student-retention
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Acadeum turns another college’s empty seat into your next credit
A missing class can delay a degree. Acadeum lets colleges borrow academic capacity from one another - with the credit approved before the student takes a seat.
Mentor Collective and the art of starting before September
A mentor is useful only if the conversation begins. Mentor Collective helps colleges turn introductions into relationships - and relationships into clues about what students need.
Motimatic buys ad space for the students who went quiet
A college can win an application and still lose the student. Motimatic uses behavioral science, paid media, and carefully timed prompts to turn unfinished intentions into a next step.
Caissa K12 and the Campaign for the Empty Desk
Public schools once waited for families to arrive. Caissa K12 treats every empty desk like an undecided voter - and only gets paid when the student comes back.
The Startup That Texts College Dropouts Before They Drop Out
Melvin Hines was one of 68 kids in his high school class to graduate. He built Upswing so the other students - the adult learners, the first-gen, the ones nobody texts back - get a fair shot at the finish line.
The Campus Clinic That Never Closes
TimelyCare turned the overloaded campus counseling center into a 24/7 care network. Now its bet is that colleges will pay not only for access, but for proof that students get better - and stay enrolled.
Knack
Knack is a student success technology company that helps colleges and universities run and scale peer-tutoring programs. Its platform recruits, trains, and pays high-achieving students to tutor their classmates through web and mobile apps and a real-time online classroom, giving institutions a measurable way to improve retention and graduation while creating paid campus jobs. Founded in 2015 and now serving hundreds of campuses including the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Northeastern, Fordham, and Auburn, Knack raised a Series B in October 2025 and appointed higher-ed veteran Megan Dusenbery as CEO.
Megan Dusenbery
Megan Dusenbery is the Chief Executive Officer of Knack, a student success platform that helps colleges run paid peer tutoring programs. Appointed in October 2025 alongside the company's Series B led by New Markets Venture Partners, she succeeded founder Samyr Qureshi, who moved to executive chairman. She spent nearly two decades building higher-ed partnerships at Kaplan (rising to Senior Vice President of Higher Education) and at ACUE, where she was Chief Partnerships Officer before taking the Knack job.
Analytikus
Analytikus is a Miami-based education-technology company that applies machine learning and artificial intelligence to help colleges and universities reduce student dropout, sharpen recruitment, and personalize teaching. Its SEAL platform pulls signals from learning management systems and campus data into a holistic student profile (WHALE), then layers on predictive modules and generative-AI assistants - Emilia and Socrates - to give students 24/7 support and give faculty an early-warning read on who is at risk.
Miguel Cosculluela
Miguel Molina Cosculluela is the founder and CEO of Analytikus, a Miami-based EdTech company that uses learning analytics and AI to help colleges and universities boost student success, retention and personalized teaching. A self-described analytics evangelist with 12+ years in the field, he co-founded a Startup Weekend winner in Geneva, has appeared on CNN to talk advanced analytics, and hosts the bilingual podcast Simplifying Analytics. He is also an Ironman 70.3 finisher and genealogy aficionado.
Archer Education
Archer Education is a higher education growth-enablement company that helps colleges and universities recruit, enroll, and retain students for their online programs. Founded in 2006 as the college-search portal Campus Explorer and rebranded as Archer in 2018, the firm pairs enrollment marketing, admissions support, and data-driven advisory services so institutions can grow online enrollment without building the machinery themselves. Over two decades it says it has partnered with 200+ institutions, managed 1,000+ online programs, and reached more than 20 million adult learners.
Brian Hartnack
Brian Hartnack is the co-founder and CEO of Archer Education, a higher-education growth firm that helps colleges and universities recruit, enroll and retain online and adult learners. A Cornell history major who cut his teeth in the late-90s dot-com scene at eToys, Gifts.com and Rent.com (sold to eBay for $415M in 2005), he launched the company that became Archer in 2006. Two decades on, the firm has worked with 200+ institutions, managed 1,000+ online programs, and connected millions of students to degrees - with Hartnack arguing that the winners in education marketing pair data infrastructure with authentic storytelling.