Online Education (Global Market)

Global Online Education Market Highlights

• Microcourses - there is a trend towards reducing the average time of one video to 1-3 minutes.
• Gamification - the main task of the platforms is to keep the user's attention, for which the gamification toolkit is most often used.
• New technologies - many experts and market analysts say that the development of augmented reality technologies will be able to become an additional driver of growth in the entire market.
• B2B - the corporate segment is paying more and more attention to the industry. Large corporations act as both consumers and service providers.
• Applied skills - there is a trend towards an increase in the number of sites offering precisely applied knowledge and skills. This trend is especially noticeable in the Russian Federation.

2023: Global Online Education Market Grows to $237.3 Billion in a Year

In 2023, the global online education market reached $237.3 billion. For comparison, in 2022, the figure was $195.8 billion. Thus, an increase of about 21% was recorded. The relevant data is reflected in the Market Research Future report published in mid-July 2024.

One of the key factors in the growth of the industry is the increasing penetration of the Internet - primarily in developing countries. This allows students to access educational materials regardless of their geographic location. Another driver is the proliferation of mobile devices that allow you to study materials and perform tasks anywhere, anytime. Online education platforms provide additional flexibility in terms of class schedules, formats and content, meeting a variety of needs. At the same time, elements of gamification contribute to a higher level of student involvement in the process of gaining knowledge compared to traditional models.

Among the significant players are named Adobe, Aptara, Articulate, Certpoint, Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems, D2L Corporation, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. North America is the largest market for online education: the region accounted for $89.67 billion in revenue in 2022. Europe is in second place in terms of spending, and the Asia-Pacific region closes the top three.

In general, as noted, the e-learning segment is a rapidly developing and competitive industry. Leading players are investing heavily in expanding the suite of services and improving the quality of services. According to Market Research Future estimates, the CAGR (compound percentage CAGR) in the market under consideration from 2023 to 2032 will be 21.2%. As a result, by the end of this period, expenses will reach $1.1 trillion.^[1]

2019

In 2018, high school students at the High School of Journalism in Brooklyn (USA) staged a protest against the Summit Learning online learning platform. In 2019, parents and teachers are already expressing doubts that their children need high-tech training in every class.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in Baltimore County, Maryland, from public schools for five years, paper textbooks, notebooks and pens disappeared. All students from kindergarten through 12th grade receive a laptop instead.

This happened because 5 years ago, the US Department of Education set a goal to achieve a one-to-one ratio - one child per computer, and completely switch to computer learning. That goal at the moment, despite student protests, still stands across the country.

Over the past decade, American schools have spent millions of dollars on a variety of educational devices and apps, believing it will help many children learn faster and be better prepared for a new competitive economy. But now even the American schoolchildren themselves understand that if "the formation of people of a new technological structure means the transition to electronic textbooks and boards, then this is a profanation of education leading to global ignorance," writes WSJ.

Students "main claim to new high-tech education programs is that they exclude much of the human interaction: communication with teachers, discussions with classmates that are needed to improve critical thinking.

In addition to reducing the level of education, schoolchildren are concerned about the security of their data. Summit Learning collects them without asking for permission. The training program collects their names, phone numbers, email addresses, records of visits, illnesses, passes, deductions, as well as gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and extracurricular activities. The Summit Learning website also says that they plan to track the lives of students after graduation, which suggests that all the information collected is subsequently summarized and analyzed by neural networks in the interests of employers.

An analysis of the performance of 115,000 students in Baltimore schools before and after the introduction of online learning found that over the past 5 years, average performance in Baltimore County has declined dramatically. Now many parents and teachers are beginning to wonder if switching to digital education was in principle a good idea.

2016: J’son & Partners Consulting

Digital education is one of the fastest growing segments of the global education market (+ 23% per year during 2012-2017), still occupies a small share <3%) в общем рынке образовательных услуг.(

The growth of the market is supported by the digitalization of learning foreign languages, preparation for tests, growing demand for online tutors and the development of the corporate online learning market. There is a growing need for life-long learning models to provide ongoing pre-training to staff in line with a changing range of challenges.

$5.5 billion investment in educational startups around the world in 2015-16. accelerated the development of projects in all verticals of the market: from foreign languages ​ ​ to specialized platforms for corporations and universities.

The United States occupies about 50% of the entire market, while Asia is growing at three times the pace both in the volume of services consumed and in the number of new projects. 34% of all investments in 2015 in EdTech were in China. In China, large and significant projects appear in various verticals:

• XuetangX is the Chinese leading MOOC platform, 5 million students as of October 2016 and 400 courses (~ 7% of the market). Very rapid growth in the domestic market and recognition from local universities.
• Genshixue (title translates to "Who to learn with?") - > 70 thousand teachers, $50M venture capital funding in 2015
• 17zuoye (the name translates as "Learning Together") - training schoolchildren in English and mathematics, > 7 million students, $135M of funding, including from DST (Yuri Milner).

Mass courses are becoming more practice-oriented, job search and employer needs:

• All platforms in 2016 emphasize the sale of comprehensive training: specializations (Coursera), Nanodegrees (Udacity), Xseries (EdX)

The platforms enter into partnerships with the corporation to train their employees:

• Coursera for Business - employees of BCG, L'Oreal, Axis Bank
• iVersity Professional Development - the European MOOC platform following Coursera sells certificates and invites companies to draw up training programs for employees
• Udacity forBusiness - same courses and nanodegrees packed for HR needs

Corporations are preparing their own courses to find new employees:

• Microsoft and Google are leaders in course production (78 and 50 courses, respectively).
• Other IT companies are picking up the trend (Facebook, Cisco, AT&T, etc.)

The demand for project training is growing - to make a site, write a book, create a script, solder a microcircuit:

• Coursera partners with Google, Instagram and Shazam for final specialization projects (capstone projects)

Learning foreign languages, children's education, applied specialties (business and IT) - the most popular areas of study:

• Example: ABCmouse, an educational gaming platform for children 2-7 years old, raised a record $150M in May 2016 at an estimate of > $1 billion.
• BabyStep - the Russian platform with content for children - the world's largest library of video tutorials for parents.

Technological trends:

• Mobile learning and cross-platform become basic requirements for any training platform
• Wearables will play a big role in learning
• Big Data is needed to improve learning technologies

Thematic trends:

• Courses with famous people (actors, athletes, directors)
• Selection of coaches and tutors
• Mobile tutor in a specific area
• Courses for creative professions
• Companies teach services that are indirectly related to the product - enhance product awareness
• Narrow specialization - the entire site about one topic

Methodological trends:

• Recruitment and training convergence
• Serious Games - gamification in the B2B segment
• Playful learning (NOT traditional gamification!)
• Learning Through Surveillance and Copying

2015 Forecast

Global E-Learning Market for 2015 estimated by experts at $107 billion: Europe - 41.6%, Asia - 28.4% North America - 22.4%, South America - 3.3%. The main players in this market are Open, Virtual, Electronic, Network and Cyber ​ ​ universities, Smart universities, the main growth of which occurred in the last decade. The scale of their activities is amazing, in each of them more than 500 thousand people study. First of all, this opens up wide opportunities for people with disabilities and defense enterprises. However, of great concern is the fact that these processes are not represented significantly in Russia.

2013

According to the results of Frost & Sullivan's new Analysis of the Global Lecture Capture Solutions (LCS), in 2013 the revenue of enterprises in this market amounted to $162 million. and is projected to reach $592.2 million. US by 2019 (CAGR 24.1%). The study looked at segments of hardware and software, including those provided by the SaaS model.

Despite their significant advantages, until recently, the level of penetration of LCS solutions into the market remained low. This is due to limited vendor sales resources and customer doubts about the scalability and value of such solutions. The prevalence of LCS solutions is growing in the North American market as well as the global market. Suppliers are increasing their product range, sales volumes and expanding distribution opportunities.

At the same time, there are a number of problems, including low awareness of potential customers about LCS solutions, insufficient awareness of teachers about such technologies, a complex procurement process, especially in the secondary school segment, as well as a limited budget of educational institutions. With the advent of cloud solutions and desktop customers, market dynamics have improved. Educational leaders have come to understand that modern digital technologies are necessary for their organizations to maintain high competitiveness.

The online education market has been in its infancy for quite some time. Despite the fact that the first sites appeared back in the 90s, and the first significant project (MIT OpenCourseWare) in 2002, the real market took off in 2012, when the three largest sites were launched: Coursera, EdX and Udacity^[2].

¹ Fixed time courses - scheduled courses that take place only at certain times with the support of teachers. Usually, new lectures and assignments are given weekly.

² More than 7 million donations

Despite the protracted start, online education instantly became popular, and the online learning market attracted many investors. The top 10 global resources in the field of online education are attended by about 20 million people, and the total investment in these resources exceeded $300 million.

According to Docebo, the current volume of the global online education market is estimated at more than $40 billion. According to the forecast, in 2016 this figure will exceed $50 billion. The structure of the global market by key geographic segments is presented below.

See also

• Catalog of products and projects of Distance Learning Systems
• Distance Learning Technologies
• Online Education (Russian Market)
• Unified Electronic Educational Space of Russia

Notes