McGraw Hill Education, a 137-year-old provider of educational content and digital tools, emphasized artificial intelligence as a transformative force at its participation in the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in September 2026. The company’s leadership underscored its strategic focus on AI-driven learning solutions, amid a broader trend of accelerating digital adoption in education. With over 100 million paid curriculum licenses and more than 7.5 million users of its AI products, McGraw Hill is positioning itself to capitalize on a market characterized by robust growth, particularly in emerging regions and higher education sectors.
The company’s revenue growth has outpaced expectations, with digital products accounting for approximately 70% of total revenue and gross profit margins reaching 81.65% in the prior year. McGraw Hill’s global professional education segment is expanding at a 5% to 6% annual rate, while the broader education market is growing at 4.5% to 6.5% annually—up from around 2% pre-pandemic. In emerging markets, spending on education is rising at 10% to 12% annually, reflecting broader socioeconomic shifts. Middle-class households now spend about 2.5% to 3% of their wealth on education, a trend expected to intensify as the middle class reaches 50% of the global population by 2030. Meanwhile, a projected 11 million shortage of healthcare workers by 2030 is driving demand for medical education content.
McGraw Hill’s AI initiatives are advancing through pilot programs with over a dozen universities and a pharmaceutical company. The company is testing pricing models for AI-enhanced tools, including a 5% to 10% premium for access to its Model Context Protocol (MCP), per-question fees, and token-based pricing. Despite local bans in Los Angeles and New York restricting AI chatbots in K-12 classrooms, McGraw Hill’s leadership emphasized trust as a critical factor in adoption, with 81% of surveyed teachers expressing willingness to integrate AI into familiar, proven platforms. The company’s adaptive learning platform, ALEKS, for instance, measures proficiency using 200 to 400 states per learner with 25 questions each.
The company’s curriculum spans 800 titles across higher education, with a strong presence in K-12 literacy (40% of revenue) and mathematics (20%). In the U.S., McGraw Hill reaches 82% of school districts and operates in 2,000 of 3,500 higher education institutions, adding about 100 universities annually. Internationally, it sources curriculum for up to 50% of materials in Middle Eastern markets. The company’s digital-first model includes an evergreen update cycle for higher-education titles every six months and a curriculum cost structure representing just $0.01 to $0.02 of the total education expenditure. Knowledge doubling rates in medical fields—where McGraw Hill’s Harrison’s textbook covers 54,000 items—highlight the urgency of AI-driven learning tools.
The company’s expansion aligns with broader educational mandates, including 44 U.S. states’ literacy reforms and a growing recognition of dyslexia, affecting about 10% of the population. McGraw Hill’s products address these needs, with literacy-focused tools accounting for 40% of its K-12 revenue. The shift toward school choice is also accelerating, with student enrollment in private or charter schools projected to rise from 5% to 10% to 15%. Meanwhile, printed materials continue to outperform digital alternatives for early-grade literacy, with printed content yielding 60% to 70% higher dwell time and better learning outcomes for K-5 students.
Philip Moyer, McGraw Hill’s CEO, framed the company’s strategy as a bet on human teaching augmented by AI, emphasizing that trust remains the cornerstone of successful implementation. The company’s long-term adoption cycles—typically five to seven years for curriculum changes—reflect its commitment to sustained innovation in an ever-evolving educational landscape.
