Dive Brief:
- For-profit open educational resources company Lumen Learning has raised $2.5 million in venture capital to expand its offerings and reach.
- Lumen, founded in 2012, initially backed away from such financing but decided it needed new capital to grow the business and scale up, edSurge reports.
- Lumen offers especially affordable educational resources for 50 college-level courses, creating a path around traditional textbooks, and it serves mostly community colleges.
Dive Insight:
Lumen currently works with fewer than 100 colleges, most of them two-year schools. The additional venture capital likely will give Lumen a platform to reach more four-year schools and expand its reach with resources for new courses. The Gates and Hewlett foundations have given substantial grant funding to Lumen, edSurge reports, but that has gone mostly toward research and development, rather than outreach and sales.