Technology has been reshaping education for over two decades. But few sectors of the knowledge economy have moved so quickly—and so unevenly—as higher education.
When venture capital discovered education, the first experiments looked like a digital revolution in slow motion. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) promised to democratize learning. Platforms like Udemy, Coursera, and edX scaled faster than any traditional university could.
And yet, most institutions of higher learning—the university—have remained largely unchanged in their structure. Until now.
We are entering the age of agentic AI, and with it comes the next great transformation of learning. The question isn’t whether technology will change higher education again. It’s how—and who will fund it.
The Venture Era of Higher Education
The first wave of venture-backed education reshaped access.
Udemy alone counts 81 million students, 250,000 courses, and 85,000 instructors in 55 languages as of 2025—numbers that rival the entire U.S. higher education system.
Investors poured billions into platforms that treated learning as a scalable product. Students became users. Professors became content creators. Education became a marketplace.
But what these early MOOCs lacked was agency. They could deliver content—but not guidance. They could test knowledge—but not understanding.
AI will change that.
What Comes Next: Agentic AI in Higher Education
The rise of agentic AI—autonomous systems that act, reason, and collaborate with humans—will force universities and venture investors alike to rethink what “learning” means.
There are at least three ways AI agents could reshape higher education:
1. The Personalized University
Instead of choosing a fixed curriculum, students could assemble learning pathways guided by AI tutors who adapt content to their goals, pace, and learning style. These tutors will ask questions, challenge assumptions, and act more like mentors than machines. Imagine an always-available, Socratic advisor who knows both you and the discipline better than any single professor could.
For startups, this opens a new frontier: the AI learning companion—a subscription product at the intersection of education, productivity, and coaching.
2. The Autonomous Administration
Universities spend vast resources on operations: enrollment, advising, compliance, reporting. AI agents can automate much of this invisible infrastructure. Picture an admissions agent that interviews applicants, reviews transcripts, and writes predictive models of student success—before a single human reads the file.
For investors, this is an overlooked opportunity: AI-native university infrastructure—systems that handle everything from accreditation workflows to student engagement.
3. The AI Faculty Collective
Agentic AI won’t replace professors, but it will augment them. Faculty could collaborate with teaching agents that prepare materials, evaluate assignments, and offer instant feedback loops. A professor might oversee a cohort of 500 learners, each supported by their own personalized AI coach.
This model blurs the line between human and digital faculty—and creates new business models for platform-based universities.
What Role Will Capital Play?
Venture capital thrives on scale, margins, and speed of iteration. Universities, by contrast, move slowly, prize stability, and measure success in decades, not quarters.
Yet these two worlds are converging again. The new generation of edtech founders isn’t selling courses—they’re reimagining the university operating system itself.
As AI lowers the cost of delivering high-quality learning and administration, entirely new institutions could emerge—born digital, AI-native, and globally scalable.
A New Governance Model? The OpenAI Question
This raises a deeper structural question: if the next generation of educational platforms blends public purpose with private capital, how should they be governed?
OpenAI’s evolution may offer a precedent. Founded as a nonprofit, it has announced plans to restructure into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) under nonprofit oversight—a hybrid that allows private investment while keeping mission at the core.
Could this be a roadmap for the future of higher education ventures?
Imagine an “OpenAI for Learning”:
- governed by educators, not just investors,
- able to issue equity and attract top talent,
- but legally bound to its educational mission.
The PBC structure could become the middle ground between mission-driven nonprofits and pure for-profits—a model where universities, startups, and capital markets collaborate without losing sight of purpose.
The Next Chapter
The venture-funded world of higher education has already changed how people learn. The next wave—powered by agentic AI—will change who learns, how deeply, and at what cost.
What’s ahead won’t look like another MOOC. It may look more like a living, evolving learning ecosystem—guided by agents, sustained by data, and funded by investors who understand that education’s greatest value lies in human potential, not content delivery.
Higher education has always been slow to change. But when it finally moves, it often redefines society itself.
This may be one of those moments.
This article was first published on LinkedIn on October 30, 2025.
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