work-based-learning
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John Fillmore Is Betting the Degree Needs a Workshop
After a decade helping Chegg scale, John Fillmore returned to the oldest problem in higher education: how to make a classroom feel more like the work waiting outside it.
SchooLinks
SchooLinks is an Austin-based edtech company that builds an all-in-one college and career readiness (CCR) platform for K-12 school districts. It replaces the patchwork of separate counseling, course-planning, career-exploration, work-based-learning and compliance tools with a single student-first system, using behavioral data and machine learning to personalize each student's postsecondary path while giving administrators the accountability and state-reporting tools they need. Founded by Katie Fang in 2015, the company operates across 40 states and raised an $80 million Series B in October 2024 - the largest U.S. edtech deal of that year.
Podium Education
Podium Education is an Austin-based edtech company that partners with colleges and universities to close the gap between a degree and a first job. Its flagship product, the Global Career Accelerator, is a for-credit, fully online program in which undergraduates of any major work on real projects for companies like Intel, L'Oreal, OpenAI and the GRAMMYs, build in-demand skills in data, marketing and coding, and collaborate with peers from dozens of countries. After acquiring the early-career talent platform Untapped in 2024, Podium now also connects its students directly to employers, turning coursework into a hiring pipeline.