My colleague Laura Brookhizer and I have recently published a report that talks about some of the investable opportunities in the post secondary sector. There are three real opportunities that I want to talk about today. The first one is regarding education software and services for the post secondary sector. One of the mitigants for post secondary institutions was to improve their operations and overall service to the student community.
Now many parts of the student journey are things that are not core to education sector institutions and they need third party service providers to help them bridge some of those gaps. We have seen a lot of interesting models evolve. For example, in the software sector, there are companies that have helped institutions manage their content, manage their curriculum better, think about career support services for students. And on the services side, there are many companies that have helped education sector institutions think about their enrollment and marketing, student retention and improve those.
We anticipate that there are many new models that are going to emerge in this sector to help institutions meet some of their goals. And these could be interesting areas for investors to focus on today. Just to give you an estimate, the size of this particular segment is estimated to be almost 20 to 30 billion U.S. dollars. The second theme that we have covered in our report is alternative pathways to the higher education sector.
I'm talking about career and technical education that's being offered today in K12 and career colleges. I'm also referring to some of the apprenticeship programs that are gaining traction in the US and also non university linked or non credential programs that are being developed for post secondary students by multiple providers. One of the key challenges in this particular sector is that there is a number of initiatives that are available or being introduced in the market and it's difficult to identify which of these are going to be successful in the future. Our report covers some aspects and helps investors identify interesting opportunities within this particular segment.
But at a high level, the investors as they look at this particular segment need to ask the question, who is the payer and what is the value that they're getting from this particular program? For example, if the student is a payer, what is their the lifetime value that they achieve after undertaking that particular program? What does their payback look like? And if investors can answer this question successfully, then most probably that particular opportunity could be an interesting opportunity for them to look at and even invest in.
And the third segment that I would like to cover is for profit for secondary institutions that provide degree credentials to students. Now this has not been a favorite for many investors because of you know the problems that we have discussed in our previous videos which is declining demographics, association with public funding etcetera. However, we have come across very interesting models that have developed affordable high quality programs for post secondary students offering them master's and bachelor's programs that are not titled 4 linked. And there are other title 4 link programs that are focused on employable degrees for example in the healthcare teaching verticals that create clear outcomes for students.
And we believe over time, some of these providers are going to gain traction as the focus shifts away from some of the funding that's available and traditional programs to programs that are able to create good outcomes for the students. And hence, there should be investable opportunities for investors in this segment too. Now, as I mentioned at the start of the video, we have recently published a report that covers some of these topics and goes into the details and also lists down a few interesting opportunities for you to explore. You can find this report on our website.
So please feel free to download them or e-mail me, ping me on LinkedIn and I'll be happy to share it with you.
