Chegg (or Amazon for that matter)? If you go to startup pitch events, you’ve seen it happen: An entrepreneur says something—something so naïve, egregious and hackneyed—that it makes the investors, along with educators who are now increasingly in the audience, physically cringe. As funders wince and squirm uncomfortably, some are thinking along the lines of: “How do I respond to this pitch genuinely without coming off like a jerk?”. MORE

They include Facebook, Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Warby Parker, Casper, Birchbox, Plated, 2U, and Chegg. “In A venture-backed company today announced a new educational offering billed as an alternative to the standard undergraduate experience. It will last only one calendar year, feature a curriculum designed in close coordination with well-known employers, and cost nothing—at least at the outset. MORE

” Via the press release : “ Cengage , McGraw-Hill Education , and Pearson have joined forces with Ingram and Chegg , Inc. Education Politics. President Trump gave a not-the-State-of-the-Union address to Congress on Tuesday. Details about the education-related elements of his speech from NPR , The New York Times , Education Week , and The Washington Post. Via The New York Times : “For Trump and DeVos , a Florida Private School Is a Model for Choice.” MORE

The month of May kicked off with a significant number of deals in the ed-tech sector, including acquisitions by Chegg and ACT, Inc. Chegg Acquires Imagine Easy Solutions: The learning platform provider has acquired Imagine Easy Solutions , the provider of EasyBib.com and other writing tools, for approximately $42 million in an all-cash transaction, Santa Clara, Calif.-based based Chegg said in a statement. MORE

Other textbook distributors, including Chegg, Inc. Three of the country’s largest publishers, Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill Education and Cengage Learning, are suing Follett Corporation, a major textbook distributor, on charges of selling counterfeit textbooks in its stores. The companies claim many of Follett’s textbooks are purchased from questionable distributors that sell illegally-copied versions. MORE

And so what we’ll do is kind of track what type of transactions are happening on, say, Chegg, Amazon, and online away from the bookstore. In the TV series Shark Tank, entrepreneurs with budding companies pitch their ideas to a panel of investors who ask probing questions and then decide whether to back the proposals. MORE

Website Review: Chegg. It’s not enough to share information with students. Unless they have an eidetic memory, much of what they see/hear/taste/smell never reaches long term memory. For that, students require study. MORE

Students will have the chance to connect directly with celebrities in one-on-one tutoring sessions through Chegg Tutors: VIP Edition. All tutoring sessions will take place this fall through Chegg’s online tutoring platform, Chegg Tutors. MORE

Chegg was founded in 2005 and went public eight years later in 2013. Once upon a time the learning-management system (or LMS) was a new idea. In fact, the notion emerged about two decades ago. To mark the 20th anniversary of Blackboard, one of the first LMSes, the company’s co-founder, Matthew Pittinsky, wrote an epic blog post about the company’s history, which includes his advice for today’s edtech leaders. What follows is an edited excerpt of Part 1 of that post. MORE

Its clients include Fidelity and Chegg. Alanda Povroznik, at head of table, works for a company that, as a benefit, will soon be helping her repay her college loans. Photo: Powertex. MORE

Chegg. Let’s pretend that you and I are both rich. Like, filthy rich. Scrooge McDuck or Tony Stark rich. The kind of rich that would let us both splurge large sums of money on silly bets. Now pretend that it’s late 2011, and we get into a debate about education technology. I’m excited for the industry’s future, and I think we can make money investing in publicly-traded edtech companies. You disagree and say that we’re both better off investing across a wider variety of industries. MORE

” Pearson and Chegg are partnering for textbook rentals. Education Politics. From the Department of Education’s press release : “U.S. Secretary of Education Announces Chief of Staff and Additional Staff Hires.” ” And what a fine bunch. Via ProPublica : “DeVos Pick to Head Civil Rights Office Once Said She Faced Discrimination for Being White.” MORE