Things seem to be moving fast as the big pathway players realise that winter is coming, both physically and metaphorically, to their US operations. Hot on the heels of the recent Study Group closures there are strong rumors of Navitas reviewing its US partnerships and cutting staff. Shorelight has also taken action through changes to its senior management team and staff lay-offs in the past month.
The Navitas partner changes are still at the point of speculation and no brand names have been removed from the list of partners as of today. But the ‘Search Navitas programs’ area of the website turns up no results for Virginia Commonwealth University, Richard Bland College or University of Idaho. Searches for University of New Hampshire courses lead to a broken ‘this page isn’t working’ link.* By contrast the Florida Atlantic University pages, UMass and Queen’s College pages seem fine, as do the Canadian university partner links.
Dr Brian Stevenson took up the reins as CEO and President of Navitas’ University Partnerships North America division at the start of this year. With his strong links to Canada it’s possible that there is a major shift of emphasis that would reflect the continuing popularity of Canada as a student destination. There certainly seems little prospect of any but the best or most market-oriented US universities being a profitable proposition in the near future.
In October InsideHigherEd noted the decline in Chinese student enrollments and its potential impact on US universities but the next news might be about the changing preferences of students from India. 2019 saw the UK have a 42% year on year increase in visas issued to Indian students and there is every sign that the coming year will see similar growth. With changes in post-study work visas coming into effect for 2020 enrollments universities and pathways are already reporting substantial interest.
Back in 2014 Karan Khemka, then a partner with the Parthenon Group, said: “The U.S. third-party/outsourced pathway market is less than half the size of the Australian market despite having a higher education system that is 10 times the size. We anticipate that growth will be constrained only by the pace at which private providers can develop the market.” That was one of the drivers for over $1bn of private investment being made in pathways.
The reality is that, with CEG and EC leaving the market, Study Group cutting back and Navitas now looking hard at its options, the past 18 months has seen a decrease of well over 10% in the number of US pathways. By contrast the UK and European pathway market continues to grow and Australia has just loosened its post-study visa regime a little further. It seems likely that this is the prevailing direction of travel for the foreseeable future.
*Searches undertaken on 30 October 2019. As with all commentary in this blog any authoritative comments or corrections are welcome and will be recorded.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay