5 Key Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Education

This past weekend, the Kauffman Foundation sponsored an education focused "Startup Weekend." But at the same time, last week, one of my fellow Change.org authors wrote a piece sharing frustration with the focus in the education sector on "entrepreneurship" as a cure-all. In her estimation, that focus can distract education reformers from implementing already proven solutions more effectively. It's a valid point, but instead of suggesting we shouldn't focus on entrepreneurship in education, it simply means we need to get smarter about what education entrepreneurship opportunities actually look like.

1. Access to funding for higher education: One of the biggest crises around the world is the access to funding for advanced degrees. In the US, student debt has actually surpassed consumer debt. Americans owe $830B in student loans vs. $827B in credit card debt. That's insane, and something has to change for the system to sustain itself. This can be even more problematic for international students, where there simply aren't as many scholarship or loan programs. One startup to watch in this area is Enzi, which is tying student loans to future income, and was awarded a 2010 Echoing Green fellowship.

2. Supplemental learning tools: It is generally accepted that boredom in the classroom is a major, major problem. Students don't feel like the work they're doing is related to their real life, and the way material is presented tends to be all about getting through tests. There is a huge opportunity for supplemental learning tools that work in the classroom or out and supplement the work that teachers are already doing. One interesting example is TeacherMate, a handheld computer designed to engage hard to reach learners and sync directly with in-class lessons that is being used by 40,000 students in 35 states.

3. Efficiency tools for teachers and administrators: It's not just students who have a hard time with schools as they're structured today. Teachers and administrators deal with a ton of students, each of whom deserve individual care but who get dumped in with everyone else. Startups like Drop the Chalk are trying to make it easier for teachers to measure student progress and understand how different types of lessons impact students in different ways.

4. Supplanting educational structures: Many of the problems of education have to do with the school systems "monopoly" on learning. Put differently, most people get in the mindset that they're only supposed to learn while in school. The internet is an incredible platform for distributing knowledge. Platforms like Supercool School and eduFire make it easy for people to teach and learn together. Another online learning platform, Udemy, recently released a collection of 600 lectures from top universities. TED Talks have been viewed a few hundred million times. And so on.

5. Tools for parents: I don't know much about activity going on in this domain, but parents are an essential part of the educational experience. There is a definite opportunity for startups focused on supporting parents with pre-school education, and there is probably also an opportunity to make it easier for parents and teachers collaborative to help customize student learning.

Bonus: Vocational training and other alternative curriculum: When students don't feel like there is any coherent relationship between what they're learning and what they'll need for the real world, it significantly reduces their incentives to participate in their own education. I think there is a very compelling argument to be made for introducing more career-job centric training into regular school classrooms -- including things like basic business accounting, computer science, etc. More broadly, I do think that rethinking the entire structure of curriculum and experimenting with new structures is a good thing.

The point of all of this entrepreneurship is not to undermine what we know about how to improve learning outcomes already, or challenging how essential great teachers are to the educational experience. The point is to dramatically shift access and quality of education in a world that frankly, can't afford a glacial pace of reform. That will take innovation from both outside and inside the system, and entrepreneurs do have a roll to play.

Photo credit: bonnie-brown