The New Guys in Assessment Town: Companies

Pat Hutchings, writing in Change magazine, broadly explores the new world of for-profit consultants and technology teams.

[T]here’s a new kind of help on the way, from outside the institution. Of course many campuses have engaged external consultants to jumpstart the assessment process; that’s not new. And neither is the use of tests and instruments designed by others. What’s new is an influx of for-profit assessment providers offering tools and services that promise, variously, to make assessment easier, faster, less intrusive, more useful, and/or more cost effective.

Some of these firms were founded in the last two or three years and are just getting started. Others have a longer, already prosperous history of work in other aspects of education (like course management) and are now moving into the assessment niche. A few have their roots in other industries—like quality assurance in health care—and have recently added student assessment to the mix. Some are run by academics or former academics and some by people with a corporate background.