I am passionate about education and finding ways to work at the intersection of education and business. At the start of the MBA, Raffy Maristela and I, along with the help of ten other MBA students interested in and/or currently working in education, started an unofficial Education MBA Brunch Club. Our group met on a bi-weekly basis to talk about all things education, including updates to the public and private learning industry, diving deeper into everyone’s education work experience and future aspirations, and collaborating to map out all the relevant public and private global stakeholders for potential job opportunities.
Through these discussions with our MBA peers, both Raffy and I started to narrow our focus towards a better understanding the education technology ('EdTech') sector. Thanks to the support of the EdTech World Forum Conference team, we will be attending the upcoming EdTech World Forum 2023 to learn more about the global EdTech ecosystem to share back with our MBA peers.
Gaining an overview of the EdTech industry
Through various courses throughout the MBA, we were able to dive deeper into the EdTech industry through our final research assessments and the content in courses such as Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurial Finance, Innovation Strategy and Marketing to mention just a few. The ability to choose our industry of preference for our Digital Transformation and Innovation Strategy assessments allowed us both to choose an industry we would ultimately like to work for in the future and gain more industry insights.
Some insights we learned about the industry:
- The EdTech sector has been disrupting traditional education pedagogy for students and teacher professional learning, and this trend is likely to continue in the coming years. According to a report by HolonIQ, the global education market is expected to reach $10 trillion by 2030, and EdTech is expected to account for a significant portion of this as the world continues to become more digital.
- EdTech has the potential to democratize education. EdTech solutions can provide access to quality education to students in remote and underserved areas, where traditional education methods may not be available. For example, the World Bank has partnered with several EdTech startups to provide educational resources to students in rural areas of developing countries.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of EdTech and accelerated its adoption. According to a report by ResearchAndMarkets, the global EdTech market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16% between 2021 and 2027, driven by the pandemic-induced shift to online learning.
- While EdTech has immense potential to revolutionize education, much of its success hinges on its ability to change behavior, integrate with existing school solutions, and take into account ethics around data
We are excited to learn from the well renowned speaker line up at the EdTech World Forum 2023 in May, which include but is not limited to:
- David Julian, Head of Industry, EdTech, Google
- Angeles Cortesi, Head UNICEF Global Learning Innovation Hub, UNICEF
- Dr Wendy Purcell PhD FRSA, Research Academic with Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
