Giving Compass' Take:

• Natalie Schwartz, writing for Education Dive, discusses the recent edtech investments that are affecting higher education students. 

• How are these investments changing the landscape of higher ed?

• Read about these four edtech trends in higher education.

It’s a good time to work in edtech. Last year, edtech companies raised $1.45 billion, marking one of the sector’s highest levels of single-year investment within the past decade.

“This trend toward funding higher education services companies is in full swing right now,” said Trace Urdan, managing director at Tyton Partners, an investment banking and consulting firm. “This is a really robust area of the market.”

To better understand what’s driving these trends, we asked investors and analysts to break down what several recent deals mean for higher ed.

  • Upswing  launched in 2012, provides interactive chatbots and online student services to help colleges improve their retention rates of adult, online and first-year students.
  • ReUp Education San Francisco-based startup, is one of the few companies devoted to reenrolling stopped-out students. Using a mix of machine learning, predictive analytics and human coaches, the company can pinpoint stop-outs who are the most likely to return, and coaches them through the reentry process and up to graduation.
  • Coursedog a New York City-based startup, bills itself as a solution to the time-consuming process of figuring out which classes colleges should offer and when.
  • Osmosis Osmosis, a startup aiming to help health care workers develop new skills, was the brainchild of two Johns Hopkins University medical students struggling to keep up in their anatomy class, TechCrunch reported.

Read the full article about recent edtech investments by Natalie Schwartz at Education Dive.