Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

OER has gotten to the point where it is "good enough" for probably around 80% of courses..certainly good enough for almost 100% of intro-level courses, which is where the publishers make most of their money. The remaining 20% are specialized or high level courses which are low volume titles. The new McGraw/Cengage and Pearson will be fighting for these relative sc-aps. I don't see how they both survive in their current forms (even with a combined Cengage and McGraw) serving such a tiny portion of the market. They're going to have to expand into services or SAAS if they want to survive, and given Cengage's track record in those areas it is not likely to be successful.

Cengage has always been great at content, but mediocre to bad at developing software. The original MindTap rollout in 2010 would have been a monumental disaster had it actually been adopted by more than a handful of professors. Revenue and employee wise Cengage already is a shell of what it once was. Revenue has declined something like 40% from a decade ago. I don't know what the headcount is, but it must have declined around the same rate.

It actually is going out of business very soon and so is McGraw hill, neither can compete in this OER driven market and out of the ashes will rise like a phoenix, a fat new bird called McCengage! However, this new albatross of a phoenix won’t be soaring for long, it too will fail year after year while it’s brave employees consume and regurgitate the same old flavor of kool aid just as before while revenue drops year after year after year...