An institution that probably hopes to one day become the major deliverer of online math courses has just purchased a leading provider of online math courses.
According to an article by Trip Gabriel in the New York Times:
The Apollo Group, which operates the profit-making University of Phoenix, said Tuesday that it would pay $75 million to buy Carnegie Learning, which offers computer-based math instruction.
Carnegie Learning’s… Cognitive Tutor software analyzes students’ weaknesses as they work through problems and offers new problems until they are ready to move on.
Apollo, true to form, says little about what it intended to do with this new acquisition, though one of Apollo’s chief executives, Gregory Cappelli, said that “adding the Carnegie Learning solution into our platform, we’ll really help our students to have better outcomes in math.”
In a separate, though apparently related, deal Apollo will also buy technology products for $21.5 million from Carnegie Mellon University related to Cognitive Tutor.
Scientists from Carnegie Mellon helped develop Carnegie Learning software in 1998.
