This time of year, when other college students are soaking up the sun south of the border, thousands of Penn students are picking up a dangerous habit we tried hard to kick all semester. Studying.

Despite the rust on our brains from an early spring break, combined with the distraction of Spring Fling ‘97…I mean, ‘07…, the quiet rumble of finals is being to mount like a Spartan army looming over the horizon. Given Penn students’ love for “study aids,” (Parent and alumni readers, close your ears) some overzealous Finance major could create a stock index to track the price of the illegal study aid Adderall. (Parents, you can listen now.) History has proven now is the time to be bullish on that commodity.

One time in a Huntsman study room, (you know, typical beginning to any Wharton story), I was reading about an upcoming assignment. With dread, I logged on to Blackboard (Ticker: BBBB), the ugly best friend to the sexy Wharton webCafe, a website where students can download lecture notes, submit homework assignments, and check their course grades.
Note, this is not to be confused with the anti-Semitic variety of black-boards recently debuted at Princeton University. Blackboard

Now, like any self-respecting columnist, I could be predictable and find a reason to complain about Blackboard. Since I hate to disappoint, that is exactly what I am going to do. As a service, Blackboard sucks. Its interface — boring. Its functions — basic at best. Its few clever capabilities — vastly underutilized by both professor and student alike. But as for the stock, that requires more analysis.

Technically, Blackboard has a great product. Putting my personal biases aside, most customers express an extraordinarily high level of satisfaction. Eighty-five percent of the 20 “Top Wired Colleges” ranked by PC magazine use Blackboard technology. Examining its financials reveals it is expanding its already dominant leadership within American classrooms.

A variety of product lines and high customer retention rates enables Blackboard to continually extract money from its users. The company is also expanding its sales overseas 58.4 percent last year.

The news of MIT offering its courses free online by the year end is yet another sign that the online classroom industry will continue growing in the coming years. With its 6.89 percent price decrease since March 26th, I recommend this stock as a solid buy.

Now if only Blackboard could solve Penn’s web mail problems.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.