Does Pearson's purchase of eCollege give it the muscle to compete with Blackboard?

Long article by Scott Jaschik from the 15/5/2007 issue of Inside Higher Education about Pearson's purchase of eCollege - a US supplier of VLE services to (mainly US distance) education providers. Pearson, best known in the UK for its ownership of the Financial Times and Penguins, has a huge text-book business, and its purchase of eCollege (alongside its even bigger acquisition from Reed Elsevier of some of the publishing and assessment parts of Harcourt) brings its recent spending in this area to around $1.5 billion. The article hints at further rationalisation and consolidation between educational technology and educational content businesses, and sees eCollege, backed by Pearson as much more serious competition for Blackboard, though Blackboard's share price, today 50% higher than 3 months ago, continues to rise; and there are also interesting insights in some of the comments on Jaschik's article. For example Jim Farmer, who wrote a guest contribution in Fortnightly Mailing last year about the "post patent" environment for e-learning, highlights the extensive use made by students in the US of text-book publishers' supplementary on-line content and formative tests (to which they get time-limited access when they purchase a text-book), and the possibly greater utility of such content and tests than that provided through institutional VLEs. Chair of Becta Andrew Pinder's October 2006 call for education to "organise industrially" for it properly to exploit ICT seems to be being heeded........