Acadeum

Acadeum, formerly known as College Consortium, was established in 2016 to address the persistent challenges within higher education, such as student retention and graduation rates. The company was founded by Josh Pierce, who brought his experience from the education sector to tackle these issues. The platform operates as a collaborative network that enables higher education institutions to share online courses, providing a mechanism to overcome administrative and financial barriers that often hinder student progress. This model allows students to find and enroll in required courses that may not be available at their home institution, thereby facilitating on-time graduation.

The business serves a market of colleges and universities, currently partnering with over 460 institutions. Its primary function is to create a marketplace for academic courses, allowing schools to expand their curriculum without the substantial investment required to develop new programs from scratch. For institutions, this translates into an opportunity to increase academic capacity, retain students who might otherwise leave, and generate new revenue streams by filling empty seats in their online courses. The business model appears to be based on a fee structure for transactions occurring across the network, likely involving a commission on the courses shared between institutions.

Acadeum's core service is its technology platform which facilitates this inter-institutional course sharing. A key benefit for students is the seamless transfer of credits, as the platform ensures that courses taken through the network are pre-approved by the student's home institution. This helps students avoid the common pitfall of taking courses that ultimately do not count toward their degree. For the partner colleges and universities, the platform not only helps in retaining their student body but also allows them to attract new learners by offering workforce-aligned curricula and stackable certifications that they might not have the resources to offer independently. In essence, Acadeum provides a strategic tool for institutions to adapt to the evolving demands of the education landscape and improve student outcomes.

Keywords: higher education, course sharing, academic marketplace, student retention, credit transfer, online learning, edtech, inter-institutional collaboration, academic capacity, graduation rates