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Public & Social Sector
Public & Social Sector
Back to How We Help Clients

Education

Improving outcomes for students, schools, and systems
In a rapidly changing world, education has never been more important as a critical lever to help people achieve their full potential. We work to improve educational and employment outcomes, helping create prosperous societies that provide equal opportunities. We do this by focusing on increasing access, affordability, and quality for every individual, and on closing gaps in outcomes across race, socioeconomic status, and gender.
We serve education institutions and systems, governments, vocational training providers, service-providers, and philanthropic and for-profit investors. Our teams include former teachers, institutional leaders, researchers, and policy-makers dedicated to helping the next generation to thrive not just as workers, but as citizens.

What we do

Reform school systems

Bringing about rapid improvements in literacy and numeracy outcomes at the classroom-level through our work across diagnostics, strategy, and implementation.

Transform higher education institutions

Helping universities and research institutions strengthen teaching and research, increase graduation rates, design and implement digital strategies, improve their ability to serve their students, transform administrative operations, and stabilize their finances.

Deliver education-to-employment solutions

Collaborating with employers, education providers, governments, and foundations to help students make a seamless transition from education to work, and to reskill adults transitioning between careers.

Harness education technology

Applying innovative digital tools to revolutionize teaching and learning both inside and outside the classroom, improving teacher collaboration and development, and increasing the administrative effectiveness of school systems.

Guide philanthropic and for-profit investment decisions

Helping both for-profit and philanthropic investors deploy their capital to deliver outcomes for students, while generating financial returns for those who require it.

Examples of our work

Improving basic education

Helped an Asian country increase primary-school enrollment by one million within 18 months, hire 30,000 more teachers into schools, and improve infrastructure in 50,000 facilities.

Transforming a liberal arts college

Turned around a mid-sized, private non-profit university with declining enrollment and retention rates that was at risk of depleting its endowment as well as losing its accreditation. We delivered an operating surplus, 30 percent increase in freshmen enrollment and a seven-percentage-point improvement in retention rates, along with growth of online and continuing education programs.

Developing a strategic plan for a research university

Supported a large public research university on a refresh of their strategy with significant improvements on graduation rates, quality of incoming class (the most economically and racially diverse class in its history), and research impact while freeing up operating costs to reinvest in mission-related initiatives.

Creating a new online training platform

Developed the content, infrastructure, and governance for a new online training platform to improve job readiness and student employability. The platform—which consisted of more than 20 courses at launch—was rolled out to 270,000 users with more than 40 employer endorsements.

Featured experts

Li-Kai Chen
Senior Partner, Kuala Lumpur
Leads our Education Practice globally; advises public- and private-sector clients in education on large-scale transformations...
Jonathan K. Law
Senior Partner, New York
Serves a range of public sector and philanthropic clients, with particular emphasis on economic development, innovative social...
Jimmy Sarakatsannis
Partner, Washington DC
Offers broad and deep expertise in education, with a particular interest in the use of technology to transform teaching and learning
Dirk Schmautzer
Partner, Dubai
Shapes economic and human capital development strategies to boost growth and create jobs. Leads McKinsey’s Education Practice...
Wan-Lae Cheng
Partner, Washington DC
Supports private-, public-, and social-sector organizations, including – educational institutions, state and local governments,...
Frankki Bevins
Partner, Denver
Partners with public, private, and nonprofit organizations to set bold strategies and build teams that can realize them

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