We are a leading education technology company that well-recognized nonprofit
colleges and universities trust to bring them into the digital age. Our comprehensive
platform of tightly integrated technology and services provides the digital
infrastructure universities need to attract, enroll, educate and support students
at scale. With our platform, students can pursue their education anytime, anywhere,
without quitting their jobs or moving; and university clients can improve educational
outcomes, skills attainment and career prospects for a greater number of students.
Over the past decade, we have developed new and innovative tools within our
platform to enhance the effectiveness of instructional methods and improve student
outcomes and the student experience. During that time, we have also refined
our program selection algorithm and improved our data-driven digital marketing
capabilities across our ecosystem of offerings to generate increased student
enrollments in a cost effective manner. As a result, demand for our comprehensive
platform of integrated technology and services has increased significantly.
Since 2008, we have expanded our university client base from one to 24 across
our entire portfolio of offerings, increased the number of 2U-powered graduate
programs from one to 37, and enrolled over 33,000 graduate students.
Our core strategy is to launch graduate programs and short courses with new
and existing university clients and to increase student enrollments across our
portfolio. We are also committed to continuously improving our platform to deliver
high-quality university and student experiences and outcomes at scale.
In both our Graduate Program Segment and our Short Course Segment, we provide
well-recognized nonprofit colleges and universities with the comprehensive infrastructure
they need to attract, enroll, educate and support students in their 2U-enabled
graduate program or short course. In our Graduate Program Segment, we target
students seeking a full graduate degree of the same quality they would receive
on-campus. In our Short Course Segment, we target working professionals seeking
career advancement through skills attainment.
Our platform consists of front-end and back-end cloud-based SaaS technology
and technology-enabled services. These two components are tightly integrated
and each is optimized with data analysis and machine learning techniques.
Front-End Technology and Services
We provide the following front-end technology and services to students enrolled
in our offerings and to faculty members and university administrators supporting
our offerings:
Online Learning Platform. Our online learning platform is a secure and accessible
learning and teaching platform, where our university clients can reliably deliver
their high-quality educational content to students in a live, intimate and engaging
setting, all accessible through proprietary web and mobile applications. Our
online learning platform allows our university clients to provide a personalized
learning environment for faculty and students as well as a robust online educational
community. Students can also download their asynchronous coursework for convenient
offline consumption.
On January 19, 2018, we entered into an agreement to purchase a perpetual source
code license for the Learn.co platform from Flatiron School, Inc., a wholly
owned subsidiary of WeWork Companies, Inc. Once integrated into our online learning
platform, we expect that Learn.co will enhance the learning experience of students
and instruction capabilities of faculty across our entire portfolio of offerings.
Student and Faculty Support. We augment each students academic experience
by providing ongoing personalized non-academic support. We also provide a dedicated
team to support and train university administration and faculty on how to use
our platform to facilitate outstanding live instruction.
Accessibility. For students with disabilities, we are able to facilitate accessibility
across our platform. This includes providing screen-reading technology, captioning,
subtitling and voice-over descriptions for asynchronous content, and sign language
interpretation and real time captioning for live classes.
Admissions Application Advising. Leveraging our customer relationship management
deployments and other technology, our graduate program-dedicated teams work
with prospective students as they consider and apply to a program. Once a student
has submitted a completed admissions application package, it is routed to and
reviewed by the university admissions office, which renders the final admission
decision.
In-Program Student Field Placements. Leveraging our nationwide network of clinics,
hospitals, schools and other sites, our field placement team is dedicated to
securing in-program field placement opportunities for students enrolled in our
university clients graduate programs that have a field placement component.
Leveraging a geo-location database, we work closely with faculty to identify
and approve sites that meet curriculum requirements.
Immersion Support. Many of our university clients graduate programs require
students to attend immersions and intensive residencies where students travel
to a university clients physical campus and other locations, where they can
engage in collaborative learning experiences with their classmates and professors
in person, and develop invaluable personal and professional relationships. We
provide the resources and technology to support our university clients in facilitating
these experiences.
Faculty Recruiting. Using our platform, our university clients can identify
and employ highly qualified teaching faculty without geographic constraint.
We effectively act as a search firm by attracting, cultivating and vetting a
pool of faculty candidates for our university clients.