The sun rises on a new week and there’s a fresh batch of news from INTO University Partnerships including overdue accounts being filed, a direct recruitment partner announced and what looks like a departure at Executive Team level.
Territory folks should stick together2
The INTO University of East Anglia LLP Annual Report for the year ended July 2022 arrived with Companies House about a month overdue. At first glance there seems little reason for the delay and the average student numbers were only slightly down on the year before. A little deeper digging shows a breaching of “certain covenants” on the CLBILS loan and a number of restatements of prior year financials.
The restatements have taken the prior year (to July 2021) Operating Loss down from £4.6m to £1.8m with the bulk of the difference being a reduction in Administration Expenses of £2.6m. The notes indicate that this reflected a decision “..that amounts payable to members for contractual services such as marketing should be included within Members’ remuneration charged as an expense..”. A similar change was made in restatements of 2021 at INTO Newcastle and INTO Stirling but not, as far as I can see, at INTO City, INTO Queen’s or INTO Exeter.
The COVID-related CLBILS loan is for £7m with HSBC and requires payment of £1m in November 2023 and the final balance to be paid by December 2023. The Annual Report notes that this is “within the cash flow projections”, with both partners signing a letter of support to enable the LLP to continue to fund its liabilities as they fall due. The University of East Anglia, which has had its own financial troubles in recent years, has not posted any Council minutes thus far in the 2022/23 academic year so it’s difficult to know if there are any further insights to be gained from its governing body.
This all means that INTO UEA ended up right in the middle of the pack for 2021/22 recruitment at INTO’s UK Centers but still at around half of its pre-pandemic enrollments. There’s quite a lot riding on the Autumn 2023 intake with another mouth to feed at the newly formed INTO Lancaster Limited. Just as a small rider on that point it seems as if this entity has been incorporated as a wholly owned INTO entity so it remains to be seen if it another co-owned joint venture.
Where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain3
Back in the USA, INTO has just announced a new partnership for direct recruitment with the University of Oklahoma. This is the second agreement in the US in 2023 following the partnership with Montclair State University announced in July. Before that, the most recent partnership was with University of Massachusetts Amherst to recruit to 17 master’s degrees, back in September 2022.
Perhaps the May 2023 publication of claims that there was 52% growth in applications for INTO Center-supported programs and 201% growth in direct entry applications has stimulated interest. Whether this has translated into equal or similar growth in enrollment should become clearer as partner universities publish their data for Fall 2023. In competition terms, the three additional partners are a limited response to Shorelight’s growing higher education smorgasbord of 65 universities offering undergraduate courses and 39 offering masters courses (excluding American Collegiate and non-US campuses).
The court case between INTO and the University of South Florida continues to move along. Factors include a Hearing on 10 October 2023, to consider “University of South Florida’s Motion to Dismiss INTO University Partnerships Limited’s Supplemental Pleading”4, INTO’s voluntary dismissal of “..Counts XI and XIV of the Supplemental Pleading to the Second Amended Complaint”5, and an appeal by INTO to the Second District Court of Appeal.6
INTO appears to have refreshed its legal team for the Appeal with three lawyers from Susman Godfrey joining INTO’s roster as “foreign”7 attorneys. Perhaps it is indicative of the stakes, as Susman Godfrey has been named Vault’s #1 litigation boutique in America every year since the award’s inception in 2011. All of those developments come ahead of a mediation event led by Joseph H. Varner, III, scheduled for 29 September8.
All this is happening as the INTO Executive Team continues to slim down. Chief Product Officer Namrata Sarmah who joined in January 2022 is the latest face to disappear from the company’s website leaving a team of seven heading up the organization. Other developments at INTO have been reported in recent blogs and it does look as if the company is tightening belts and battening down hatches while continuing to invest in University Access Centres and await developments, including Manchester Metropolitan University’s tender for an embedded international student centre.
NOTES
Impossible to resist an Oklahoma theme to the sub-headings. The “Sooner State” boasts the American Bison as its state animal and the Oklahoma Rose as its flower but the words all belong to songs from the first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! which premiered in 1943.
- Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ is the first song after the overture
- “Territory folks should stick together” is a line from Farmer and the Cowman
- “When the wind comes sweeping down the plain” is taken from the title song, Oklahoma. For reasons I cannot explain the musical has an exclamation mark and the title song does not! In 1953 the state legislature chose it as the state song.
- Filing # 181397864 E-Filed 09/08/2023 12:06:23 PM
- Filing # 180352287 E-Filed 08/23/2023 02:46:41 PM
- Filing # 179426524 E-Filed 08/11/2023 08:31:57 AM
- Florida Supreme Court RULE 2.510.FOREIGN ATTORNEYS (a) Eligibility. Upon filing a verified motion with the court, an attorney who is an active member in good standing of the bar of another state and currently eligible to practice law in a state other than Florida may be permitted to appear in particular cases in a Florida court upon such conditions as the court may deem appropriate, provided that a member of The Florida Bar in good standing is associated as an attorney of record.
- Filing # 179194479 E-Filed 08/08/2023 03:23:11 PM
- Many A New Day is a song title from the musical. Some describe it as an anthem of female indepence.