Before "EdTech" existed, education's biggest commercial business was content: textbooks, workbooks and teacher guides from a handful of publishers. That business has been rebuilt twice in 15 years. First, print gave way to digital courseware and access codes. In higher education this led to inclusive access, where course materials are billed through tuition. In K-12 it led to digital core curriculum adopted district by district. Second, a public-good counter-movement grew up: open educational resources (OER) such as OpenStax, and nonprofit open curricula such as Illustrative Mathematics. Together with the high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) movement and EdReports, these changed what districts buy and how they judge it. Generative AI now adds a third pressure. Content can be produced almost for free, so value moves to curation, alignment, evidence and the platform that delivers it. This section covers how publishing and curriculum markets work, textbook pricing, inclusive access, OER, HQIM and adoption cycles, and how an expert evaluates content businesses.
What the study covers
- 1Overview: three content markets
- 2Mechanics
- 3Key numbers
- 4Landmark companies and cases
- 5Pitfalls
- 6How an expert thinks about it
- 7Glossary
Technical exhibits
Worked examples, checklists and case studies included with this study.
Textbook Pricing and Inclusive Access Worked Example
Script-computed model of one large intro course: student cost per format, publisher revenue and gross profit over a three-year edition cycle under traditional sales vs. inclusive access, and the OER alternative
Curriculum Adoption and Hqim Primer
How K-12 adoption cycles work (adoption states vs. local control), the EdReports gateways, and a checklist for selling or evaluating core curriculum