Tag: giant

  • Coursera to acquire Udemy to create $2.5B MOOC giant

    Coursera to acquire Udemy to create $2.5B MOOC giant

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    Dive Brief:

    • Coursera is acquiring fellow MOOC provider Udemy to create an online education and upskilling giant valued at $2.5 billion, the companies announced Wednesday. 
    • The combined company is poised to generate $1.5 billion in annual revenue and eliminate some $115 million in costs, Coursera and Udemy said in a press release. 
    • In explaining the deal — expected to close in the second half of 2026 — the companies pointed to their complementary consumer-facing and business-to-business offerings, as well as rising demand for artificial intelligence skills training.

    Dive Insight:

    Coursera and Udemy featured AI prominently in their merger rationale, saying that their combination would provide skills training for the emerging technology to the global workforce. 

    Elaborating, the companies said the combination would enhance “capacity for sustained investment in AI-driven platform innovation, rapid product development, and durable growth initiatives.”

    The messaging tracks with each company’s emphasis on the technology prior to the merger announcement. 

    AI was mentioned over 50 times on an outlook and strategy call with Coursera executives in November. On the call, CEO Greg Hart touted Coursera’s “AI-enabled platform,” which includes an AI tutor called Coursera Coach. 

    “We need to continue to accelerate our development cycles to leverage AI and data to improve the learner experience and continuously enhance our capabilities across all areas of the platform,” Hart said.

    On the company’s latest earnings call, Hart described generative AI as “the most in-demand skill in Coursera’s history.” On average, 14 users per minute were enrolling in one of the company’s roughly 1,000 generative AI courses, he said. 

    Meanwhile, Coursera recently partnered with OpenAI to embed the MOOC provider’s platform directly into ChatGPT, making its videos and information available to the AI platform. 

    Likewise, Udemy CEO Hugo Sarrazin emphasized AI’s importance to the company’s business on its latest earnings call in October. 

    Framing AI as a demand driver for Udemy’s offerings, he said that “companies are heavily invested in AI transformation” but are “struggling to demonstrate ROI because many haven’t developed the core workforce capabilities required to extract value from their investments.” 

    At the same time, both companies also acknowledge potential downsides to AI. In Coursera’s latest earnings report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, its list of risk factors pointed to the novelty of AI and cautioned that the market for AI skills and Coursera’s own AI products may not grow as planned. 

    Moreover, the company said, AI could “displace or otherwise adversely impact the demand for online learning solutions, including our offerings.”

    That is exactly what has happened to ed tech specialist Chegg, which operates in an adjacent space with online learning tools. The company recently announced it would lay off nearly half its staff after multiple quarters of cratering revenue, which Chegg executives have attributed to loss of traffic — and thus subscribers — with the release of Google’s AI summaries in the search giant’s results. 

    For now, Coursera and Udemy are relatively stable financially for tech companies in a dynamic, ever-changing market. Both companies logged over $550 million in revenue for the first nine months of their fiscal years. In both cases, that represented growth from the previous year. 

    While Coursera is historically unprofitable, Udemy made $6.1 million in net income for the first three quarters of its fiscal year after a $75.4 million loss for the same period last year. 

    Coursera is valued more highly, with a market cap of $1.3 billion to Udemy’s $948.7 million as of Wednesday afternoon. Under the transaction, which requires regulatory and shareholder approvals, Udemy shareholders will receive 0.8 shares of Coursera stock for each of their Udemy shares.

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  • Tiny House Communities are storming America & changing real estate (Tiny House Giant Journey)

    Tiny House Communities are storming America & changing real estate (Tiny House Giant Journey)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Tiny House Communities are storming America & changing real estate (Tiny House Giant Journey)




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  • Trump’s giant budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even richer bill is a travesty. (Robert Reich)

    Trump’s giant budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even richer bill is a travesty. (Robert Reich)

    Friends,

    One of my objectives in this daily letter is to equip you with the facts you need. As the Senate approaches a vote on Trump’s giant “big beautiful” tax and budget bill, I want to be as clear as possible about it.

    First, it will cost a budget-busting $3.3 trillion. According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the already out-of-control national debt over a decade. That’s nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version.

    Second, it will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health coverage. The Senate version would result in even deeper cuts in federal support for health insurance, and more Americans losing coverage, than the House version. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.

    All told, this will leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034.

    Third, it will cut food stamps and other nutrition assistance for lower-income Americans. According to the CBO, the legislation will not only cut Medicaid by about 18 percent, it will cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) by roughly 20 percent. These cuts will constitute the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history.

    Fourth, it will overwhelmingly benefit the rich and big corporations. The CBO projects that those in the bottom tenth of the income distribution will end up poorer, while the top tenth will be substantially richer.

    The bill also makes permanent the business tax cuts from the 2017 legislation, further benefiting the largest corporations.

    Finally, it will not help the economy. Trickle-down economics has proven to be a cruel hoax. Over the last 50 years, Congress has passed four major bills that cut taxes: the 1981 Reagan tax cuts; the 2001 and 2003 George W. Bush tax cuts; and the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Each time, the same three arguments were made in favor of the tax cuts: (1) They’d pay for themselves. (2) They’d supercharge economic growth. (3) They’d benefit everyone.

    All have been proven wrong. Here’s what in fact happened:

    (1) Did the tax cuts pay for themselves?

    No. Rather than paying for themselves, the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts each significantly increased the federal deficit. In total, those tax cuts have added over $10.4 trillion to the federal deficit since 1981 compared to the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections.

    (2) Did the tax cuts supercharge economic growth, create millions of jobs, and raise wages?

    Absolutely not. Rather than growing, the economy shrank after passage of the Reagan tax cuts. And unemployment surged to over 10 percent. Following the enactment of the Bush and Trump tax cuts, the economy did grow a bit, but at rates much lower than their supporters predicted.

    (3) Did the tax cuts benefit everyone?

    Heavens, no. Rather than benefiting everyone, the savings from the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts flowed mainly to the richest Americans. The average tax cut for households in the top 1 percent under the Reagan tax cut ($47,147) was 68 times larger than the average tax cut for middle-class households ($695). The Bush tax cut for households in the top 1 percent was 16 times larger than the average tax cut for the middle class. The 2017 Trump tax cut for households in the top 1 percent was 36 times larger than for middle-class households.

    Summary: If the bill now being considered by the Senate is enacted, 11.8 million Americans will lose their health insurance, millions will fall into poverty, and the national debt will increase by $3.3 trillion, all to provide a major tax cut mainly to the rich and big corporations. There is no justification for this.

    Never before in the history of this nation has such a large redistribution of income been directed upward, for no reason at all. It comes at a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth.

    What you can do: Call your senators and tell them to vote “no” on this calamitous tax and budget bill. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

    Beyond this, help ensure that senators who vote in favor of this monstrosity are booted out of the Senate as soon as they’re up for reelection.

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  • Scotland’s “sleeping giant” looks to international recruitment

    Scotland’s “sleeping giant” looks to international recruitment

    Although the history of the institution dates back over 100 years, it only achieved degree-awarding powers last year. Specialising in agriculture and life sciences, SRUC hopes to become an increasingly attractive choice for international students.

    “For many years, SRUC’s been a sleeping giant,” SRUC’s principal and chief executive Wayne Powell told The PIE News. “Now we’ve awoken and we can see huge amount of potential in what we can offer here in Scotland.”

    Offering international masters programs including international food and agriculture business, business consultancy and project management, Powell said the institution is “creating a future which is much more aligned to what students for the future will want to do” – with international recruitment efforts largely looking to students from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

    With six campuses located around Scotland, SRUC’s Edinburgh campus launched a £1.8 million vertical farming innovation centre in January, making it the first Scottish higher education institution in Scotland to create a commercial-sized vertical farm to help address global and local food production challenges.

    “Some of the things that we work on are at the nexus of the most important challenges facing society. So how do we feed a growing world?” explained Powell. “How do we support environmental sustainability?”

    He continued: “We are interested in attracting students that have an identity and an interest in sustainability and how the sustainability will play out over their lifetimes”.

    But while sustainability is undeniably a focus for the institution, Powell stressed that prospective students are also being enticed by curriculums focussing on business – especially as SRUC runs its own “successful consultancy business”.

    Now we’ve awoken and we can see huge amount of potential in what we can offer here in Scotland
    Wayne Powell, SRUC

    Learning about international agriculture, food and business in tandem is also a focus for programs, “particularly the potential for acquiring those business skills as part of a green economy”, Powell said.

    “And our location in Edinburgh [creates] a fantastic opportunity to come and live and work and study in a great city,” he added.

    “There’s something here which is going to be attractive and we’re keen to market that in the right way and creating the first cohort of students coming into something really special.”

    It comes as Scotland has taken steps to position itself as an attractive destination for international students. In late January, the country’s universities were encouraged to take “collective action” to promote Scotland as a study destination.

    In the same week, Scotland’s first minister John Swinney made the case for a bespoke visa for skilled international students graduating from the country’s colleges and universities. However, it is understood that the UK government has no plans to make good on these ambitions.

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