Ik herinner me nog een les van professor Dirk Van Damme waarin hij ons in 2000 uitlegde dat onderwijs een van de grootste groeimarkten is. We merken het misschien relatief weinig in België, maar zoals wel vaker het geval is Vlaanderen een oase. In The Washington Post schrok ik wel van een cijfer, de onderwijsmarkt is er namelijk ondertussen 9% van het totale BNP.

Het cijfer hoort bij een blogpost over een conferentie waarbij mensen konden leren hoe je onderwijs ‘for profit’ kan benaderen. Check even dit citaat uit de uitnodiging:

Private equity investing in for-profit education is soaring, and for good reason — the public and non-profit models are profoundly broken.

This is why for-profit education is one of the largest U.S. investment markets, currently topping $1.3 trillion in value.

Look at the current state of K-12 public education. School districts across the U.S. are underfunded, underperforming, and well behind the curve when it comes to adopting quality technologies.

Many simply lack the expertise to treat today’s applied technologies as not just gadgets or strategic opportunities, but as real solutions for expanding their capacity to teach students.

And in the post-secondary world, non-profit institutions are finding that very few enticements are bringing in money. Not sports. Not research. Not classrooms.

Public funding and private endowments are both down, and neither will be particularly reliable in the future.

So 2013, and beyond, will see numerous for-profit companies making inroads into public and non-profit education by taking over large swaths of the market. What’s more, they’ll prosper in the corporate training and continuing education marketplace as well. (bron)