GlobalScholar Raises $27 Million B Round To Tackle Online Education
In conjunction with the investment round, GlobalScholar is also announcing that it has acquired Excelsior Software for an undisclosed amount (although it was less than half the total raised). Excelsior makes student assessment software used by teachers in 1,000 school districts nationwide. GlobalScholar will be adding the Excelsior’s business to its existing Web-based tutoring platform, which it launched quietly last fall.
Tutors can charge their own rates—which can range from $5 to $95 an hour—and GlobalScholar takes a 20 percent cut. The first hour is only $1 to encourage people to try out the service, and GlobalScholar is offering $5,000 to the student with the highest SAT score that takes an SAT prep class online. Competitors include SmartThinking, Tutor.com, and TutorVista—the NYT reviews Tutor.com today. Watch out, Kaplan.
In addition to GlobalScholar, the company also launched two other Websites in the past few weeks. SchoolFinder pulls together basic information for elementary and high schools and lets parents compare one school against another. And CollegeFinder does the same for colleges, pulling in rankings from U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review. It also lists celebrity alums for each college. (Did you know that Sigourney Weaver and Ted Koppel both went to Stanford?). Parent and student reviews are coming soon.
Here are some screen shots: