Digital Learning in 'Inside Higher Ed' This Week

The following developments of potential interest to readers of "Inside Digital Learning" received coverage in Inside Higher Ed this week:

• The online program management company 2U announced Tuesday that it would purchase Trilogy Education Services, a large boot camp provider that partners with continuing education divisions at dozens of universities. The publicly traded 2U will pay $750 million in cash and shares for Trilogy, in a deal that will nearly double the number of university partners for the combined company, to 68 from 36. 2U's chief executive officer, Chip Paucek, said the substantial overlap between the two companies includes a shared belief in “the university’s central role in the life of the student.”
• Two high-profile civil rights lawsuits filed by the National Association of the Deaf against Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are set to continue after requests to dismiss the cases were recently denied for the second time. The two universities were accused by the association in 2015 of failing to make their massive open online courses, guest lectures and other video content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Two experts on the use of labor market data to shape postsecondary offerings discussed their work in an interview with Inside Higher Ed's Paul Fain. Matt Gee works as a senior researcher at the University of Chicago and as the co-founder and CEO of BrightHive, a technology company focused on work-force data. Yuanxia Ding, a former Education Department official during the Obama administration, is chief impact officer for Skills Fund, which provides student loans and quality assurance for the boot camp sector.
• Bridgepoint Education, which owns Ashford University, changed its name this week to Zovio Inc. And on Wednesday the company announced that it is acquiring TutorMe, an online tutoring provider. The online tutoring will be part of Zovio's "education technology services ecosystem," Andrew Clark, Zovio's CEO, said in a written statement. That suite of services includes Fullstack Academy, a coding boot camp the former Bridgepoint announced earlier this month it would buy for about $20 million. Zovio also is relocating its headquarters from San Diego to Chandler, Ariz.