Class Clowns

Class Clowns is more than a business book, or a book on the education industry. Filled with colorful characters and gripping narratives, it poses deep questions that should engage a broad audience. By bringing the keen insights of a veteran investment banker, Knee demonstrates that no matter the goals, any business is subject to the basic laws of economies of scale, geographic advantage, and barriers to entry. This is an important lesson that many in the education sector seem to have ignored. -- James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Den of Thieves
Class Clowns will be intriguing for educators who, while they may be skeptical of reforms borrowed from the business sector, do not actually know much about the business decisions underlying these reforms. Do market-inspired reforms that fall short educationally also disappoint investors and backers? Jonathan Knee makes a fervent and entertaining case. -- Susan Fuhrman, president, Teachers College
When business meets education the result is a succession of face-plants that will leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry. Class Clowns is a great read for anyone concerned about the future of education or perhaps hoping to invest in it. -- Tim Wu, author, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Send in the clowns! In this case, the otherwise brilliant billionaires who were dumb enough to part with hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-conceived utopian education schemes. Jonathan Knee reveals how, despite the best of intentions, these "edu-trepeneurs" wound up getting schooled. -- Paul Ingrassia, former Managing Editor of Reuters and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Crash Course
Jonathan Knee's Class Clowns is a funny and trenchant account of the misadventures of a cohort of celebrated investors in the for-profit education business. The stories Knee tells demonstrate that the power of markets works only when combined with rigorous analysis, not willy-nilly. -- Nicholas Lemann, author, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
Class Clowns is, predictably, both a good read and provocative, and I think it will be a standard text for all those interested in investing in the educational ecosystem. This is a volume rich in insight and perspective. Knee delivers his clear objective—namely to highlight the common errors that have undermined progress in education and destroyed shareholder value along the way. -- David Levin, president and CEO, McGraw-Hill Education
Class Clowns performs an enormous public service by peeling back the underlying structure of educational markets and revealing the strategic imperatives for long-term success. The failure of many well-intentioned educational businesses and investors to heed these lessons has bred cynicism instead of hope in a sector that is crucial to social and economic progress. -- Bruce C. Greenwald, co-author of Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress
What I liked: This in-depth look into a segment of the investment world I'd never really given much thought to before.... What I loved: How many parts of Class Clowns read just like a novel. * Better Investing *
[Class Clowns] is as much about bone-headed bets on tech as it is about the challenges investors have in navigating America's educational system. * The Street *
A tough-minded study that shows there's gold in them there halls, but getting to it is a problem—or, an entrepreneur might say, a challenge. * KIRKUS REVIEWS *
A stunning new book. * Radar Magazine *
It is easy to nominate irascible, contrarian, eloquent and, as well, one of the leading bankers in the media sector, Jonathan Knee, as the nation’s best business writer. . . . Class Clowns deconstructs a series of deals in the continuing bubble of the private education market. The allure of ever-increasing spending, combined with a desire among rich men to do good, or believe they are doing good, results in a series of delusional assumptions and vast shareholder losses. -- Michael Wolff * USA Today *
A valuable addition to our knowledge base regarding education markets... Class Clowns prosecutes a very sound case that investors must beware when entering the educational space. -- John Warner * Chicago Tribune *
Timely...filled with stories of hubris and myopia, of a failure to understand the field of education and, indeed, in some respects even the basis of success in business outside the celebrated investors' traditional field of dominance. * GLOBE AND MAIL *