B2B. Following last week’s merger announcement of McGraw-Hill Education and Cengage, another higher education publisher is making a major move. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, of the US, is acquiring the assets of the 11-year-old New York-based Knewton, a provider of affordable courseware and adaptive learning technology for an undisclosed price. Knewton’s Alta platform delivers content to more than 300 colleges and universities. More than 15m students around the world are said to have used Knewton-powered courses to date, at a cost of about $40 per course. While the price is not being disclosed, Knewton has been in receipt of more than $180m in venture capital funding but it has struggled to establish its value in the fledgling adaptive-learning marketplace, so may not have recouped the investment. In 2017, Pearson, one of Knewton’s largest partners (and also an investor) decided to stop using its technology.
Wiley buys higher ed tech
