Lumina recognizes the promise of EduNav’s course-to-career technology with investment in the EdTech startup
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lumina Impact Ventures has invested in EduNav, the leading provider of algorithmic-based academic planning software for colleges and universities, to further EduNav’s unique, cutting-edge approach to student success. The investment was sparked by EduNav’s ability to automatically generate and update optimal educations plans to help individual students graduate or transfer on time. EduNav’s software alerts students and academic advisors when students are about to register for or drop a class that could delay finishing or transferring. The software also optimizes future class scheduling by leveraging data from aggregated education plans.
Many students take too long to graduate or transfer, and the students who achieve these milestones often take too many courses. Only 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 5 percent of associate degrees are earned on time*. At the same time, there are not enough academic advisors to help students, and advisors often spend much of their time doing academic planning instead of advising. The national average caseload is 482 students per advisor, and many advisors carry caseloads of 600 students or more.
EduNav helps prevent students from making registration mistakes and taking unnecessary courses, enables advisors to focus on advising instead of creating student schedules and ed plans, and helps administrators plan future course inventories to improve institution-wide graduation rates. EduNav is the only solution that can do this because it uses cloud-based combinatorial optimization and artificial intelligence on continuously updated information that flows among students, advisors, administrators, and the institution’s student information and degree audit systems. The EduNav system takes a wide array of factors into account when computing the optimal education plan for each student, including degree requirements, institution-specific advisory rules, complex class rules and prerequisites, current seat availability, each student’s unique academic history, and other constraints.
“Lumina Impact Ventures invested in EduNav because the Foundation believes the company’s solution can have a dramatic impact on helping students graduate or transfer in the least amount of time and with the fewest number of credits,” said Jamie Merisotis, Lumina’s president and CEO. “We expect the tool to enhance efforts to improve student success, especially among Black, Latino, and Native communities. By automatically creating optimal education plans for each student, EduNav can free academic advisors to spend more time working with populations critical to achieving racial equity. We look forward to supporting EduNav in its next phase.”
“EduNav’s reason for existence is in complete alignment with Lumina Foundation’s outcomes-based approach that focuses on helping design and builds an equitable, accessible, responsive and accountable higher education system while fostering a national sense of urgency for action to achieve this goal,” said Isaac Segal, CEO at EduNav. “Everyone at EduNav is deeply honored to be selected for an investment by Lumina Impact Ventures and are excited to work closely with Lumina Foundation as we continue to scale our business and enable more institutions to help more students.”
About EduNav
EduNav is the leading provider of algorithmic-based student academic planning and course inventory optimization software for colleges and universities. Our solutions drive student success by optimizing the academic planning, scheduling and registration experience of students while simultaneously enabling colleges and universities to plan for the ideal course inventory to maximize on-time, institution-wide graduation rates. EduNav automatically generates a personalized, always up-to-date optimal path to completion for every student. As a result, institutions improve student persistence and timely completion while optimizing future course offerings. For more information, visit https://www.edunav.com/.
About Lumina Impact Ventures
Lumina Impact Ventures leverages investment capital to accelerate the development of promising solutions that can help more people benefit from education and training beyond high school. Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis, operates this impact investing arm as part of its national commitment to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. The foundation envisions a system that is easy to navigate, delivers fair results, and meets the nation’s need for talent through a broad range of credentials. The foundation’s goal is to prepare people for informed citizenship and for success in a global economy.
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