[trevelyan]

Pearson is not strong outside institutionalized education, which is not the growth space and is VERY hard for startups to address anyway. They have money to buy stuff, but their margins are eroding in print and the company isn't structured to innovate elsewhere, in large part because no-one running any division wants money-losing investments on their balance sheet. So the company has to acquire rather than innovate, and isn't even very good at that (Tutorvista???).

There is really interesting stuff happening in the adult education market that will eventually trickle into K12 and higher ed. It just isn't generally covered by edutech press because of the focus on institutional money. So don't fear the reaper and all, although I agree about the quality problems now things will look differently in ten years.