When Big Data pays


Civitas Learning parses Big Data from more than 3 million student records.

Big Data can mean big business.

In February, the technology research company Wikibon released a report predicting that the Big Data market would value $18.1 billion by the end of this year. That’s a growth of 61 percent since 2012.

From corporations to health and government agencies, there are few sectors not exploring the capabilities of Big Data – education included.

Last week, the ed-tech start-up Civitas Learning closed its most recent round of funding with $8.75 million from investors, including Austin Ventures, First Round Capital, Floodgate, Felicis Ventures, and New Markets Venture Partners.

“We’ve got one less excuse, and an awfully big opportunity to do a lot of good with this capital and a team that’s thrilled to get after that,” said Charles Thornburgh, CEO and founder of Civitas Learning, in a video announcement.

The Austin-based company uses a cloud-based analytics platform to provide real-time suggestions to faculty, administrators, and students by aggravating information from student enrollment data, financial aid profiles and learning management systems.

So far, the platform is in use at six institutions, parsing data from more than 3 million student records and 15 million course enrollment records to offer recommendations on decisions like selecting a degree, identifying at-risk students and determining the need for staffing changes.

See Page 2 for what Civitas Learning plans to do with the nearly $9 million in  funding.

“What this company is doing is truly visionary,” stated Santiago Subotovsky, principal with Emergence Capital Partners. “Civitas Learning is building technology that will dramatically improve success rates for both students and institutions.”

In the video announcement, Thornburgh said the funding brings the company one step closer to their goal of helping change student outcomes. With the money, Civitas Learning plans to double its number of employees over the next year and expand to more institutions and students.

The platform is used at Austin Community College, University of Central Florida, DeVry University, University of Maryland University College, Strayer University and Valencia College.

“The funding we just raised is not a goal in and of itself,” Thornburgh said. “We haven’t won yet. We’ll know that we’ve won, that we accomplished this goal we set out to accomplish, when we are  impacting student outcomes for millions of students across higher education.”

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