Aug 19, 2026
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4 min read
Enrollment shifts across computer science, health, engineering, and data programs are changing how vendors should read institutional demand.
Aug 17, 2026
5 min read
The Ecosystem Weekly: South Dakota advances an AI modernization plan, NSF launches new life sciences funding, CS enrollment cools, and McMahon's voluntary pledge keeps planning in focus.
Aug 12, 2026
7 min read
A nonbinding federal appeal can still alter procurement when board approved public claims require traceable proof across academic, research, finance, and communications records
Aug 10, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Aid processing stabilizes while NSF launches regional AI hubs, Instructure lowers LMS switching costs, and the Education Department asks colleges to publish governance commitments.
Aug 5, 2026
9 min read
Federal agreements are creating repeatable demand for data controls, evidence management, training records, monitoring tools, and board-level reporting.
Aug 3, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: NSF launches a $380M AI lab network, Blackbaud expands campus AI, and DOJ intensifies admissions scrutiny.
Jul 29, 2026
Auditability, data lineage, and decision traceability are moving to the centre of product strategy
Jul 28, 2026
3 min read
BNED posted its strongest results in years. Your procurement posture has not caught up
6 min read
Encoura came attached to the deal. For enrollment and admissions vendors, that is the part to read closely.
Jul 27, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: DHS's new visa framework, widespread student AI adoption, federal research reforms, and Title VI regulatory changes
Jul 22, 2026
Stricter student aid controls are creating demand for identity, analytics, payments, and workflow platforms that can operate as one system.
Jul 20, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: DHS visa reforms, graduate aid implementation, AI governance, and new research partnership models reshape institutional priorities.
Jul 14, 2026
As research universities cut doctoral intake, a new buying category is emerging across grants management, enterprise planning, graduate enrollment, and research finance.
Jul 12, 2026
The Ecosystem: Online enrollment strategy matures, financial aid systems begin OBBBA implementation, third-party cyber risk expands procurement scrutiny, and leading research universities reduce Ph.D. admissions.
Jul 7, 2026
A court ruling clarified where institutions will need help: financing risk, enrollment conversion, and graduate program economics.
Jul 5, 2026
The Ecosystem: State enrollment rules, federal loan changes, fraud scrutiny, and NIH grant oversight are shifting demand toward auditable campus infrastructure.
Jul 1, 2026
The Ecosystem: AI expands inside Microsoft 365, private college finances weaken, and new federal loan flexibility reaches campuses
Jun 29, 2026
As DOJ and HHS move closer to civil-rights, FERPA, and disability workflows, higher ed vendors will need to sell evidence, auditability, and institutional defensibility.
11,000 retractions, a 1.4-star courseware rating, and a renewal cycle your institution is not ready for
Jun 26, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Syracuse’s enrollment shortfall, July 1 aid-rule disruption, UIC’s Google AI accelerator, and NSF’s SBIR/STTR restart reshape vendor priorities.
Jun 24, 2026
What changing grant rules, student aid policy, and program economics could mean for research strategy, graduate education, and institutional planning.
Jun 15, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: International enrollment weakens, NIH tests grant concentration limits, federal research rules face a review, and a PeopleSoft flaw exposes risks in higher ed's tech backbone
Jun 10, 2026
8 min read
How federal contracts, civil-rights enforcement, and accreditation are turning policy risk into an operating constraint for colleges, universities, and the vendors that serve them.
Jun 8, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Harvard centralizes administration, Florida expands state control over curricula, AI governance enters procurement reviews, KBR becomes an $8B research intermediary
Jun 3, 2026
Behind the AI messaging is a much bigger battle over customer retention, market trust, and institutional migration decisions.
Jun 1, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Record FAFSA completion, unresolved graduate loan rules, a $39 million AI renewal at CSU, and emerging federal research funding uncertainty
May 27, 2026
As higher education tightens scrutiny around AI, vendors face a harder question: what makes a product institutionally defensible?
May 25, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Four federal shifts this week are turning compliance, repayment, and AI into auditable workflows that reshape higher-ed buying committees
May 20, 2026
Rasmussen University may be an early signal that LMS platforms are evolving into broader operating layers.
May 19, 2026
Five targeted intelligence briefs, simultaneously published across all sides of the post-breach LMS market. Here is everything we said.
May 18, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: A 20% enrollment drop, AIM negotiations, Canvas fallout, and MIT’s research warning.
May 13, 2026
16 min read
Canvas has been breached twice by the same actor in eight months. The market is open. Here is how long it stays that way, the only move worth making, and where to point the spear.
May 11, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: A finals-week LMS disruption, new graduate borrowing limits, federal AI funding alignment, and AI-mediated grant oversight are changing how institutions evaluate operational risk
May 6, 2026
Institutions are unlikely to abandon Canvas quickly. But repeated incidents change how platforms are evaluated during renewal cycles and expose how much of the EdTech stack now depends on them
May 4, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: NSF governance is dismantled, STATS ties aid to program earnings, Grad PLUS is eliminated, LMS replacement tilts AI first, and $289M in IES funding risks expiring
Apr 29, 2026
Here is what that means for every vendor with a deal in the pipeline.
Apr 27, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: A new earnings-based Title IV test, an ADA accessibility delay for public colleges, and NIH’s continued 30–35% discussion rate in peer review all shift how institutions allocate
Apr 22, 2026
The company’s true moat is not data or technology. We spell out what it actually is.
Apr 20, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: DOE’s earnings-based aid proposal, the AIM accreditation rewrite, AI grant priorities, and congressional scrutiny of publishing costs
Apr 17, 2026
The Khan-TED-ETS announcement framed as a challenge to Harvard was clickbait. The key signal is what ETS is doing, why it is doing it now, and what it means for assessment & credentialing vendors.
Apr 15, 2026
The Sana acquisition gives Workday account teams a new lever within 650+ universities that already run its HR and finance systems.
Apr 13, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Funding per student falls, accreditation rules expand federal leverage, Workday strengthens the enterprise platform model, and research cuts force universities to pursue industry
Apr 10, 2026
Earlier this year we published contrarian theses on two publicly traded companies in the education and learning space. One is up 40%. One is down 50%. We called it correctly. Here is how we did it.
Apr 8, 2026
Campuses cannot support dozens of AI tools under tight budgets and compliance pressure. Institutions are increasingly consolidating AI access into enterprise platforms they already operate.
Apr 6, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Proposed $2.7B funding cut lands, accessibility compliance deadlines arrive, CSU’s AI survey reveals governance gaps, and a federal certification proposal triggers ~22k comments
Apr 1, 2026
Universities are now using VPAT documentation and WCAG compliance to screen vendors before contracts are even considered.
Mar 30, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: ED speeds new accreditor approvals, Treasury assumes $180B in defaulted loans, federal research grants compress university partnerships, and IPEDS deadlines keep moving
Mar 25, 2026
As campuses integrate systems and reduce vendor portfolios, platform decisions made during consolidation cycles may determine which edtech providers expand across institutions and which disappear.
Mar 23, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: ACTS reporting slips under court order, NCES data infrastructure gets a redesign effort, and ED-DOL launch the first joint federal grant competition.
Mar 18, 2026
Mid-cycle federal updates and continuous ISIR transactions are compressing processing timelines and exposing the limits of batch-based financial aid systems
Mar 16, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Visa issuance shocks enrollment planning, federal aid systems prepare for a major cutover, AI rises to the top of presidential agendas
Mar 11, 2026
Texas, North Carolina, and Minnesota: How multi-year platform contracts signed in 2025-2026 may face new scrutiny under changing governance and budget environments
Mar 9, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: ED moves to sectorwide oversight, foreign funding investigations expand, AI budgets formalize, and the Pentagon reshapes university partnerships.
Mar 4, 2026
Why universities can report rising research spending while the infrastructure that sustains it becomes financially constrained.
Mar 2, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: ED sets a hard date for Grad PLUS elimination, accreditation speeds up, Anthropic embeds in 1,000 campuses, and states deploy billions as federal research wobbles.
Feb 25, 2026
How accreditation enforcement and state-led AI infrastructure are redefining decision power in higher education
Feb 23, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: UC’s $1.2B dispute ends, ED targets regional accreditation language, NJ launches an Nvidia AI supercomputer pact, FAFSA passes 8M, and OCR secures 31 partnership exits.
Feb 19, 2026
Projected $11.5B Pell shortfall and margin pressure are pushing even $500K deals to finance review.
Feb 16, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Pell math tightens, accreditation rewrites begin, ED probes student data sharing, and NSF pulls shared facility buying into spring 2026.
Feb 11, 2026
Vendors moving into regulated and infrastructure-adjacent markets reflect a deliberate trade: slower procurement cycles in exchange for an embedded, lower-churn revenue streams
Feb 9, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Pell holds steady for 2026, ACTS forces seven years of admissions data by March, cloud capacity tightens, and NIH buys institutions time on compliance.
Feb 4, 2026
Accreditation reform is changing RFP language, pulling legal and compliance into reviews, and slowing deals that looked approved.
Feb 2, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: U.S. News reshapes online enrollment risk, DOE puts accreditation on the clock, College Board pulls work-based learning into the core stack, and NIH restores grants.
Jan 28, 2026
New buying signals show institutions prioritizing auditability, operational risk reduction, and AI systems they can defend
Jan 26, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Congress blocks aid cuts, courts reshape compliance risk, cyber patch timelines tighten, and research governance shifts as AI moves upstream.
Jan 21, 2026
Grant authority is shifting from the DoE to the DOL, changing who evaluates proposals, what proof clears review, and why previously viable deals are now stalling.
Jan 19, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Asset-led consolidation, federal oversight shifts, AI moves into core infrastructure, and research buyers pivot from growth to resilience.
Jan 13, 2026
2 min read
What actually governs renewals inside institutions, and why product comparisons keep leading challengers astray
Jan 12, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: ED’s earnings rule shifts spend upstream, courts block NIH overhead cuts, Ohio State mandates AI fluency, and ERP consolidation tightens platform risk.
Jan 6, 2026
The Ecosystem Weekly: Credit outlooks turn cautious, DOJ escalates tuition enforcement, AI moves into enterprise governance, and NSF data shows research dollars concentrating.
Dec 29, 2025
How central finance, procurement, and risk now decide deals, and why many vendors do not realize they have already lost
Dec 22, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Faculty salaries spike, federal oversight tightens, AI enters core workflows, and research units pull back as funding contracts.
Dec 17, 2025
How demand aggregation is reshaping leverage, visibility, and strategy across higher ed, OPMs, and edtech platforms
Retention Risk, Partner Erosion, AI Tradeoffs, and Regulatory Exposure
Dec 15, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: SAVE ends, compliance demands rise, digital twins expand, and grant funding contractions reshape research spending.
Dec 12, 2025
10 min read
Enterprise retention, partner economics, AI scale, and the cracks forming underneath
1 min read
Dec 8, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Graduate price ceilings, elite endowment cuts, KEV-listed zero-days, and shrinking NIH dollars
Dec 1, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: New federal terms, 2026 provenance rules, AI-governance gaps, and certificate-driven enrollment shifts shape next year’s budgets.
Nov 24, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Compact stalls decisions, DEI reviews hit research, FIPSE accelerates AI plans, and international drops strain revenue.
Nov 17, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Elite aid moves, federal oversight widens, AI capital accelerates, and direct admissions rewires early-stage demand.
Nov 10, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Loan caps squeeze growth, compliance budgets open, transfer tech converges with CRM, and Amazon rewires higher ed’s B2B market.
Nov 3, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: New federal rules and rapid AI adoption are forcing vendors to navigate tighter compliance and faster procurement cycles.
Oct 27, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Sales cycles are slowing as tariffs inflate costs, compliance rules tighten, and institutions shift from expansion to risk management.
Oct 20, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Federal oversight weakens, cyber response stalls, and Google enters credentialing
Oct 13, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Aid delays, vendor collapses, and paused grants hit Q4 pipelines
Oct 6, 2025
Sep 30, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: Graduate loan caps, record enrollments, AI oversight, and widening funding gaps
Sep 22, 2025
The Ecosystem Weekly: UATX’s free-tuition bet, compliance crackdowns drive tech demand, Google seizes system-scale AI, and $1B in research cuts
Aug 25, 2025
Foreign students don't only “fill seats” - they fuel America’s labs, patents, and next-gen companies
Jul 14, 2025
What vendors don't see about product-switching behavior
Jul 1, 2025
Blackboard defined the LMS category. Can it survive what it helped create?
May 21, 2025
Strategies to reverse the decline of America's small-town institutions
May 16, 2025
Why the post-AI $80K/yr Classroom Still Has a Future
Apr 17, 2025
Marc Andreessen is flat wrong about job security, and many American workers should be worried
Apr 14, 2025
The $43.8 billion higher education export that needs to be protected.
Apr 4, 2025
Field notes to prepare you for ASU-GSV 2025
Mar 26, 2025
How Universities are Navigating the Federal DEI Crackdown
Mar 11, 2025
Erasing personal narratives from admissions
Mar 6, 2025
Will a realignment of DEI initiatives result in meaningful spending changes?
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