Here are the funding totals for March 2017:

• Amount invested: $220,300,000
• Number of investments: 17
• Average investment size: $13,768,750 / Median investment size: $10,000,000
• Number of acquisitions: 5

The total amount of investment for March 2017 is higher than either March 2016 or 2015, in part because of the number of investments this month that were more than $20,000,000: Nearpod, Examity, MakeBlock, BYJU's, and MasterClass.

(The funding total for 2017 so far is also higher than the two previous years at this stage. It's higher, of course, because of the $500 million invested in SoFi last month. If you exclude that one investment (I don't think you should, but if you do), then the total funding figure for the year-to-date down is down from 2016 and from 2015.)

Also of note:

There were three investments this month in "financial aid management startups": Regent Education, CampusLogic, and Raise.me. I've insisted for some time now that the private student loan industry was one to watch (i.e. SoFi), but let's expand that category now to a more generalized effort to privatize financial aid as a product and as a service.

In other news:

The Chinese test prep company BYJU's raised $30 million this month. It's now raised $204 million total, making it one of the most heavily invested ed-tech startups. (Its investors include Aarin Capital, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, IFC Venture Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Times Internet, and Verlinvest.)

As always the data for this project is freely available on GitHub.