Crow, was once again the involuntary star due to his permanent focus on innovation. He participated in the first three panels in the morning, developed all in a tiny room packed with attendees. "We are at the beginning of innovation. Everything has been transformed except education," he said. During the panel titled "Hollywood and Higher Ed Meet Up", Michael Crow presented, along with film producer Walter Parkes, the Dreamscape Learn project, "a learning breakthrough initiative", in his words. A staff of 125 people works on this exploration project based on creating immersive, Hollywood-quality virtual environments where students interact with an avatar. Crow criticized the fact that there is almost no national investment in education. "The U.S. laboratories are dedicated to everything but education." Another initiative presented yesterday was the "Cintana Alliance," a partnership between ASU and consultant and investor Doug Becker's company, intended to introduce a new model for global universities. .@asugsvsummit discussion around #DreamScapeLearn with Michael Crow and Walter Parkes. Starting with Artificial Intelligence in biology classes @ASU Reversing the trend of low student engagement at the University level. #asugsvsummit #ASUGSV pic.twitter.com/5msTRCTu9n — Matt Miller (@LakotaSuper) August 9, 2021 Day 1 of @asugsvsummit has been truly delightful, especially spending time with so many fantastic colleagues I have missed so much. #asugsv2021 #asugsvsummit (Vaxxed+ negative test+masking indoors) ❤️☺️ pic.twitter.com/SWyEVjIHRk — Dr. Bridget Burns (@BBurnsEDU) August 10, 2021 Congrats to our very own President and CXO @kat_thegeek for winning this year's #PowerOfWomen award from @gsvventures at @asugsvsummit. Kat's put nine years into making Degreed a pioneering company, and we wouldn't be where we are today without her. pic.twitter.com/ZHnPYEo1FO — Degreed (@degreed) August 9, 2021

Robinhood, Now Featured as a Meme Stock, Had a Wild Week with a Gain of 56%

The free-commission trading app Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) closed a wild week trading up with a gain of 56.5%, after another jump of 7.9% this Friday. The stock ranked among the most actively traded companies valued at more than $500 million. The surge added $30.2 billion of market value to the controversial start-up. This wild ride contrasted with the lackluster debut on the Nasdaq last week. Analysts agree to feature Robinhood — whose app helped fuel the memeification of the market — as a meme-stock. The presence of amateur investors fueling rallies is truly confusing fundamental analysts. "It has officially become a meme stock, and this week’s wild ride could be just the beginning if legions of amateur investors pull money from their old favorites to buy more shares while insiders are dumping them," wrote Bailey Lipschultz for Bloomberg. This meme status resembled the stock rallies of AMC and GameStop earlier this year. Insisting on this volatility, Eric Schiffer, chairman of Patriarch Organization, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, said, "investors need to recognize that this is going to trade like a crypto or other meme-related stocks in the short run and they could see significant positional changes." Skeptics note on Thursday's 27% drop after the news that existing stockholders would sell up to 97.9 million shares over time. On Friday, Robinhood reiterated that it was not selling any stock for now. "Robinhood is not itself selling any additional securities but filed the Resale S-1 on behalf of certain of its shareholders pursuant to a pre-existing contractual obligation," Robinhood said. Anyway, the SEC would need to approve any transaction after Robinhood's second-quarter earnings on August 18. The three-day rally of the stock began on Tuesday and it was triggered by news that Cathie Wood’s exchange-traded funds were snapping up shares. It was refueled when options started trading Wednesday. The market consensus is that when meme traders strike, the volatility will be unprecedented like it's happening with crypto stocks.  

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Saturday, November 22, 2025

Education technology today is marked by rising AI adoption among educators and innovative personalized learning approaches.

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Today in AI & EdTech

Saturday, November 22, 2025

AI is transforming the education technology landscape as more teachers adopt intelligent tools, driving forward and adaptive learning experiences.

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