Education
Improving student outcomes, increasing access and affordability, and enabling new academic research across the entire education ecosystem
GSI’s focus is on improving education and employment outcomes for all to create a more prosperous society with equal opportunity, and enabling new research that builds stronger communities.
Improving educational opportunities has always been at the center of achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth. As automation and artificial intelligence raise the bar for workplace skills, the power of education to transform individual and societal trajectories has never been higher. Yet deep inequalities remain between and within countries – in access, quality, and affordability of education.
GSI is committed to improving lifelong learning opportunities and outcomes around the globe by collaborating with clients on their top-of-mind issues while always keeping equity at the forefront of our work. Our teams include former teachers, institutional leaders, policymakers, and researchers with deep expertise across all levels of education from early childhood and K-12 to higher education and workforce development.
We serve education institutions and systems, governments, philanthropists, investors, and service providers. We complement our hands-on work with original research, which allows us to better understand the sector’s toughest challenges and build new capabilities to help solve them.
In addition to our client service, GSI is committed to partnering with education non-profits in our local communities, having supported over 80 educational nonprofits in over 20 countries in the past five years.
How we can help
Early childhood education and K-12 school systems
We strengthen early childhood, primary, and secondary school systems and institutions to expand access, improve student learning outcomes, and foster child well-being, with a special focus on historically marginalized and vulnerable populations.
Higher education
We help higher education stakeholders reimagine the future by designing and implementing strategies that improve student outcomes, increase access and affordability, enable more and better research, enhance operational and administrative performance, and ensure financial sustainability.
Workforce development
We prepare people for the future of work by designing, improving, and transforming workforce development systems, placing a premium on equity, inclusion, and the elevation of underserved communities.
Investors, philanthropists, and service and technology providers
We work with companies, investors, and philanthropies to develop and deploy innovative digital tools and support services that strengthen teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom, leading to more effective school systems and higher-education entities.
Get in touch
Contact usCase studies
Developing a ten-year road map for a public school system
We supported a Middle Eastern public school system to identify the root causes of low performance on international test scores through analysis of both performance (test scores across subjects, demographics, and over time) and health (student, teacher, and system mindsets, behaviors and resources). We partnered with the system to develop a ten-year road map across 15 initiatives to target 20-30 points improvement on international assessments.
Good to great transformation for a flagship US state university
We partnered with a flagship state university in the United States to improve how it delivered on its mission. Through engagement with more than 300 faculty and staff members, we helped to deliver impact in athletics, auxiliary revenues, enrollment, online growth, procurement, research, and student success. The institution saw a five percent increase in freshman enrollment, a ten percent increase in transfer enrollment, new research partnerships implemented, and net surplus captured from negotiation of contracts and savings from procurement initiatives.
Increasing availability of affordable higher education in Latin America
We supported a leading university system in Latin America on a multi-year transformation to advance their mission of providing affordable higher education to underserved communities. We supported 140+ impact initiatives to strengthen the quality of academic programs (including launching hybrid modalities), improve retention and graduation rates, increase enrollment by over 14 percent, and enhance financial performance to foster sustainable growth.
Designing and launching training for US allied healthcare workers
We partnered with an ecosystem of public and private institutions in the United States to establish a four-year program to train 10,000 workers across a range of skilled healthcare occupations—including medical assistants and coders—to address a skill shortage and the state’s future healthcare needs. We provided a rigorous design process, stakeholder interviews, and analyses of the employer and its skilling and credentials landscape using proprietary GSI tools and insights.
Developing a labor market model to support economic development
We supported a city in the Middle East to develop a labor market model to identify the talent required to meet its eight-year economic development road map to double its labor force and develop initiatives to address key bottlenecks – including increasing labor force participation of women, improving international talent attraction, and prolonging productive working lifespans.
Improving customer success for a US curriculum provider
We supported a K-12 curriculum provider in the United States to map district customer journeys across the school year, design a new customer success playbook to improve administrator, teacher and student experience in onboarding and ongoing curriculum implementation, and develop a change management road map to shift behaviors across the organization – resulting in $20 million increase in net revenue retention in the first year.
Community impact
HBCUs
GSI has a long-standing commitment to serving Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We supported HBCU operations in the wake of COVID-19, and have worked with national advisory boards to develop a roadmap to accelerate HBCUs on a trajectory of resiliency and long-term sustainable growth.
Bottom Line
We are working with Bottom Line to help them expand their work supporting degree-aspiring students from under-resourced communities. Our multi-year partnership includes strategic planning to expand into additional cities and reach their goal of supporting 20,000 students to get into college, graduate, and start their careers.
Braven
We partnered with Braven on a multi-year effort to scale their work empowering first-generation and underrepresented college students by equipping them with the skills, networks, experiences, and confidence to secure strong first jobs, collaborating on the blueprint of a digital platform.
Opportunity@Work
We supported nonprofit Opportunity at Work in their efforts to 'tear the paper ceiling' and drive upward mobility for the 70 million workers in the US who are STARS (skilled through alternative routes), driving extensive research on skills-based hiring.
Enseña Perú
We supported Latin American nonprofit Enseña Perú to improve reading comprehension in primary schools by improving teacher training and coaching, class curriculums, performance and change management systems, and school district training tools.
Akanksha India
We supported Indian nonprofit Akanksha to develop a five-year strategy to fulfill their mission of delivering a high-quality education to each child, facilitating a research-rich and stakeholder-informed strategy process to explore scaling their school model.