Apollo Group pay $75m for Carnegie Learning

Apollo Group owners of the University of Phoenix and BPP have paid $75m to buy Carnegie Learning (CL).

CL, founded in 1998 and provides specialist adaptive maths software, assessment and services and is a spin out of Carnegie Mellon University, to whom Apollo have agreed to pay $21.5m (over 10 years) in a separate, but related transaction. Former investors in CL include Draper Triangle Ventures an off shoot of Silicon Valley’s Draper Fisher Jurvetson. CL also has a raft of ‘learning partners’ who include the RAND Corporation and New Schools Venture Fund (who were also involved with Wireless Generation, recently acquired by News Corp.).

Driving the deal seems to be Apollo’s desire to use adaptive technology to help improve the maths skills and hence educational outcomes of their students, put more simply, this means better retention and graduation rates, two important issues for US private universities.