Marketplace for College Course-Sharing Raises $5 Million

AUSTIN, Texas, March 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Acadeum, creator of the Course Share™ platform used by more than 300 colleges and universities, today announced a $5 million investment from Rethink Education along with Socratic Ventures, Lumina Foundation and LearnStart. More than 14,000 students have used courses shared through the platform to save over $30 million and accelerate their path to completion.

"This year has seen unprecedented disruption to higher education, as the pandemic exposed gaps in access to courses and accelerated long-term paradigm shifts to high-quality online learning and interoperable pathways through multiple institutions," said Josh Pierce, CEO and co-founder of Acadeum. "This investment validates the power of collaboration among networks of colleges and universities. It reflects the collective potential of institutions to close access gaps and the vast—and often latent—potential of institutions themselves."

Founded in 2016, Acadeum's marketplace for online college courses enables the formation of course-sharing consortia that allow students to access courses from hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities. Participating institutions can dramatically expand their course capacity to meet students' needs by enabling access to a global catalog of more than 40,000 online courses. Acadeum's marketplace also powers consortia created by college associations including the Council of Independent Colleges, the League for Innovation, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, and the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas, among many others.

"Too often, a student's barrier to success is not being able to access the course they need at the time they need it," said Tom Evans, president of University of Incarnate Word, the first teaching institution to join the Acadeum network. "By providing open seats in our quality online courses through Acadeum's course-sharing networks, we have helped other colleges and universities give their students course options to make progress, get back on track to graduate, and recover good academic standing. We are proud of our role in helping institutions improve student retention and graduation, as well as financial stability."

The investment comes on the heels of a $7 million Series A funding round raised in January 2020. This past year, Acadeum deployed the Higher Education Course Recovery Consortium to enable students and schools impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to access over 2 million seats in high-quality online courses. By leveraging the consortial model, courses can count fully toward graduation requirements, GPA, and financial aid and avoid many of the inefficiencies of transfer and articulation, which can lead to wasted credits, lost time and extraneous expenses. Institutions have used the online course-sharing model to improve retention and graduation rates, improve academic efficiency, and generate a combined $25 million in additional enrollment revenue for participating institutions.

"The power of sharing and collaboration across institutions has been an invaluable tool as colleges and universities contend with the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic and economic recession," said Michelle Dervan, managing partner at Rethink Education. "As educators and students are tested by the unusual constraints of this historic time, we believe this is only the beginning of the massive potential for deeper collaboration through course-sharing—developing new models of access and more resilient academic communities."

"The past year has seen dramatic changes to the higher education landscape, requiring new methods of supporting learners to keep them on track to graduation," said David Daniels, who recently joined Acadeum as president and previously served as president of Pearson's North American Higher Ed Services. "Our partner institutions have demonstrated that cross-institutional collaboration is key to maximizing limited resources while meeting students' needs. By working together, institutions can immediately increase the success of their students and enhance their financial sustainability."

About Acadeum
Acadeum's Course Share platform hosts 275 networks of colleges and universities committed to sharing high-quality online courses to improve student success. Together, we're unlocking the collective potential of institutions to ensure that all learners have access to the courses they need when and where they need them. More than 300 colleges and universities are powered by Acadeum's cross-enrollment platform accessing these course-sharing networks to improve student retention and completion, while increasing institutional revenue.

To learn more about Acadeum, please visit www.acadeum.com.

SOURCE Acadeum