Colombia is experimenting with more public-private partnerships in higher education in an effort to increase student enrolments through private sector expansion. But allowing for-profit universities is still highly controversial and opposed by students and university rectors alike, according to the country’s former education minister Cecilia María Vélez.
Laureate Education Inc, a for-profit higher education provider that boasts former U.S. President Bill Clinton as honorary chancellor, is planning to launch an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some blame the problem on for-profit universities that have proliferated in the past two decades as a reaction to increased demand for higher education. The universities, which offer as little as one degree, have earned the moniker ‘garage universities’ because they often operate from houses, where each room is a ‘faculty’.
When Jesús Ignacio Lechuga applied to college three years ago, he was looking for an education that would be affordable and allow him to work and study at the same time. So he applied to the International College for Experienced Learning, or Universidad ICEL, a for-profit university in Mexico City, where tuition is 10 percent of what it is at the city's elite nonprofit universities and classes are offered at nights and on weekends.
Rosemir Soares always wanted to go to university but could never afford the fees. Then she discovered Prouni, a scholarship program of the Brazilian government that has guaranteed a college education for more than one million low-income students since it began, in 2005.
Universities in Brazil have long been for the privileged few. Only 11% of the population of working age has a degree – and such scarcity has brought rich rewards. Graduates earn, on average, 2.5 times more than those without degrees, and five times as much as the majority who never finish secondary school, reports The Economist.
DeVry Inc.'s CEO Daniel Hamburger said Thursday that he sees better times ahead for the for-profit education company given a recent acquisition, cost-cutting measures and improving enrollment trends at some of its schools.
Uncovered confidential contracts reveal that millions of dollars may have been illegally funneled from private universities to fund the success of a club soccer team.
Brazilian educational company Kroton Educacional SA (KROT3.BR) and Anhanguera Educacional Participacoes SA (AEDU3.BR) on Monday said they agreed to merge their operations, creating the country's largest educational company.
Education firms Anhanguera Educacional Participacoes SA and Kroton Educacional SA were added to Brazil's benchmark Ibovespa stock index for the period between Sept. 2 of this year and Jan. 3, 2014, exchange operator BM&FBovespa said on Monday.
Students at for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean are amassing more debt than their peers at medical schools in the United States, and many of those students quit school early, thereby creating risk for taxpayers, according to an article in Bloomberg Markets magazine that examines trends at the Caribbean institutions. Some of those schools also pay hospitals in the United States to take their students for clinical training, a practice that has drawn the ire of some medical educators.
Brazil has the world's 7th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with a population of around 195 million inhabitants, distributed in 27 states (more than five thousand cities). The country has a peculiar higher education system, with a relatively small number of public research universities and a large number of private institutions, both philanthropic and for-profit. Although the system has been growing substantially in the last 15 years, the number of young people attending the university has not exceeded 14% of the 18-25 age cohort eligible to pursue university level study. Approximately 6 million students attend a higher education institution in Brazil— 75% of these students are enrolled in private institutions (approximately half of them are for-profit institutions).
At a time when you might have expected to hear the youth of Brazil chanting about the nation’s football team, they called out “Vem pra rua” – “Come to the street” – an invitation to protest against corruption, police aggression and poor public services.
Estacio began 2013 with a new record for student enrollment. There were 117,000 more new on-campus and distance learning college students matriculated in the first quarter of 2013, an increase of 23% compared to the same period last year. With this, Estacio ended the matriculation period for 1Q13 with a total student base of 334,200 undergraduate and graduate students, 19.9% above what was recorded for the same quarter in 2012, of whom 270,500 were matriculated for on-campus programs, and 63,700 in distance learning programs. Not including acquisitions made in 2012, the student base grew organically by 16.8%.
It’s been a busy time for the education sector in the Brazilian stock market. In less than a week, two large groups of private universities have filed for initial public offerings, which together could raise as much as R$1.6 billion (US$730 million). But there’s more action than IPOs. This year, three mergers and acquisitions of major education companies also shook up the sector, which is making big bets on online distance learning.
A few months ago I was in Chile, where I was invited to lecture on issues in higher education. The moment I arrived, I was struck by how important the subject is in Chile, where it has a pervasive presence in everyday life.
It has been a busy time for the education sector in the Brazilian stock market. In less than a week, two large groups of private universities have filed for initial public offerings, or IPOs, which together could raise as much as R$1.6 billion (US$740 million). This year, three mergers and acquisitions of major education companies also shook up the sector, which is making big bets on online distance learning, writes Patricia Gomes for edSurge.
Chile’s National Accreditation Commission has rejected the appeal of a university affiliated with the Baltimore-based for-profit education company, Laureate, after it was denied reaccreditation in October. The Universidad de Las Américas (UDLA) next plans to appeal the decision to the country’s Higher Education Council. As in the U.S., universities in Chile must be accredited in order for their students to access government-backed loans and grants.
A 34,000-student university in Chile affiliated with Laureate Education, Inc. has received notification from the National Accreditation Commission that its institutional accreditation will not be renewed at the end of its current three-year term. The Universidad de las Américas plans to appeal the decision, which -- if it stands – would mean that new students would be ineligible for government loans or grants.
Profit-making in higher education engages controversial issues and debates involving the proper bounds of market activity. While it is widely recognised that many non-profit institutions engage in profit-making, this article deals with those institutions that are legally allowed to distribute revenues among shareholders and specifically focuses on Brazil – one of the world’s largest higher education for-profit sub-sectors.