When Fintech Meets Education: An International Love Affair

Investors and entrepreneurs are usually exuberant about the 1.65 billion strong global student market until they hear the bad news: the majority can’t afford anything beyond basic education. This, of course, doesn’t include the 122 million illiterate youth in the world today or the legions of non-formal and professional learners who may want to improve their skills but have little […]

Will Trump’s “America First” Policies Disrupt International Education?

In 2016, the United States hosted over 1 million foreign students at an estimated $32.8 billion economic impact and over 400,000 jobs, a level that could easily exceed $45 billion by 2025. Under the outgoing Obama Administration, international student enrollments grew five-fold from 200,460 international students in 2009 and left the US as the top destination […]

Russia’s Untapped Potential: Beyond Hacking

Russia is not an education superpower. What if it were? This may not be an idle question as the country seeks to bolster its international position–no less under a Trump Administration–and to counteract the perception of either being a state-sponsored hacker or geopolitical bully. Domestically, Russia’s persistent de-population trend over the past quarter century coincides with a global shift […]

Understanding the Global Edunomic Index (GEI)

What is the GEI? The Global Edunomic Index (GEI) was recently published over at 3/1 Global Research. Within it we analyzed education, economic and investment risk/environment data across 49 Emerging and Frontier Markets and then stack-ranked them using our internal scoring methodology. Why? To help companies, universities and investors make sense of the world’s rapid development […]

Does America’s Foreign Language Deficit Matter? Ask Google Translate

For many years US education officials have lauded the remarkable success of Finland in math and science, where its 15 year-old students have, along with a handful of Asian countries, dominated the global rankings as measured by comparative international PISA scores. US Education Secretary Arne Duncan lamented that US students are one to two years […]

Chasing China’s Edtech Unicorns: A Cautionary Tale

This article was first published at EdSurge on June 7,2016 There is little doubt that China’s record $1.7 billion invested in 44 edtech companies last year is helping to provide one of the world’s most dynamic education market with increased access quality learning and spurring a movement toward social impact investing. But in the competitive scramble […]

India’s Race Against Time

To the naked eye, India looks like an oasis in the middle of a wrenching emerging market economic downturn. In 2015 Indian GDP grew by 7.2% with the IMF projecting 7.6% growth over the 2016-17 period. FDI reached a record US$63 billion in 2015, exceeding China for the first time. And despite more recent concerns […]

Africa, David Ricardo and the Promise of Education Outsourcing

The theory of comparative advantage is one of the most important concepts in international trade. From 18th century economist David Ricardo’s explanation of why England should produce cloth and Portugal make wine–but not each country producing both– to more modern examples of credit card service centers in Bangalore or iPhone manufacturing operations in China, we intuitively […]

China’s Next Act: From Hollywood to Harvard?

This article was published in Edsurge on March 21,2016. Could China buy America’s top universities? When this question appeared on Quora a few years ago it was quickly dismissed as unworkable from a governance perspective. But the ambition behind the question remains: If Chinese investors could, they would. What else might China acquire from America’s […]

Do Emerging Markets Want Their Education Disrupted?

This article was published at Educelerate on March 7,2016. Have foreign education companies “cracked the code” for educating the rest of the world? Earlier this month the online education company Udemy reported that over 10 million students had taken “at least one of its courses” and that growth overseas was surging. While this milestone should be applauded, such a […]

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