Private equity in higher education

Following a decline in private equity acquisitions of for-profit colleges and universities due to regulatory scrutiny, poor student outcomes, and institutional collapse, firms have shifted to acquiring companies that provide labor, goods, and services to institutions rather than owning them outright. In recent years, private equity firms have acquired companies in higher education outsourcing, data management, and classroom content, as well as transportation, housing, food services, athletic programs, and more.

The profit-seeking motives of private equity firms do not always align with the needs or best interests of students. Educational institutions and investors should carefully monitor the risks of private equity investments in the sector, and consider implementing policies to protect students and investments from such risks.

Outsourcing

While outsourcing is often presented as a solution to staffing shortages, staffing agencies and management companies do not create new jobs or address the root causes of staffing crises. In fact, the weakened higher education system that allows private contractors to flourish is the problem – without enough funding to pay staff what they deserve, working in colleges and universities has become a less sustainable long-term career option. Though higher education administrators may find outsourcing to be a convenient option, workers find an increasingly precarious market. As sociology professor Albert Fu wrote, “most convenient of all is that the university no longer has a relationship with or obligation to the worker.”

Human Capital Education

In 2025, private equity firm Haven Capital Partners added higher education consulting and technology provider Human Capital Education (HCE) to its portfolio. The company offers a range of services including staffing, enrollment and marketing, online program management, and information technology. Haven Capital was founded in 2024, making HCE one of its first acquisitions. Haven Capital funded an add-on less than one year after the acquisition – In January 2026, HCE acquired Kennedy & Company. HCE now serves more than 300 institutions in the United States. 

Beyond consulting for specific projects, HCE staffs vacant positions across a range of departments. The company contracts with schools to provide admissions support to prospective students – HCE uses artificial intelligence (AI) tool CollegeVine to gather information about a student and then match them to an admissions coach based on their needs. The “AI-assisted qualification” model seems to prioritize certain students: “CollegeVine engages new inquiries instantly and surfaces real intent, ensuring your highest quality prospects are engaged quickly and efficiently” based on “data-driven intent scoring.” Through this and other methods, HCE promises its clients an enrollment increase. This process runs the risk of connecting with HCE contracted workers instead of with admissions staff with deep knowledge of the particular institution where they are employed.

Kelly Education

Kelly Education advertises itself as the largest education staffing firm in the US, working across higher education institutions and more than 1,000 school districts to fill millions of vacancies. Kelly Services relies heavily on the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which incentivizes companies to hire people who face barriers to employment such as veterans and formerly incarcerated people. In the 1990s, the company lobbied to preserve and expand the tax credit. Real estate investment firm Hunt Companies acquired parent company Kelly Services in January 2026.

A 2022 ProPublica analysis found that Kelly’s tax credits, “primarily” WOTC, accounted for 48% of its U.S. pre-tax earnings, reducing the company’s income taxes by 73%. Kelly Services ranked among the top firms on two of ProPublica’s lists: most tax credits approved and most severe injuries as reported by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Kelly also settled a class action lawsuit in which plaintiffs alleged that the agency misclassified workers, violating wage and hour laws. Though the company denies any wrongdoing, the court approved a $3.15 million settlement. 

In higher education, Kelly recruits and places virtual adjunct faculty, “making geography a non-issue.” Kelly’s website boasts testimonials from institutions in Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and features case studies related to recruitment outsourcing and payroll and benefits administration. 

Insight Global

Insight Global is an education staffing company based in Atlanta. The company fills positions in information technology, administrative and office management, and more for colleges and universities. In 2024, Insight Global staffed more than 800 positions in higher education.

Private equity firms have owned stakes in Insight Global since 2007. Leonard Green & Partners and Crescent Capital acquired stakes in 2016, paying existing owner Ares Management a large dividend. Since then, the private equity owners have completed six dividend recapitalizations, in which debt is added to the company in order to pay the firms and their investors. The tactic has been widely criticized by both supporters and skeptics of the private equity model for needlessly saddling companies with debt to extract capital without making substantive operating improvements, putting those companies at risk for restructuring, bankruptcy, or cost cutting to make up the interest payments and pay off debt.

Through open records requests, Good Jobs First found that Insight Global committed wage and hour violations resulting in penalties from the Illinois, New York, and Washington Departments of Labor as well as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Department of Labor since 2020. The company also settled an NLRB case in Georgia for “concerted activities (retaliation, discharge, discipline), coercive statements (threats, promises of benefits, etc.), and coercive rules.” In 2024, the Department of Justice fined Insight Global $2.7 million for violating the False Claims Act by failing to protect patient data during COVID-19 contract tracing work.

Insight Global owner Leonard Green has gained notoriety as a firm with a business model that harms patients, workers, and consumers. From 2010-2020, Leonard Green took approximately $437 million in fees and dividends from Prospect Medical Holdings, then a community health system in Southern California. The Senate Budget Committee foundthat Leonard Green “spent board meetings discussing profit maximization tactics—cost cutting, increasing patient volume, and managing labor expenses—with little to no discussion of patient outcomes or quality of care at their hospitals.”

Prospect filed for bankruptcy in January 2025 with over a billion dollars in liabilities. Leonard Green sold its stake in the company in 2021, but its actions contributed to the conditions that set the bankruptcy in motion. Leonard Green and Partners also owned Joann when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2025. Joann laid off 19,000 people and closed 500 stores.

Data Management

Through educational and administrative platforms, private equity-owned companies have access to data on millions of students. This data can be used to track individual student progress and overall trends, or it may live in a management database with information like student attendance, health records, and grades. Depending on the program and use, data collected can range from basic information like a student’s name and address to scholarship information and citizenship status. Some educational tools and devices can also track which websites students visit, typing patterns, and search history.

Two of the largest student learning and data management platforms are owned by private equity firms: Canvas (Instructure) and Blackboard (formerly Anthology). 

Instructure

KKR, CPP Investments, and Dragoneer Investment Group acquired Instructure for $4.65 billion in 2024. Instructure claims that 50% of all higher education students use its learning platform Canvas.

In Spring 2026, hackers accessed student information and disrupted Canvas twice, demanding a ransom from individual schools or Instructure in exchange for erasing the data, which contained email addresses, enrollment information, and messages sent on the platform. Days after the second attack, the company “reached an agreement” with the hackers, seemingly paying the ransom despite general advice from the FBI to the contrary. 

Anthology

In September 2025, edtech provider Anthology filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, reporting more than $1 billion in liabilities across the company and its many subsidiaries. As one of the largest edtech companies operating in the United States, Anthology crumbled under the weight of private equity’s risky, debt-heavy strategy.

In 2020, Leeds Equity Partners and Veritas Capital created Anthology. The following year, Anthology acquired online learning platform Blackboard. The company offered more than a dozen products to higher education institutions, promising increased efficiency and seamless connection between products. Despite the company’s high aspirations, institutions preferred flexibility to Anthology’s end-to-end suite of products The company’s aggressive acquisition strategy led to unexpected “operational hurdles” and “integration challenges” that took “longer than anticipated to effectively right-size.” 

Anthology’s story reflects private equity common practice: firms acquire and merge smaller companies that do similar or complementary work in order to create a larger company that offers more services, reducing competition. In some cases, the company cannot manage the rapid growth and ends up filing for bankruptcy. 

Anthology has been divided into three parts, each continuing under new private equity ownership. Oaktree Capital Management and Nexus Capital Management own the Anthology brand, focused primarily on learning systems. Ellucian, owned by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners, absorbed the company’s enterprise operations. Encoura, also owned by Nexus, took over Anthology’s student success business. In 2024, Nexus acquired college entrance exam provider ACT. While building a well-integrated system sounded promising, its failure to materialize may reflect a broader issue with private equity investment in the education sector: a mismatch between private equity’s appetite and educational institutions’ desire. To read more about this, see our coverage of the bankruptcy here.

Curriculum Development and Course Materials

A study from education consulting firm Tyton Partners found that instructor generative AI use has sharply increased in recent years, going from 4 percent in 2023 to 30 percent in 2025. While AI may free up time for educators, it does not address the fundamental issues that lead to educators being overburdened in the first place. According to new research covered by the Harvard Business Review,

“AI tools don’t reduce work, they consistently intensify it: In the study, employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. That may sound like a win, but it’s not quite so simple. These changes can be unsustainable, leading to workload creep, cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.”

Educators may take on more work, appearing to increase productivity while potentially pushing the instructor closer to burnout. Authors of the study encourage employers to correct for this by creating guidelines around AI that “include intentional pauses, sequencing work, and adding more human grounding.” 

Straive

Straive is an AI and data solutions provider that operates in a variety of industries. In education, the company offers AI tools that can be used for curriculum development, admissions, financial aid, counseling, and more. Straive has been private equity-owned since 2004, when it was acquired by TH Lee. Formerly named SPi Global, the company has since changed hands four times, most recently taken over by EQT in 2021 after being rebranded by Partners Group. Under private equity ownership, Straive has acquired 14 companies.

In 2020, Straive acquired LearningMate Solutions, which provides generative AI to educators through a platform called Kadal. With no mention of why teachers have “strained time and energy constraints,” Straive aims to give teachers their evenings back through AI tools which automatically create and grade assignments. Similarly, Straive acknowledges that educators often develop curriculum “in the cracks of their daily schedules,” and offers tools that automatically translate, paraphrase, and fill gaps in content. 

Follett Higher Education

Follett Corporation opened its first bookstore in 1873, growing significantly over the years to offer textbooks and other course materials to K-12 and higher education students. The company sold off its K-12 division to private equity firm Francisco Partners in 2021. One year later, Madison River Capital acquired the rest of the company, including Follett Higher Education. In 2024, Follett laid off approximately 120 workers due to restructuring and low sales.

Students and faculty have pushed back on Follett’s bookstore privatization for more than a decade, protesting in North Carolina, starting a petition in Washington State, requesting meetings with university administration in Calgary, and demanding transparency in Santa Barbara. In recent years, Follett has experienced financial distress – Norton sued the company for millions in missed payments, while SUNY New Paltz changed bookstore owners after Follett failed to pay commission to the school for a full year. It seems that Follett is changing its business model in response. While one might expect to primarily find books in campus bookstores, Follett is focused on expanding its other retail offerings through its own private label goods and partnerships with third parties.