If Higher Ed Were a Startup

A TechCrunch inspired pitch deck teardown

The Second Draft: #0055

I write two articles each week on the emerging discipline of Human + AI Work—tracing how education, expertise, and human capability evolve as AI reshapes work, knowledge, and meaning.

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What’s a Pitch Deck Teardown?

TechCrunch runs an ongoing series where they publish actual pitch decks used by startups to raise venture capital—then have experienced investors tear them apart, slide by slide.

The format is simple:

A startup shows investors their deck.

The deck explains their problem, solution, market size, business model, traction, and team.

If it’s good, they get funded.
If it’s bad, they walk out empty-handed.

The teardown shows both: what the deck says, and what investors actually think when they see it.

Why it matters:

VCs see hundreds of decks a year.
They’re pattern-matching for fundability.
They know what questions to ask, what red flags to spot, and what narratives actually hold up under scrutiny.

Most founders think their pitch is compelling.
The teardown reveals whether investors agree—and more importantly, why or why not.

It’s brutal.
It’s honest.
And it strips away politeness and good intentions.

Which makes it the perfect lens for higher education.

Because if higher ed had to pitch itself like a startup—transparent data, clear value proposition, aligned incentives, measurable outcomes—the cracks would be immediately visible.

Not to academics.
Not to administrators.
Not to people inside the system.

But to anyone who’s ever had to build something that delivers value or die.

So let’s apply that lens.

Here’s the higher ed pitch deck.

And here’s what an investor would actually think.

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We got our hands on the pitch deck from a legacy education provider seeking Series Z funding. Here’s what works, what doesn’t, and what it would take to make this investable.

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SLIDE 1: THE PROBLEM

The Pitch:

Preparing People for Productive Participation in Society

→ Society needs educated citizens
→ Employers need qualified workers
→ Students need to develop critical thinking

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The Teardown

What This Slide Does Well:

Absolutely . . . nothing.

What’s Missing:

First: Let’s start with the basics:

Who has the problem?

This slide lists three different constituencies:
→ society
→ employers
→ and students
without identifying which one is the customer.

In any viable pitch, you need to be crystal clear about who’s experiencing pain and who’s paying you to solve it.

The “problem” statements here are aspirations, not problems.

“Society needs educated citizens” isn’t a problem
—it’s a societal value.

A problem would be: “82% of employers report they cannot find workers with [specific skill], costing them $X per unfilled role per month.”

That’s quantifiable. That’s urgent. That creates willingness to pay.

Second: There’s no indication of problem acuity.
How painful is this? What’s the consequence of inaction?

In a strong problem slide, you’d see something such as “Every month this goes unsolved, customers lose $X” “Without this solution, Y happens.”

Here? Nothing.

Third: How do you know when the problem is solved?

If I’m an employer and I hire your graduate,
what specific capability gap did you close?

If I’m a student, at what point can I say
“Yes, I now have critical thinking”?

The lack of clear success criteria means there’s no way to validate your solution works.

The Fatal Flaw:

This isn’t a problem slide.
It’s a mission statement trying to pretend it’s a market need.

And here’s why that doesn’t work:
mission statements describe what you want to do;
problem slides describe what customers desperately need done.

When you have three different “customers” with three different needs,
what you actually have is no customer at all.

You’re trying to be everything to everyone,
which means you’ll deliver real value to no one.

What It Would Take to Make This Investible:

Pick one customer.
Get specific about their pain.

For example: “Mid-sized companies in [sector] spend 6-9 months training entry-level hires on [specific capabilities] before they’re productive. This costs them $45K per hire in lost productivity. We compress that 6-9 month ramp to 30 days.”

That’s a problem.
It has a customer (mid-sized companies).
It has pain (6-9 months of unproductive labor).
It has cost ($45K per hire).
And it has a clear success metric (30-day ramp).

Red Flags for Investors:

When a founder can’t tell you whose hair is on fire,
it usually means one of two things:

1. There is no fire (i.e., no actual market pain)

2. The founder is building a solution in search of a problem

Either way, it’s a pass.

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SLIDE 2: THE SOLUTION

The Pitch:

A Comprehensive Four-Year Experience

→ Four-year residential program
→ Full student services and facilities
→ Expert-delivered lectures and curated readings
→ Employer-recognized credential

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The Teardown

What This Slide Does Well:

It clearly articulates what the product is.

You know exactly what you’re getting:
→ four years
→ on campus
→ with lectures and credentials.

That’s more than some decks manage.

What’s Missing:

The entire value proposition.

A solution slide needs to answer:
“Why is THIS the right way to solve THAT problem?”

Instead, what we get is a feature list.
And not just any feature list
—a feature list where every single item raises more questions than it answers.

Four years? Why not four months?
What about the solution requires 48 months of delivery?

If you told me you needed four years to build the new dorm—plausible.
But knowledge transfer?
YouTube delivers knowledge transfer in 11 minutes.

Residential? Why does the solution require physical proximity?
What about your solution breaks if the student is in their living room instead of a dorm room?

Employer-recognized credential? Recognized by whom?
Because if you talk to employers, they’ll tell you the credential is increasingly worthless without demonstrated capability.

The piece of paper doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

The Fatal Flaw:

Your cost structure IS your value proposition.

Look at what’s being pitched here:

→ facilities
→ full-time faculty
→ student services
→ four-year timeline
→ residential experience

Every single one of these is a cost center.

And the pitch is essentially:
“We’re expensive because we have expensive things.”

That’s not a solution.
That’s a bundle of legacy costs that you’re asking customers to subsidize.

What It Would Take to Make This Investible:

Unbundle ruthlessly.

→ Identify the irreducible core of value you deliver
→ Strip away everything else
→ Price accordingly

For example:

“We deliver [specific capability] through [specific method] in [specific timeframe] for [specific price]. Our graduates demonstrate [measurable outcome] within 30 days of hire. Total cost: $8K. Total time: 12 weeks.”

That’s a solution.
→ It’s measurable.
→ It’s focused.
→ It’s fast.
→ And it costs 96% less than your current bundle.

Red Flags for Investors:

When a founder lists features instead of benefits,
it signals they don’t actually know what value they deliver.

When every feature is a cost center rather than a value driver,
it signals the entire business model is upside down.

Any investor can see this bundle is ripe for disruption.

The question isn’t “Will someone unbundle this?”
The question is “How are you going to compete when they do?”

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SLIDE 3: THE MARKET

The Pitch:

A Massive, Established Market

→ Hundreds of billions in annual revenue
→ Millions of students enrolled nationwide
→ Essential for workforce participation
→ Growing credential requirements across industries

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The Teardown

What This Slide Does Well:

The revenue numbers are real.
This is genuinely a massive market by dollar volume.

What’s Missing:

The direction.
And the direction is down.

A market slide needs to show TAM (Total Addressable Market), but it also needs to show trajectory.

Is this market growing or shrinking? Are customer acquisition costs rising or falling? Is competitive pressure increasing or decreasing?

This slide shows market size.
What it doesn’t show is that the market is collapsing in real-time.

Birth rates: Down 20% since 2007.
That’s not a blip—that’s a demographic cliff. Your customer pipeline is shrinking by 20% and you’re pitching this as a growth opportunity?

Enrollment: Declining since 2011.
Not flat. Not growing slowly. Declining. For over a decade.
That’s not a market with tailwinds.

Public confidence: At record lows.
Your customers increasingly don’t believe your product delivers value.
That’s a brand crisis, not a market opportunity.

Debt burden: $1.7 trillion and rising.
Your customers are drowning in debt from buying your product.
At some point, the music stops.

Competition: Free alternatives proliferating.
YouTube, Coursera, Google Certificates, company-run training programs.
Every one of these delivers knowledge transfer faster, cheaper, and with clearer ROI than you do.

The Fatal Flaw:

You’re confusing current market size with future market opportunity.

Yes, hundreds of billions flow through higher ed annually.
But that’s not because the value proposition is strong
—it’s because the government underwrites the transaction.

The moment that subsidy shrinks or disappears,
this entire market contracts.

Here’s the tell:
“Essential for workforce participation” and “Growing credential requirements”
are artificial barriers to entry,
not organic market demand.

Employers require degrees because degrees used to signal capability.
They don’t anymore.

What It Would Take to Make This Investible:

Show me the growing segment,
not the declining whole.

→ Maybe there’s a specific industry where credentialing requirements are genuinely increasing and your solution is uniquely positioned to serve it.
→ Maybe there’s a demographic segment where demand is rising even as overall enrollment falls.
→ Maybe there’s a geography where your model still works.

Find that segment. Size it. Show its growth trajectory.
Then explain why you’re the one who can capture it.

But don’t show me a declining market and call it an opportunity.

Red Flags for Investors:

When a founder shows market size without market trajectory,
they’re hoping you won’t ask about growth.

When every market trend is negative but the pitch is positive,
they’re either delusional or dishonest.

Either way, you’re not putting money into a declining market with rising competition and collapsing customer confidence.

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End of Part 1

This teardown has covered the first three slides of the Higher Ed pitch deck:

• The Problem: No clear customer, no measurable pain

• The Solution: A cost structure marketed as a value proposition

• The Market: Declining demographics, falling enrollment, collapsing confidence

Already, the pattern is clear:
This is an un-fundable business.
It’s a legacy institution running on inertia and government support.

But we’re not done yet.

Stay tuned, where we’ll tear down:

• The Business Model: Government subsidy dependency, not sustainable revenue

• Traction: Vanity metrics that dodge the question of actual value delivered

• The Team: Shared governance means no one can execute when speed matters

• Competitive Advantage: What moats actually exist (spoiler: fewer than you think)

• Go-to-Market Strategy: How do you actually acquire customers in a declining market?

• Financial Projections: It’s gonna get worse before it gets worse 🤣

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As I was working on this piece,
I realized just how tenuous the current environment is for higher ed.

The Slide 2 teardown: which showed that higher ed’s value proposition is actually all just its most expensive cost centers made me wonder if this problem is even solvable.

If you’re a paid subscriber, I appreciate you, and I’m giving you a deeper dive into the paradox of what happens when your biggest costs are also your core value.