Being forced to study interplanetary cow reproduction and its influence on medieval poetry just because you got waitlisted from every class you wanted isn’t exactly ideal.
Higher education has become incredibly expensive — over the past four decades, the cost of an undergraduate degree has more than doubled. When your parents are draining hundreds of thousands of dollars to get you educated, quality is rightly assumed. However, with record-breaking applications to top US schools and the subsequent over-enrollment, more students share the same resources — inevitably sacrificing quality. Classes on topics that interest you fill up instantly, forcing you into not-so-pleasant options — like the one mentioned above. Taking the classes you want is critical to professional development, and colleges inadvertently curb that progression. Luckily, start-ups aiming to provide you the best bang for your parents' buck have risen. Coursicle, an app for tracking and scheduling classes, has been pivotal in helping students access equitable educational opportunities. I interviewed Joe Puccio, co-founder of Coursicle, to evaluate how student-centric apps have yielded better opportunities for students, prompted colleges and professors to improve, and turned their ethical purpose into tangible businesses.
Coursicle
If you haven’t heard about Coursicle, you’re either a freshman or — actually, you’re definitely a freshman. Coursicle is the last resort for college students when it comes to getting into classes. The start-up does this through active class tracking enabled by its course database from over 900 colleges in the US. Here's how the app works: if a waitlisted or closed class opens, Coursicle pushes a notification to its users who can quickly enroll for the course. I can strongly vouch for them — over just the last two semesters, I’ve gotten into 3 waitlisted/closed courses, giving me access to better professors and relevant classes. Coursicle was godsent. Besides class tracking, which is still the only paid feature of the platform, Coursicle offers scheduling tools and a chat that serves as an academic forum to provide feedback on classes and professors.
The Story
Joe founded the platform as a student at UNC, inspired by his frustrations of getting waitlisted, taking irrelevant classes, and nursing deep hate for the university’s enrolment interface. He kickstarted voluntary partnerships with UNC — to improve academic UI and natively allow class scheduling — and got the idea off the ground but it soon stagnated due to the reluctance of other universities to join them. “I remember sending out thousands of emails, and only 2 universities got back,” says Joe. The team soon realized they didn’t actually need universities to join them — class data for most universities are public. All they needed to do was scrape the data off each university’s database and organize it. That brings us to what Coursicle is today — “a repository of academic data” for 950 universities serving 500,000 students. Other features were gradually added over the next 10 years of the app’s existence to phase into its sustaining transition as an academic ecosystem. Yet, the organized data repository of Coursicle remains its strongest source of revenue in the form of a semester-long US$4.99 subscription model for class tracking and the monetization of its repository to third parties. Future plans for Coursicle to solidify its revenue base include bucketing its database via majors, years, and professional goals for recruiter access, or even creating a separate product within its ecosystem for recruitment.
The Purpose
Coursicle aimed to help students with simple planning and scheduling problems, and it continues treading on that path. Apps like Coursicle and Rate My Professor often work as supplements during enrollment season, enabling students to work out their classes. Student-led forums reduce information asymmetry regarding classes and professors, promoting better academic choices. Additionally, as an open resource, professors and colleges actively monitor forums for unfiltered feedback that the students might not communicate to the university. I've had professors share screenshots of their Rate My Professor reviews, acknowledging where they could improve, and then actually changing their teaching styles. Point is, it works — these are platforms where students can openly communicate to hold universities and professors accountable.
Do Ethical Businesses Work?
For Coursicle, yes. Their revenue is up 2400% in the past 5 years, the platform boasts a conversion rate of 25% on every referral, they have 500,000 users who have at least scheduled 3 classes with them, and they have been profitable ever since they made their repository accessible to third parties (something that actually made them profitable overnight). Coursicle has never wanted to raise capital — “having investors would have felt like having a boss,” says Joe. The founding team heavily values autonomy and without external backing, generating revenue is essential for financial sustenance. Coursicle has managed to meet financial goals so far and, moving ahead, has plans to diversify revenue sources away from just the repository.
The Ed-Tech Space, Competition, and How Coursicle Positions Itself
The Ed-Tech space is young, fierce, and diverse with a CAGR of 20%. New platforms emerged during the pandemic and witnessed major growth despite sharp price hikes. Consumers want the industry to stay. Education is one of the most important aspects of our lives, and we have our wallets wide wide wide open to it. Within the industry, Coursicle positions itself as a B2C academic planning ecosystem — a repository of class data, an active forum for academic-centric dialogue, and a tool to schedule courses. Alongside these three functions, in works are two more products, one that enables students and recruiters to connect and the other that allows inter-collegiate dialogue between professors. “I’ve seen so many screenshots with Coursicle open on one tab and Rate My Professors on the other”, (that’s me too btw), and the new additions seek to eliminate that need of shifting between platforms. In terms of competition, no platform offers class-tracking like Coursicle, and building an ecosystem around that core functionality gives Coursicle a competitive advantage. The problem of class scheduling, tracking, and feedback is universal, and the prospects to expand to other global educational hotspots are promising, Joe suggests.
Weaknesses, Conflicts, and Controversies
Still, there are weaknesses. Coursicle struggles with seasonality. Users need the app essentially twice a year for no more than 10 days. Additionally, getting into classes is more of a struggle in the first two years of college since everyone has the same core classes. As a result, Coursicle’s core businesses cannot inherently retain students across their college life. Coursicle’s active transition into an academic ecosystem aims to combat this inherent seasonality.
Controversy and drama are interesting to the public, and Coursicle’s had its own big one that everyone seems to know. I speak to Joe in-depth about this, taking his permission to share. In February 2022, internal issues at Coursicle pushed Joe into a mania (he’s doing better now). The app went down, sent random notifications, and their social media pranced onto an anti-capitalist campaign. The outburst was an interesting mix — Reddit users absolutely and justifiably screamed at Coursicle as they saw their schedules perish, while Twitter users hopped onto the bandwagon and raged at capitalism. During this episode of constant screaming for about a week or two, Joe saw a great community emerge. People with genuine concern reached out, offered support, and made group chats. After the entire saga, there are discords and WeChats with hundreds of users (with Joe in all of them) — all driven by mutual appreciation and concern towards the platform. My conversations with Joe make it evident that he takes full responsibility for the incident and assures full trust in the future — he actually wants me to convey that. On the flip side, he does believe a lot of random good came out of it, like absolute strangers meeting on their discord and going on road trips over the love of Coursicle and me bagging this interview?!?!?!?!?!
Regaining Trust, Building Up, and the Future
Trust is essential in the Ed-Tech space, and you tend to lose some amidst the mess of deleted schedules, social media outbursts, inappropriate notifications — the list goes on. Fortunately, seasonality becomes a boon here. Coursicle went offline when most students had planned, scheduled, tracked, and enrolled in their classes. Post the episode, Coursicle saw no drop in users or retention figures. Growth seems to be following the usual trajectory too. One stakeholder that’ll be tough to regain, Joe and I admit, are professors and advisors, who’ll think twice, if not thrice, before recommending the app. Time heals most wounds and as advisors continue to struggle with enrolment and a multitude of “Can you please please please get me into this class” emails, they’re bound to gravitate towards solutions. Coursicle still seems to be the best one. Internal changes with Coursicle’s management at HR will ensure that when advisors do regain their confidence in Coursicle, it will never be lost again.