As with most MegaTrends, we’re not as interested in the gold miners that are out there looking to strike it rich. We’re more interested in the companies selling the picks and shovels to all those gold miners.
In this sector, you have to look at the companies that have the ability to reach the most people with the least amount of costs.
From the consumer side, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are a MegaTrend trio.
While there’s a significant amount of demand in China for digital learning services, the market is becoming a bit riskier given the growing tensions between the US and China.
There’s significant growth available ex-China that will drive this MegaTrend for a decade or more before any of the top stocks bump up against that growth constraint.
Not only is home schooling on the rise in the US, but there’s also a trending multi-year decline in students enrolled in traditional four-year colleges. The big “college is for everyone” trend that started in the 1970s is having challenges keeping up with its ageing goal.
New Age, New Opportunity
What’s more, the Digital Age has also had a significant impact on college. Many coders and IT professionals have been working since they were high schoolers or younger and don’t have any real need for a formal education to progress in their field.
As that digital world requires all professions to achieve more and more digital fluency and new technologies like AI seek to supplement certain gaps in resources for more analog tasks, traditional higher education is coming under significant pressure.
Plus, as more work is done digitally, resources like social media and platforms like Microsoft’s LinkedIn become more relevant than the old office water cooler.
Also, there are now numerous certifications and licenses workers can receive via digital courses, with little need to add the big expense of graduate school.
This is a major shift that’s ongoing, but there are already winners that are making a difference and will continue to be a part of the change.
