Best Higher Education Tech Companies in Chicago, United States
The 47 best Higher Education Tech companies in Chicago, United States in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: RedShelf.
Ranked: Best Higher Education Tech companies in Chicago
| # | Company | Disclosed funding | Last round | Stage | Founder | Founded | Tech stack | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RedShelf Platform offering digital textbooks for students | $84M | 42 mo ago | Series D | Rob Holland Chief Executive Officer | 2012 | Cart FunctionalityWixSentry+25 | — |
| 2 | Packback Text book rental platform | $11M | 28 mo ago | Series B | Daniel White Vice President | 2012 | WordPress Block EditorWordPressMySQL+28 | — |
| 3 | Upkey Career creation platform empowering students through skills development and professional growth | $3M | 66 mo ago | Seed | Amir Badr Co-Founder & CEO | 2014 | SentryTypeScriptNode.js+18 | — |
| 4 | GetSet Learning Improves student retention through community, analytics, and behavior change tools | $2M | 143 mo ago | Seed | Karan Goel CEO and Founder | 2012 | RubyRuby on RailsAngularJS+13 | — |
| 5 | Overgrad Streamlining student success with data-driven tools for postsecondary planning | $2M | 82 mo ago | Series A | Kevin Hoffman Cofounder & CTO | 2013 | RubyErlangHighcharts+20 | 1 job opening |
| 6 | AwardSpring Scholarship management system | $1M | 20 mo ago | Series A | Kurt Reilly Co-Founder & CEO | 2013 | DudaNginxAzure+23 | — |
| 7 | Scholastica Academic publishing management software solutions provider | $1M | 109 mo ago | Seed | — | 2012 | SkolengoMariaDBJava+24 | 1 launch |
| 8 | Reach Pathways Platform connecting high-performing under-resourced students to companies and colleges | $1M | 26 mo ago | Seed | Jeffery Beckham Co-Founder & Co-CEO | 2022 | WixSentryBootstrap+12 | — |
| 9 | TransparentCareer Career Management and candidate sourcing platform | $850K | 118 mo ago | Seed | Mitch Kirby Co-Founder & CEO | 2015 | — | — |
| 10 | Parker Dewey Platform for students and companies to connect with each other for short-term projects | $720K | 102 mo ago | Seed | — | 2015 | SentryErlangElixir+21 | 1 internship · 1 launch |
| 11 | Cognomos Course matching platform for higher educational institutes | $385K | 101 mo ago | Seed | Matt Boulos Founder & CEO | 2017 | — | — |
| 12 | StudyCloud Collaborative classroom management platform | $110K | 156 mo ago | Acqui-Hired | Ravi Pilla Co-Founder & CEO | 2012 | — | — |
| 13 | Loper App-based platform to discover colleges and universities | $100K | 40 mo ago | Seed | Sam Bernstein Co-Founder | 2021 | WebflowTikTok PixelGoogle Analytics+14 | — |
Top 12 Higher Education Tech companies in Chicago
#1
Series A · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2013 · 22 employees$1.2Mraised▾
Scholarship management system. The features include customizable application, scholarship matching, evaluation, follow up notifications, reporting, single sign on, integrations with SIS, and more. The platform is offered on monthly subscriptions basis.
- Dec 2024Series A$2.4M
- Nov 2021Seed$1.2M
#2
Series B · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2012 · 117 employees$11.1Mraised▾
Packback is an online textbook rental platform.Packback has served over 130K students nationwide and is backed by $3M+ in venture funding from notable investors including Mark Cuban, Howard Tullman, and Mark Tebbe. Packback also provides a price Comparison tool to compare prices from the textbook renters on the web. Packback also operates Packback questions, a social Q&A platform.
- Mar 2024Series B—
- Jan 2019Series A$2.5M
- Jan 2018Series A$4.2M
- Sep 2017Seed$1.5M
#3
Series D · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2012 · 107 employees$83.5Mraised▾
Platform offering digital textbooks for students. It offers solutions for buying, selling, and reading digital content like eBooks, textbooks, academic materials, magazines, documents, and other digital content. It also provides tools for bookmarking, highlighting, and note-taking.
- Feb 2023Series D$15M
- Aug 2020Series C$10M
- Apr 2020Series C$300K
- Oct 2018Series C$25M
#4
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2022$1Mraised▾
Platform connecting high-performing under-resourced students to companies and colleges. It uses metaversity setting and a video-game style curriculum, to reach career pathways to bring scholars' programming to more students.
- May 2024Seed$1M
#5
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2014 · 214 employees$2.6Mraised▾
Career creation platform empowering students through skills development and professional growth. This platform focused on providing a lifeline, especially to those from underrepresented communities, helping them gain the skills, confidence, and clarity needed for their professional journeys. It served as a source of hope and momentum for young individuals navigating their place in the world. While the platform is winding down operations due to the evolution of the professional development space, its impact remains in the students who found their voice and dared to dream bigger. The mission to empower students and young people continues, exploring new avenues in mental health, career growth, financial literacy, and community development.
- Feb 2021Seed$2.6M
#6
Series A · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2013 · 9 employees$2.5Mraised▾
Streamlining student success with data-driven tools for postsecondary planning. This platform empowers organizations to drive better student outcomes, effortlessly. It offers solutions for charter schools, community-based organizations, K-12 districts, scholarship providers, collaborative networks, and philanthropy. The features include access, success, postsecondary planning, postsecondary tracking, and benchmarking and reporting. It replaces multiple platforms with advising, planning, messaging, and reporting all in one place. The platform supports students from K-20+, streamlining data capture and analysis from various sources. It facilitates communication with stakeholders through built-in text messaging and email tools. It empowers students with form capture, data entry, planning, and document upload. The platform is built to drive measurably better outcomes, focusing on student success. It offers intuitive dashboards to track student outcomes in real-time and student-facing accounts to scale impact. It is a SaaS platform that helps to build a better future for students, offering tools to support them effectively and deliver outcomes that truly matter. The platform is a one-st
- Sep 2019Series A$2.4M
- Dec 2016Seed$50K
#7
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2021 · 8 employees$100Kraised▾
Developer of college search platform designed to help students discover the colleges and universities that fit them. The company's platform personalizes college search to help students find the institutional fit and a path that suits them, enabling students to save time and empowering them.
- Mar 2023Seed$100K
#8
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2012 · 5 employees$2.5Mraised▾
Improves student retention through community, analytics, and behavior change tools. This is a SaaS platform focused on enhancing student success in higher education. It offers a suite of tools designed to foster a sense of belonging and improve metacognitive skills. The platform provides a secure virtual community where students can connect and share, promoting growth mindset, resilience, and self-regulation. Analytics provide insights into student behavior, and behavior change intervention tools help institutions improve retention rates. This evidence-based approach aims to create a supportive learning environment and drive positive student outcomes. The platform offers multiple services to educational institutions seeking to improve student engagement and persistence.
- Sep 2014Seed$2.5M
- Seed—
#9
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2012 · 44 employees$1.1Mraised▾
Scholastica is an academic publishing management software solutions provider. Enables publishers to streamline their editorial operations, and produce articles & issues. Its features include peer review, open access publication, and typesetting.
- Jun 2017Seed$525K
- May 2014Seed$510K
- Apr 2012Seed$25K
#10
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2015 · 4 employees$850Kraised▾
TransparentCareer (earlier known as TransparentMBA) provides a career planning platform. Users can explore careers by industry, job functions, benchmark pay features and explore detailed company data to discover right opportunities. Also, provides the employers a proprietary algorithm to match and rank candidates to company values. Won first place in the New Venture Challenge accelerator program.
- Sep 2016Seed$850K
- Jun 2016Grant (prize money)$90K
#11
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2015 · 49 employees$720Kraised▾
Platform for students and companies to connect with each other for short-term projects. Students can also search for projects that match their skill set. Companies post projects detailing requirements such as skill and location. Reviews curated talent and hire a suitable candidate. The platform filters candidate to find suitable candidates. Also, manages payments and administrative processes.
- Jan 2018Seed$720K
#12
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2017$385Kraised▾
Course matching platform for higher educational institutes. The platform allows students to rank the classes according to their needs and the algorithm optimally assigns student schedules. Enables registrars to manage complex course enrollments.
- Mar 2018Seed$385K
Funding & investor landscape
Notable founders
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Higher Education Tech coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
Common questions
Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.