Part I — The Facts
This post is the first of a two-part series examining Anthology’s bankruptcy and what it reveals about the changing landscape of education technology. In Part I, we focus on the facts — what happened, how the company was structured, and where it went wrong. Part II will turn to interpretation: what lessons the Anthology story holds for the future of ed-tech strategy and investment, especially as institutions seek to navigate the new realities of artificial intelligence in teaching, learning, and administration.
What Was Anthology, and What Did It Set Out to Do?
Four years ago, Anthology Inc. emerged with an ambitious vision: to become “the most comprehensive ed-tech ecosystem” serving higher education worldwide. Formed in 2020 by private-equity firms Veritas Capital and Leeds Equity Partners, Anthology combined three companies — Campus Management, Campus Labs, and iModules — into a single platform meant to unify administrative data, student engagement, and institutional analytics.
In 2021 Anthology acquired Blackboard LLC, once the dominant learning-management system (LMS). The deal was intended to create an end-to-end suite for colleges and universities spanning academic, administrative, and engagement functions — a one-stop ecosystem linking course delivery, enrollment, advising, and alumni relations.
How Did Anthology Try to Grow — and What Was Its Business Model?
Anthology’s model centered on selling interlocking cloud-based software to institutions on a subscription basis, supplemented by implementation and professional-service contracts. The company structured its operations into four segments :
Teaching & Learning — Blackboard Learn and Anthology Ally for course delivery and accessibility; ≈ $240 million annual revenue in FY 2025 (about half of total).
Enterprise Operations — Anthology Student (SIS/ERP); > $100 million annual revenue and ≈ 300 institutional customers.
Lifecycle Engagement — Anthology Reach (CRM for recruitment and alumni relations); ≈ $55 million annual revenue.
Student Success — managed services for marketing, enrollment support, and advising.
The company serves millions of learners in more than 80 countries. Its growth thesis was that colleges would prefer an all-in-one platform linking academic and administrative systems — a synergy that never materialized.
What Went Wrong?
Analysts say Anthology misjudged how colleges buy technology. Faculty and academic leaders typically choose the LMS; registrars and CIOs choose SIS/ERP systems. Those decisions are siloed, making cross-selling impossible at scale.
According to Phil Hill, an education-technology market analyst: ”Anthology assumed that by combining the LMS, SIS and CRM that they would get a lot more cross-selling. What they misunderstood was that academics—the deans, provosts and faculty—really pick the LMS and they’re not going to pick an LMS because the registrar and chief information officer picked a different SIS. That synergy they were looking for just really didn’t exist.”1
Meanwhile, Anthology’s rapid acquisition strategy left it with a sprawling and aging product portfolio that was costly to integrate. Different code bases and legacy systems drove up expenses and slowed innovation. The company carried an oversized headcount and binding vendor contracts that it could not quickly reduce.
The bankruptcy court filing shows that product performance and customer trust eroded. The 2017 launch of Blackboard Learn’s next-generation platform occurred before support teams were fully trained, creating a service backlog and customer attrition. Later price hikes sparked pushback, and some implementation contracts were so mispriced that millions had to be written off.
Externally, the post-pandemic market shifted from cheap capital to high interest rates. Competition from Instructure (Canvas), D2L, and smaller specialists intensified, while colleges faced budget pressure from declining enrollment. The filing shows that from FY 2023 to FY 2025 revenue fell ≈ $80 million, gross margins slipped from 57 % to 55 %, gross profit declined from $300 million to $246 million, and EBITDA collapsed from ≈ $33 million to just over $4 million. At the same time, Anthology carried ≈ $1.79 billion in funded debt and paid ≈ $185 million a year in cash interest, leaving too little for a turnaround .
What Happens Now?
On September 29, 2025, Anthology filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas (Case No. 25-90498). The court approved $100 million in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing — half as new-money term loans and half as a roll-up of existing first-lien debt — to fund operations during the sale process.
The reorganization plan focuses on a smaller, profitable core:
Encoura will acquire the Lifecycle Engagement and Student Success units.
Ellucian will purchase Enterprise Operations.
Teaching & Learning — Blackboard Learn and Ally — will remain the center of a restructured Anthology expected to emerge debt-free.
Analysts expect limited disruption for current customers, but Anthology’s breakup underscores a deeper shift now confronting every player in education technology. As institutions move to integrate artificial intelligence across teaching, learning, and administration, they are discovering that complexity—not scale—is the defining challenge. Anthology’s fate serves as an early warning of what happens when technological ambition outpaces organizational integration.
(Part II — Lessons and Implications → coming next)
Kathryn Palmer, “Why the Ed-Tech Behemoth Unraveled,” Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2025.