You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Last week I wrote about the five big sales mistakes that edtech companies make when working with colleges and universities. This week I want to talk about the mistake that higher ed makes when working with for-profit edtech companies.
We only make one mistake -- but it is a big one.
Our big mistake is that we fail to understand that the people who work for edtech companies are basically just like us. They are education people first, motivated by goals that are similar to the ours -- to improve the quality of learning, to expand educational access and to lower educational costs.
We fail to understand that edtech company employees share our values, our goals and many of our frustrations.
Like us, most edtech people are internally motivated by a desire to advance education. Often, these professionals have backgrounds in non-profit education, and ot is not uncommon to find executives who were once teachers. In addition, many people who serve the educational learning market, particularly providers of learning management systems and digital learning platforms, have worked in higher ed IT.
Yes, people working in the edtech for-profit sector want to see their companies to profit; they have mortgages, orthodontia, car loans and college tuition bills just like we do. The average edtech company employee is not any more or any less idealistic or self-interested than the average higher-ed professional. This is not to say that people working in edtech will put the goals or objectives of institutions and learners above their companies' goals. Rather, our edtech colleagues believe that their companies' goals and our schools' goals are aligned.
However, we fail to internalize the idea that people who work for edtech companies are our colleagues and our partners, which is at the root of much of disconnect I see across the school/vendor divide. All too often we don’t hear each other and assume that we are starting from a place of divergent values; therefore, we fail to learn how we can collaborate to create value for our students and our faculty.
Why would someone whose prime motivation is to advance education choose to work for an edtech company rather than a college or university? How can I convince my higher ed colleagues that the people who work for technology and publishing companies share our core goals and values?
Here are three reasons why people work for edtech companies:
1. Speed. It is hard to work in higher ed if you believe that technology is the most effective lever for improving learning and expanding access. Higher ed moves slowly -- and this slow pace of change is largely by design. Shared governance and distributed organizational structures have many advantages, but being nimble is not one of them. The advantage of changing slowly is that we are less likely to jump at the latest fads. Long-term-time horizons -- I’m talking decades -- are good for long-term thinking. What they are not good for is rapid action.
Edtech companies operate at the speed of business and the speed of technology change. Every learning technology company, especially those that were once educational publishers and are now digital education providers, is moving quickly. This pace of internal, product and organizational change would probably be disorienting for most long-term higher ed people -- but it is a net positive (although not without its challenges) for people in edtech. So, for many who want to advance higher education, the pace of change at institutions is simply too slow. They are a better fit with edtech.
2. Scale. The scale that those of us who work in higher ed IT is mostly institutional -- and sometimes at the systems level. We believe in collaboration and knowledge sharing with our peers at other institutions, and through our professional organizations, personal networks and social media, we work hard to share what we know. But our greatest impact is local.
If you work for an edtech company, you can have an impact across the entire postsecondary ecosystem because your product or service can be adopted by many institutions. Most edtech companies work with a diverse set of partners, across the range of public and private institutions. As great as it is to collaborate with a highly selective small liberal arts institution, it is also wonderful to work with community colleges and large research institutions. People who work in the edtech sector often have a better view of the diversity of higher education than those of us who spend our days (and sometimes our careers) working at one type of institution.
3. Risk. People working at for-profit edtech companies need to have very clear and very immediate signals from the market about the desirability of their product or service, and the skill in which the company executes.
This is not to say that those higher ed are immune from market forces or insulated from external factors. Quite the opposite. Many of us are dependent on larger policy decisions and funding choices that we have little impact or control. The difference is that edtech companies are under constant pressure to add value and to bring in revenues.
The risk profile of a for-profit edtech career is immediate and ever-present, with success dependent not what you have done before but what value you can create next. Some educators who are motivated by improving education also have a higher internal tolerance for risk and for failure. They tend to do better working at for-profit edtech companies.
In short, there are very good reasons for education people to work in the for-profit edtech sector, mostly because they believe that it is through working for companies, they can make the biggest difference in advancing education.
Think Critically
None of this is to say that we should be uncritical in our interactions with the edtech corporate world. There is lots of money flowing into edtech, and it is smart to be suspicious of the corporatization of education. Edtech's short-term values of profit maximization are often opposed to the long-term values of social improvement and opportunity creation that we hold in higher ed.
However, edtech professionals seldom are the company investors and money people. We should not conflate the logic of short-term profit maximization with the values of people work at for-profit edtech companies.
Understanding that ,most edtech company professionals share our values, and are internally motivated to improve education, will make our collaborations with the companies more productive. Shared values encourage the sharing of ideas, challenges, frustrations and possible solutions. Working to understand edtech professionals as colleagues will open our minds to listening more closely to what they have to teach us.There is much we can learn from the for-profit edtech sector -- but learning requires that we build relationships.Taking the time to understand what motivates our colleagues in the for-profit edtech sector is time well spent.
How can we change mindsets so that we move towards more open and collaborative relationships across the for-profit edtech and non-profit higher ed sectors? What are the risks in assuming that we start from a place of shared values and goals?
