Class Central, yet again, came across a 2U employee’s layoff post on LinkedIn. This is its sixth layoff (that we know of) since 2U acquired edX in 2021. The first one happened in 2022 for profitability’s sake. Since then, the company filed for bankruptcy (mostly due to the debt it took to acquire edX for $800M), took down its bootcamps, exited many university partnerships, and even got delisted from the stock market. The previous layoffs were framed as strategy shifts, realigning operations, o

Swayam is India’s national online course platform, designed to support the country’s National Education Policy, which entails improving access to quality education in India. At Class Central, we’ve been paying attention to Swayam since the very beginning. It launched in beta in 2016, and has now reached over 56 million enrollments with over 5.2 million certificates issued. It’s been growing rather fast. Swayam offers courses in a wide variety of disciplines, including from prestigious institut

Online course platforms closely track their learners. And things have gotten worse over the past two years.

In 2027, Duolingo is shutting down Duolingo for Schools, its free classroom tool that helped teachers track student progress and assign lessons. Coursera did the same thing last year, ending free course audits. It seemed sudden, but the signs were there. Class Central tracked the Duolingo for Schools shutdown too. And this time, the signs were all across social media platforms. Why the Shutdown? Duolingo for Schools was launched in 2015. Within a week, more than 10,000 teachers and 25,000 stud