Acadeum, an Austin startup that allows a network of more than 200 colleges and universities to share online courses, announced Thursday it raised $7 million in a Series A investment led by the Lumina Foundation, Rethink Education, LearnStart and Socratic Ventures.
College classes usually fill up quickly or conflict with each other, which forces students to sit on waitlists, compromise on scheduling and sometimes take on extra semesters to fulfill their required course load.
Acadeum’s online course marketplace, known as the Academic Sharing Platform, aims to solve these issues by allowing schools to easily exchange academic resources, student and enrollment data and financial payments. This way, if a class fills up at one university, a student can enroll in an online version of the class with a different university in the network, earning full credit toward graduation, GPA and financial aid requirements.
“Our work is rooted in a belief that deep collaboration is at the core of lasting innovation in higher education, as it has been in many other sectors,” CEO and co-founder Josh Pierce said in a statement. “It reflects the transformative impact of interoperability and open networks to expand access and options for students while simultaneously enabling institutions to specialize and refine sustainable financial models.”
Acadeum, which was formerly known as College Consortium, claims to have facilitated more than 150 inter-school partnerships, helping 5,000 students complete classes. The company says this most recent funding will be used to grow its community of institutions.
