Pearson Pushes Out His CEO After a Dramatic Tenure Full of Sales and Job Cuts

Pearson –the world's largest ed company with a $6.6 billion market value– announced yesterday its CEO John Fallon, 57, will step down in 2020 after a successor is appointed. Sidney Taurel, 70, Chairman, is leading the search for the next CEO. John Fallon's departure comes just three months after a severe profit warning that knocked the company's confidence in the transition into digital products, decreasing its market value by a fifth. It will mark the end of a dramatic seven-year tenure for Fallon, whom after succeeding Marjorie Scardino in 2013 cut costs and jobs (16,000 over the past six years.) while gradually selling important assets, such as Penguin, Financial Times, and a stake in The Economist. [In addition, Pearson said yesterday that it will sell its remaining stake in Penguin Random House to Bertelsmann for $675 million. Pearson sold a 22 percent stake back in 2017.] Stocks in Pearson (PSON) rose yesterday 1.7 percent on the London Stock Exchange after the news of his resignation. Pearson needs to show investors that difficulties in the US business are transitory rather than structural, according to some analysts. The value of Pearson’s stock has dropped by 57 percent since 2013. Most recently, the company warned investors that its U.S. textbook sales for 2019 would be weak. During Fallon's time in charge, Pearson has had six profit warnings to shareholders. “We’re now at the stage where it’s time to transition to a new leader, who can bring a fresh perspective,” Fallon said in a prepared statement. Marjorie Scardino, who lead Pearson for 16 years, turned Pearson into a behemoth, managing more than two dozen acquisitions. Fallon’s job was to restructure the company by removing legacy parts and reorienting the company into digital learning services. It seems that shareholders have finally lost their patience with Fallon. It's the end of an era. Today I shared with our colleagues that I’ve decided to retire from @pearson in 2020 and that we are selling our remaining stake in @penguinrandom. I wanted to share this news with our wider community, too. https://t.co/PVuzb0AEIt — John Fallon (@johnfallon) December 18, 2019

A New Catholic Polytechnic University Will Focus on the Integration of Science and Faith

Analysis: Over 30M Adults With College Education But No Degree: Certificate Programs to the Rescue

Instructure Announces It Is Exploring to Sell the Company – Estimated to be Worth $2.5B

The EdX Organization Adopts a More Commercial Structure Appointing a New Co-CEO

The edX nonprofit organization, created by MIT and Harvard University, decided to adopt a more business and less academic-focused structure with two running CEOs. According to the unexpected announcement made yesterday, Adam Medros, currently the COO and President, has been promoted to co-CEO, joining Anant Agarwal in this position. In a way, the move follows Coursera's aggressive commercial direction when it replaced Rick Levin, former President at Yale, for Jeff Maggioncalca as CEO. Maggioncalca was mainly hired to find a successful business model and IPO-ing the company. Adam Medros, a business manager who moved from TripAdvisor to edX two years ago, with no previous experience in higher education, "will partner with Agarwal to drive the company’s continued growth and innovation, in service of its non-profit mission to increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere," edX said. Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor who has been teaching for 31 years said, "Adam’s dedication to the edX mission and his partnership have been invaluable to me in my role as Founder and CEO of edX and I look forward to further deepening our collaboration." Excited to share my new role as @edXonline President and co-CEO. Honored to join @agarwaledu, edX Founder and CEO, as we work together to further the edX mission: https://t.co/HA6v6hgdMX — Adam Medros (@adammedros) October 31, 2019 Pleased to announce that @adammedros is now President and co-CEO of @edXonline. I’m super excited to expand our partnership and collaboration as we further the edX mission. https://t.co/WFTF8bMJfp pic.twitter.com/G15nKHeOXa — anant agarwal (@agarwaledu) October 31, 2019 The official announcement highlighted the new business orientation that the learning organization is adopting, "Agarwal and Medros will continue to work with the edX partner network, made up of the majority of top-ranked universities in the world and industry-leading companies, to deliver stackable learning experiences that help learners and employers alike address the future of work." In the last months, Adam Medros –who he stayed in TripAdvisor for 13 years– has been working in new business strategies to make edX a financially sustainable organization. He provided his views in an interview with IBL News recorded in March.  

A Spanish University Builds a Futuristic Eco-Campus with Outside Classrooms

The University of Malaga, in Spain, is building a futuristic eco-campus for students to take classes outside. Spanning a surface area of 52 acres, this innovative campus will include a green infrastructure suitable for everyday activities, such as studying, meeting and reading. The goal is to improve the climatic comfort and connectivity within an educational setting. A Madrid-based architectural firm called Ecosistema Urbano is designing this interactive infrastructure after winning in 2016 a public contract to transform an old campus into an environmentally-friendly and digitally connected space. It will be a geological garden in the works, a tropical garden, and a digital water curtain. By using high-tech capabilities, learners will be able to visualize real-time information and manipulate physical aspects of public space in an almost futuristic fashion, as shown in the picture below. Outdoor comfort will improve through solar-powered climate conditioning systems such as evaporative cooling and geothermal air circulation. Naturally, everything will run on renewable energy systems.

ISTE Conference Organizer Absorbs EdSurge Media – Investors Won't Be Rewarded

Sachem Head Becomes One of the Top Shareholders of 2U and Advocates for a Sale

An Influential Hedge Fund Pushes Instructure's Canvas LMS to Sell Its Business

Docebo Learning Platform's Stock Dropped 28% after Raising C$75 Million on its IPO

The cloud-based LMS company Docebo didn't show promising performance on its first trading days on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock, listed under the ticker symbol "DCBO", started trading at C$16.00 (Canadian Dollars) on October 8 and closed at C$11.50 on Friday 18, losing over 28% of its value. [Update: on Monday 21, the stock gained 13% until C$ 13.04]. An imperfect balance sheet with weak fundamentals discouraged investors, according to some analysts. Toronto-headquartered Docebo had raised high hopes after it successfully closed its IPO at a price of C$16, obtaining C$75 million. A total of 4,687,500 common shares were sold, with Canaccord Genuity Corp. and TD Securities as the lead underwriters. Docebo's pre-IPO backers included Intercap Equity, and Canadian enterprise software equity firm Klass Capital. "Completing this IPO is a significant milestone for Docebo and a testament to the talent and dedication of our team and support from our global base of customers," said during the offering, CEO Claudio Erba, an Italian computer consultant who founded the company on March 2005 in Florence, Italy. "With the proceeds raised, we will continue to strengthen our market position and look to continue our track record of innovation in the enterprise learning industry." Written in PHP, Docebo (Latin for "I will teach") is focused on providing a SaaS learning platform to train workforces, partners, and customers worldwide. It claims to have a customer base of more than 1,600 companies in 68 countries. We are pleased to welcome @Docebo to TSX! Founded in 2005, Docebo provides an easy-to use, highly configurable & affordable learning platform with the end-to-end capabilities & critical functionality needed to train internal and external workforces, partners and customers. $DCBO pic.twitter.com/cHTGfo6kKl — Canada's Markets (@tsx_tsxv) October 8, 2019   Claudio Erba, CEO, Docebo at Learning Technologies 2019 from Learning News.

The 10 IT Issues Higher Ed Leaders Are Focusing on, According to Educause

  The 2019 Educause Annual Conference yesterday recognized four prominent educators, highlighting their achievement during the opening talk in Chicago’s convention center. Leadership Award: Linda Jorn, Assoc Vice Provost for Learning Technologies, University of Wisconsin-Madison Community Leadership Award: Mark Askren, Senior Advisor to the President, University of Nebraska DEI Leadership Award: Melissa Woo, President for Information Technology and Enterprise Chief Information Officer, Stony Brook University Rising Star: Tina Pappas, Associate Director, Innovation and Technology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In addition, the Educause staff announced the 2020 Top 10 IT Issues index, stressing what's important and where to focus on in terms of higher education: Information Security Strategy Privacy Sustainable Funding Digital Integrations Student Retention and Completion Student-Centric Higher Education Improved Enrollment Higher Education Affordability Administrative Simplification The Integrative CIO "The 2020 IT Issues reveal where the integrative CIO must simplify, sustain, and innovate as higher education drives to digital transformation," said Susan Grajek, Vice President, Communities and Research at Educause. "Institutions know they need to innovate to achieve a competitive advantage in today’s complex marketplace, and almost none of today’s innovation can happen without data and technology," she added. On this edition, the gathering attracted over 8,000 attendees. "This year's attendance has been a record-setting," John O’Brien, CEO at Educause, said without providing further data. "Every year there is something new in the air that captures imagination," he said. "We know innovation is everywhere."     [Promotional Video]    

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Friday, November 21, 2025

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

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Friday, November 21, 2025

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

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