Full Year 2025 Education Industry Trends

2025 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The largest deal in 2025 was Cinven’s announced acquisition of Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio, a private university in Spain, for $2.3 billion.

One of the most active acquirers in 2025 was Leeds Equity Partners with six transactions. These transactions included the acquisitions of All About Learning Press, Core Anesthesia, PulsedIn, OnlineMedEd, The Cedarhouse School and Learnosity.

2025 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction value decreased significantly from $34.5 billion in 2024 to $7.7 billion in 2025. This decline is due to the three largest deals in 2024 combining for a total of $24.8 billion. Removing those transactions, total value still declined by 21% and is a 13% decrease compared to the $8.9 billion in 2023.

Total transaction volume in 2025 increased 22 percent over 2024, from 337 to 411.

The median revenue multiple in 2025 remained the same over 2024, at 1.8x.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,095 Education transactions between 2023 and 2025, of which 147 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $43.76 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 948 undisclosed transactions to be $7.7 billion, totaling $51.5 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 1.77x revenue and 10.6x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $20-$80 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 1.8x revenue compared to 4.1x revenue for those in the $80 million and above range.