The digital age and changing corporate strategies
have produced some handoffs among the three corporations that have dominated
education publishing: McGraw-Hill,
Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Apollo Global Management has bought the education publishing
side of McGraw-Hill for $2.5 billion. McGraw-Hill
had dropped 11% of revenues between 2008 and 2011, according to Education Week (December 12, 2012). The head of Apollo's version of the company
says they want to put together digital content and services into a package,
rather than separate development.
The other two of the big publishers revenues also
dropped in that period: Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt
lost 13% and Pearson's publishing revenue dropped 3%.
Edweek
says the situation is a result of several trends: moves from print to digital, austerity in
school district budgets and states deciding not to purchase new textbooks until
the new US Common Curriculum is in place and textbooks reflect new content.
While McGraw-Hill sold off its education side,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt came out of bankruptcy protection after restructuring
$3.1 billion in debt because of previous acquisitions of other education publishing
companies. They had expanded into a declining
market.
Pearson is “acquiring technology to create platforms
for its content,” according to the Edweek report. It has bought Harcourt
Assessment, “America’s Choice” school improvement company, Schoolnet software,
and Connections Education, a virtual school operator. They bought Connections Education from Apollo
Global management that, in turn, just bought McGraw-Hill.
For Pearson, this is a continuation of a corporate
strategy of buying up other companies to develop an integrated company that
offers one-stop shopping for every stage of the education process. This was described in another digicritic post. http://digicritic.blogspot.ca/2012/09/corporate-control-of-education-pearson.html
Apollo, the company that bought McGraw-Hill, owns
Phoenix University. Apollo is closing
down more than 100 Phoenix University campuses in the US and putting the
savings into expanding its already large online programs. A US Senate committee has reported on an
investigation of Phoenix University practices:
“The report outlines widespread problems in the
sector, including overpriced tuition, predatory recruiting practices, high
dropout rates and aggressive marketing campaigns. It calls for enhanced
transparency, stronger oversight and meaningful protections. The report
suggested that the education department create an online student complaint
clearinghouse and require all higher education institutions to provide a link
on their websites.” [From the Phoenix,
Arizona, Business Journal.] 
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