Shortly after I enrolled at CUNY, I began receiving emails prompting me to enroll in Blackboard, one of the school’s various learning management systems (LMS). Since I wanted to get off on an organized foot this academic year, I quickly googled “CUNY blackboard” to find the right site and create my account. Instead of leading me to an institutional Blackboard page, my search turned up a few articles about how CUNY had recently made the decision to ditch Blackboard in favor of Brightspace, a different learning management software (CUNY and Missouri State Switch from Blackboard to Brightspace). I learned that the expiration of CUNY’s contract with Blackboard precipitated a reevaluation of faculty, staff, and student needs, and Brightspace was determined to be the better LMS for the school. I was immediately curious about this decision: isn’t Blackboard the more popular LMS? Why would CUNY choose to cut ties with a seemingly successful company? As a clearer picture of Blackboard Inc. emerged through my investigation, I’m inclined to say that CUNY made the right choice. 

Blackboard Inc. was founded in 1996, born from the combination of two education software startups called Blackboard LLC and CourseInfo LLC (“Blackboard Inc.” via Wikipedia). The four founders of these companies — two men per company — have an almost hackneyed backstory: they met in pairs at their respective colleges, and merged the companies when one of the Blackboard founders met a CourseInfo founder at a conference. Within one year of its founding, Blackboard Inc. saw sales of nearly $1 million; and, by 2006, Blackboard was used on more than 65% of U.S. college campuses (A Brief History of Blackboard). Despite buying up many of its LMS competitors, Blackboard Inc. experienced significant debt and a loss of clients in the late 2010’s. In a graphic by ListEdTech, we can see that Blackboard Inc. lost many of these clients to Brightspace. In 2021, Blackboard Inc. became absorbed by Anthology, another LMS, creating an “ed-tech behemoth” (Blackboard, Anthology to Merge, Creating Ed-Tech Behemoth). Inside Higher Ed points out that, given its near ubiquity on college campuses, Blackboard had suffered from widespread complaints about its software and usability from faculty and other higher ed administrators. Blackboard’s popularity also made it a target for LMS competitors. By the end of its independent life, Blackboard Inc. was worth at least $3 billion but had amassed a significant debt of $1.3 billion. As of 2023, ZoomInfo and Zippia, two job information sites, estimated that Blackboard has almost 3,000 employees. On Glassdoor, an employee review forum, some of these employees have left negative reviews citing high turnover at the company due to the merger with Anthology. As the Blackboard Inc. is absorbed into Anthology, I wonder what will happen to many of the company’s employees. 

CUNY has held a contract with Blackboard Inc. since at least 2015, when the countersigned “Blackboard Prepaid Campus Card Agreement” was created. This contract – which includes an extensive implementation manual – outlines CUNY’s use of Blackboard through 2018. I dug further into CUNY’s contracts with Blackboard, and found a document to “Authorize a Contract Extension with Blackboard, Inc. to Ensure Ongoing Access to the Learn System and to Enable the Migration to Blackboard’s Cloud Platform”, extending Blackboard’s contract with CUNY from December 2021 to December 2022. In this document, it is stated that CUNY has been using Blackboard for over twenty years, with Blackboard overseeing 99% of CUNY’s enrollment systems, course registration, and operation of educational programs. Under this contract, CUNY would pay Blackboard almost $3.6 million per year between 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. Given CUNY’s longstanding history with Blackboard and the considerable sum of money the university is devoting to the LMS, I’m even more curious about the decision to drop Blackboard Inc. altogether. Blackboard Inc.’s rise from dorm room startup to multibillion dollar, privately owned company is remarkable; and so is its subsequent descent into merger-and-acquisition oblivion. As Blackboard Inc. is subsumed by Anthology and Brightspace takes over CUNY’s learning management systems, I’ll be curious to track each company’s rise and fall. Will CUNY use Brightspace forever, or is this LMS just the latest in a chain of ed-tech programs that jostle for recognition from the seemingly perpetual beast of the higher education business?

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