The Uneven Geographies of Venture Capital Investment in the Global Education Industry

• In Event: The Politics of EdTech: Exploring the changing conditions of educational governance in the age of technocapitalism (Part II)

Proposal

Venture capital (VC) investment in global education grew dramatically from $.5B in 2010 to a peak of 20.8B in 2021, as an unprecedented influx of public funding went into the education sector to solve the crisis created by COVID-19 (Williamson 2021). This influx of money in edtech has significantly restructured schooling and educational practices, yet little is known as to who is investing, where investors are located, what logics they employ, and where investments, and ultimately profits, are landing (Williamson 2017; Williamson & Komljenovic, 2023).

This presentation attempts to answer these questions by exploring the uneven geographic flows of VC investment capital in the global education industry over the past two decades. Defining VC investment in education as a speculative financial practice of wealthy individuals and firms investing in for-profit education companies within the broader global capitalist system (Authors 2024), we analyze VC investment in edtech through three avenues of capital: 1) investments by Global North VCs, principally from the US, UK, and European countries, in companies located in the Global South; 2) investments by Global South VCs in companies located in the Global North, principally the US; and 3) investments by Global South VCs in companies located in the Global South and/or targeting the Global South as their principal market. We draw on a mixed methods approach, including interviews with venture capitalist partners; network analysis of key investors/investments; and quantitative analysis of VC investments with a disaggregation of educational sub-markets by geography using data from Crunchbase.

Drawing on a framework that considers the racialized and gendered political economy of the education, technology, and finance industries (Authors 2024), we find that VC investments perpetuate racialized and gendered power dynamics as venture capitalists from the Global North and Global South (who share particular racial, class, gendered, educational, and social characteristics and dynamics) invest in rapidly growing markets in the Global South under a logic of frontier capitalism (Author 2018; Bou Akar 2012; Gregory 2004). Here, populations and markets on the peripheries of capitalist investment are turned into new or (re)imagined geographic frontiers for capital accumulation (Author 2018; Bou Akar 2012; Gregory 2004). We also present how while VCs see investments in edtech in the Global South as offering the promise of scale, they also view such markets as risky. To offset such risk, we reveal how VC’s operate through a logic of risk management, which takes into account perceptions of political stability, technological infrastructure, conditions for capital growth, and investment in a broader portfolio where markets and governments are seen as stable. Through these techniques, the high chance of investing in a failing company is mitigated, to the extent possible, for the investor, while the costs of failure may be moved to other stakeholders– entrepreneurs, learners, educators, and/or local communities. The paper seeks to reveal not only the uneven and racialized geographies, logics, and capital flows that underlie the recent surge in VC investment in edtech, but ultimately how profit and dispossession occur and under what conditions.

Authors

• Klint Kanopka, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

• Tyler J Hook, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

• Mariam Sedighi, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Shahnaaz Khan, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• María Fernanda Rodríguez, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• Kathryn Moeller, University of Cambridge