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Comment by noodlesUK | Hacker News Reader

I think this really depends on your definition of EdTech. I don’t think anyone would contend that turnitin or Ellucian haven’t scaled well.

Tools that cater to the organisations that have money can absolutely do well, but trying to sell to people without the means to buy your stuff will always be unsuccessful.

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Yeah canvas and blackboard were are one point startups, I'm sure there's some products that can scale, but the market is probably driven by bureaucratic compliance more than a genuine desire to improve the quality of education for students

I only have experience of the university side of EdTech, but in my experience people were extremely interested in anything that would make it easier for lecturers to do their jobs, improve student experience, etc.

What they weren’t interested in was anything that changed the general dynamic of the university or replaced their core business.

Marking tools, stuff that helps deliver lectures, anything of that variety was all in-bounds, and lots of departments were happy to explore new things.

What would not sell was anything that required selling directly to students, because they simply won’t spend the money.

Unless it's textbooks. Then the students will spend spend spend (if you are in the USA).

They have no choice though

The university has a choice to not force such things. There are open source alternatives such as openstax. There's little reason to force students to buy expensive textbooks.

I agree; in my state, the universities are not required to have open source textbooks, but if they do use them, they are required to mark them in course catalogs so that students can pick them. I have yet to see this in practice though

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