ushighereducation – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

INTO Court as Joint Venture Sours

There are signs that INTO University Partnerships’ (INTO) relationship with the University of South Florida may be ending after a recent Court Evidentiary Hearing¹ on 19 August 2022. While no public record of a judgement has appeared, rumors suggest there are communications in circulation advising that enrollment to INTO University of South Florida (INTO USF) will cease. If any authoritative source can provide an alternative explanation or clarification, I will be happy to correct any misunderstandings.

It is appropriate to note that both INTO and the University of South Florida still feature INTO University of South Florida on their websites at the time of writing (27 August). The INTO Study site for students also offers the opportunity to apply for courses at the university. This may be the result of a time lag or the possibility of further discussion and this blog is written in good faith to explore the background to the Court case and the joint venture’s history.

The underlying case for a university going to court to end a joint-venture pathway that was once among the most successful in the world deserves attention. Publicly available court filings outline the case² and material on the INTO Corporate and University of South Florida websites is used to summarize the history and other background about the joint venture relationship. The source of further commentary is referenced through hyperlinks.

Summary of the Case

A Court filing³ from USF Financing Corporation (USFFC) to the Thirteenth Judicial Court in and for the state of Florida Civil Division dated 15 July 2022 seeks a “declaratory judgment that the 2010 stockholders Agreement between USF FC, the Company⁴, and the INTO Defendants is terminated as of April 21, 2022.” The grounds are that the joint venture is “insolvent under both a balance sheet basis and inability to pay debts as they become due, and (b) has demonstrated a material adverse financial position where it could not perform all or a substantial part of its obligations..”. The particular difficulties of pathway programs in the United States have been widely explored and the filing incorporates direct reference to my blog of February 2022 regarding the growing level of indebtedness of INTO’s US ventures.

With an eye on its responsibilities for “stewardship of public resources” the University of South Florida terminated the program in April 2022 and “initiated the process for the teach-out of the programs’ enrolled international students….” The filing asserts that “The INTO defendants refuse to acknowledge the Stockholders Agreement termination and refuse to participate in the teach-out or develop the Plan to dissolve and wind-up the Company.” There are a number of points made around the fiduciary duty of the three INTO appointed Directors of INTO USF Inc, to creditors and shareholders “once a company is insolvent” with a memo, the accompanying Exhibit G of the filing, asserting that “the INTO appointed directors have a conflict of interest.”

INTO University of South Florida

INTO partnered with the University of South Florida in 2010 and the case study on the INTO website asserts “extraordinary” enrollment and economic impacts. The accompanying graph (reproduced below) suggests that even if this was true up until 2016/17 the ensuing years have seen a significant decline in enrollment to the pathway. Enrollments look to have peaked at around 800 but have subsequently fallen by around 100 a year to stand at c300 (this would be supported by the USF Fact Books showing non-degree seeking international students declining by a similar amount).

Source: INTO Global.com

The Court filing includes INTO USF, Inc’s Financial Statement to June 30, 2021 (Exhibit E) showing a net loss of $3.276m that year and $206,000 the year before. This is supported by the USFFC’s Financial Statements to 30 June 2021 which comment on “approximately $3.3 million of net loss incurred by INTO USF during the year ended June 30, 2021.” USFFC’s share of INTO USF’s “net accumulated (deficit)” was shown as $1.794m.

As noted in the February 2022 blog “China Crisis for US Pathways”, since 2018 when INTO Illinois State University opened, “total level of indebtedness across all US operations has nearly doubled from £18m to £35m”. This figure included the debts at institutions where joint ventures have now closed – Washington State University, Marshall University and Colorado State University. The blog also reflects that INTO has become the 100% owner of what was previously a joint venture at St Louis University.

One feature of both INTO USF (the second INTO partnership in the US) and INTO Oregon State University (the first) is that they are listed in INTO’s Annual Report as Inc. and are C-corporations. Informed opinion suggests that closely held corporations (which these appear to be) “have been held to higher fiduciary duty standards” and this may be reflected in the “conflict of interest” comment. Later US joint ventures are listed as LLC’s where, “By agreement, parties can alter certain duties to expand, restrict, or eliminate fiduciary duties owing to either the LLC or the other members and managers”, which suggests there may have been advice leading INTO to pursue alternative structures.⁵

Summary

It is worth waiting to see any Court judgement and whether there is an appeal process but the filing and other financial statements seem definitive in outlining the decline of the joint-venture’s financial situation. If the joint venture is closed it would leave INTO with six joint ventures in the US, as well as the fully owned St Louis University operation and the “comprehensive partnership” with Hofstra (which is not listed in INTO’s annual reports as having joint ownership).

As well as the closures in the US there have been several INTO joint ventures shut down in the UK in recent years. In addition, INTO has taken a controlling interest in the joint venture with Newcastle University and the financial arrangements at the joint venture with City University have changed. As noted in a recent blog the yearly financial reporting for INTO University of East Anglia is shown at Companies House as overdue, for a joint venture under significant financial pressure.

On top of all that there are rumors of imminent changes at the top in the INTO Finance team and the return of a familiar face to the INTO North America team but that is for another day.

Notes

Case number: 22-CA-006726 before Judge D.D. Farfante
I am unaware of any written response by INTO University Partnerships to the case filed
Filing#153460265 Efiled 07/15/2022 07:45:26 PM
“the Company” is defined as INTO USF Inc which is the C-Corporation established in 2010 with stockholders USFFC and INTO USA LLC. Its board has three nominees from INTO and three from USFFC.
The purpose of this paragraph is to provide further information which may be relevant and the quoted elements comes from the source indicated. There is no intention to give legal advice or guidance and readers are advised to seek appropriate counsel on company structures.

Image by Venita Oberholster from Pixabay

INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN*

It’s always difficult to know when news is official and when it’s a false start and a case in point is the appearance then disappearance of a new Chief Executive Officer for INTO University Partnerships (INTO) over the course of a few days last week. It would be invidious to name names publicly at this point but one day the INTO corporate website had a picture and biography then a day later it was gone. It all happened so quickly that I was pleased to have a conversation with a colleague who had seen the website and could also name the individual.

There doesn’t appear to have been a press announcement about the appointment, but on Wednesday 16 June, the site also had INTO’s co-founder John Sykes listed as Deputy Chief Executive and VP of UK Operations so there seemed to be a nascent structure in place. More curious is that all of INTO’s pages related to people – and they were extensive – went missing and remain so on Wednesday 23 June. If you click on the link to Our People it takes you to a bland page about Global Reach – Global Impact, the Leadership Team area on Corporate Information is a desert and the Meet Our North American Development Team section is as blank as untrodden snow.

Any official and authoritative explanation is welcome and I’m happy to provide an update if it is forthcoming. Perhaps the wider site needed a major refreshing but if so it would be reasonable to see the Marshall Student Center and Colorado State University imagery coming down because those joint ventures have closed. Anyone who has had responsibility for keeping websites up to date know that it is not for the faint-hearted and requires constant vigilance. Using collateral from partnerships that have ended feels a little like the corporate equivalent of carrying a torch for a childhood sweetheart.

The claim of 30 university partnerships in the UK and US also does not square with the logos of nine US partners and nine UK partners. The relationship with Chinese universities appears to have disappeared from the corporate site but the INTO student site still has opportunities for study at Nankai University. It’s all pretty confusing.

Only time will tell if the lack of information about leadership reflects a new approach to privacy, a major update or a pending restructure of significant proportions but it’s a good moment to review the task facing a new CEO if or when they are appointed. Partnership growth has stalled, online capability appears to be behind the curve and the main competition has forged ahead in both areas. It seems a long way from the growth proposition that encouraged Leeds Equity Partners to invest £66m ($105.8m) for a 25% stake in the business back in 2013.

Over the past two years INTO has seen the end of joint ventures at the University of Gloucestershire, Newcastle University London and Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK as well as Marshall University, Colorado State University and Washington State University in the USA. The company invested in School Apply in early 2020 and closed it a year or so later.

The INTO Annual Report for the year ended 31 July 2020 was for a year before the full impact of the pandemic was felt on 2020/21 enrolments and suggested little growth. Adjusted turnover (which removes discontinued operations) was up 3% to £202k while adjusted EBITDA fell 9.1% to £26m. Overall, the intercompany debt from joint ventures to INTO had increased by around £8m to £44m with the Centre’s closing listed as debtors to the tune of around £11m.

After entering the pathway market with a ground-breaking joint-venture model at the University of East Anglia in 2006, INTO leveraged its model with great initial success in the US at Oregon State University from 2008. There have been no new partners in the UK since the University of Stirling in 2014 and the most recent pathway additions in the US was Hofstra University announced in January 2019. Shorelight adopted many aspects of the INTO model and has forged ahead to be the dominant partner of American universities since its founding in 2013. Long-term players like Kaplan, CEG, Navitas and Study Group and upstarts like QA Higher Education and Oxford International have scooped up the most recent UK university pathway partnerships.

INTO’s purchase of SchoolApply may have been the start of a foray into the world of online delivery but it is no longer active and there is little evidence of significant advances in this area. This is at a point where Study Group is moving forward with Insendi, Kaplan Open Learning has online partnerships with Essex and Liverpool, CEG Digital has an established stable of partners and even Oxford International has been making waves with its Digital Institute. In the US, Shorelight has made a great deal of its delivery through the Shorelight Live platform and appears to be repositioning as a business delivering technological solutions to student problems.

One way of looking at things might be to suggest that the reduction in partnerships has been a deliberate step by INTO to clean up some joint ventures that had struggled to make headway in a competitive market. The growing level of indebtedness from these joint ventures to INTO might suggest that they were not making adequate progress but it does seem as if several decisions were university driven. The latest closures are part of history that includes the closures of partnerships with St George’s, University of London, and UEA London which undermines the original notion of long-term joint ventures providing greater stability than third-party pathway providers.

It’s something of a strategic head-scratcher and the loss of academic ‘supply’ comes at a tipping point where both the US and UK are demonstrably back in the game as far as international student demand is concerned. The lack of a viable online option seems to put INTO at a disadvantage in delivering to a market where increased flexibility and option has become the norm and is likely to grow in future years.

Perhaps there is a mega-deal on its way and one might guess that Leeds Equity Partner would be pleased to find a way to realise some return after eight years of a holding position. A possible merger with Shorelight to become a demonstrable lead player in the US seems a long shot but the operating models have some similarities and the online expertise may bring energy to INTO’s portfolio. Or maybe this is the moment where a stable group generating solid if unspectacular EBITDA could be taken back into 100% ownership by INTO’s founder, Andrew Colin.

It’s all speculation but for an outside observer INTO needs to establish some renewed momentum if it is to fulfil the promise of its early days of innovation, creativity and energy. There’s been substantial investment in talent at the top level and perhaps a new CEO is the final piece in the jigsaw. Only time will tell.

Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay

* Fans of the mighty Tom Petty will know that Into The Great Wide Open is co-written with Jeff Lynne and charts the progress of Eddie as he “went to Hollywood, got a tattoo”, “made a record and it went in the charts” to the time “their A&R man said, ‘I don’t hear a single”. It’s the old story of “rebel without a clue”, to overnight success, to uncertainty when “the future was wide open”.

Amendment on 1 May 2023: The earlier version of this blog suggested that Andrew Colin, founder of INTO, might take the business “private”. It has been amended to clarify that this was intended to suggest he might choose to take it 100% back into his sole ownership

Do Aggregators Match Up?

There’s significant interest in the higher education community about the rise of websites claiming to match students to degree programmes and what they might mean for student choice. The websites and public comments of these aggregators are strong on claims about transparency, choice and putting the interests of students first. This blog gets close and personal with a couple of websites of main players and gets granular enough to suggest that there might be room for improvement.

As a disclaimer I should note that, despite a philosophical preference for all education to be free, I appreciate the value that private investment can bring to expanding choice and opportunity. If investors can employ people and make a return while offering good value to students, it seems to me to be an acceptable trade off. I also have no reason to disbelieve the claim of aggregators that they aim to make global student choice easier and more accessible.

To ease the flow of the blog I have put a note of search terms used at the bottom of the text. As with all research there is an element of subjectivity in my choices but they serve to explore some points about the way the system works. The two operators chosen reflect their scale and profile rather than any value judgement about their quality compared to other operators in this increasingly crowded space.

Before plunging into that detail there are a couple of general points that emerge from looking at several aggregator websites:

– The word ‘partner’ occurs often without a full explanation of what the relationship is or what due diligence has been done to ensure quality or appropriateness. There is usually even less insight into the nature of the commercial relationship with their partners and the ways that this might skew presentation of information.

An example of that the Studyportals Bachelorportal top level search* produced 839 courses on the ‘Our Picks’ list. The first 10 were the University of Lincoln and the first 253 were flagged as ‘Featured’. The site says, “the university partners with us for this programme to reach students like you”. Studyportals have confirmed that being featured represents ‘paid exposure services’ for the universities in question.

It is common for internet search engines to tell the user which results are adverts. But when an aggregator lists ‘Our Picks’ it might be taken to imply that they take some responsibility (other than being paid) for the selection. While Studyportals gives details about its organizational partners and its student partners it does not do so about university partners.

– There are many claims intended to satisfy students about the choice the site offers and the lure of counselling about those options. For example, ApplyBoard claims to have “built partnerships with over 1,500 primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions, and work with 5,000+ recruitment partners”. It’s difficult to know the breakdown of these and the website gives no indication of how many universities in each of the four countries – Canada, USA, UK and Australia – can be searched on the site.

Using the ApplyBoard Quick Search and asking a broad query to study Business in the United Kingdom offered 10,000+ programs in 100+ “schools”. My count was of only 70 institutions named with the 100 being achieved through branch campuses – including the most, eight, from University of Law. At least 40 of the 100+ links led to pathway operations from Study Group, Kaplan, INTO, Navitas or CEG.

With over 140 degree bearing institutions in the United Kingdom it seems arguable that ApplyBoard is some way short of offering a critical mass of choice for students using the service. One of the arguments levelled against student recruitment agents has been that their choice is restricted to institutions who they have commercial terms with. The strength of this may be that they usually have the benefit of familiarization trips and visits from university or pathway staff to enhance the advice they give students. The extent to which an aggregator offers counselling advice based on direct personal knowledge of an institution may be an area for development.

To an extent none of that would matter if the much-vaunted machine learning, artificial intelligence and algorithms were providing good matching between the student and the university. A student would put their information into the system and it would throw out carefully calibrated responses that reflected the student’s personal needs as well as their academic capability. Testing across the aggregators is complex and cannot be consistent because search terms are rarely the same but a look at Apply Board and Studyportals gives some indication of what the student experience looks like. The analysis took place between 8 and 11 May.

Apply Board

Even for a native English speaker the process is tough to navigate so I decided to go with being a US citizen who had studied in the UK to A-level. After my experiment with a top-level query (discussed above) I filled out both the eligibility and school filters on the page to give a more precise search for a UK university**. It provided 1000+ programs at 45 schools but the results were less than inspiring.

As I wanted to go direct to a university BA degree programme it was unhelpful to find the Relevance list populating only with pathway operations or foundation courses offered by a university through another route. The top option on the list was “2-Semester Pathway – International Year One in Business and Management – Bachelor of Science – Business and Management (Year in Business)” at Royal Holloway’s International Study Centre run by Study Group. This suggests that the algorithm does its best but may not always reflect what students are searching for.

When I tried to view the list by the “school rank” option I presumed it would be indicative of university rankings although there was no source indicated. Given this expectation it was surprising to find the universities of Manchester, Durham and Lancaster further down the list than Anglia Ruskin University. There would be merit in clarifying what the ranking system is and also, what the progression rate to the university is if a pathway option is shown.

When I entered the same search terms for study in Canada (changing my visa status to Canadian Study Permit or Visitor Visa and the duration to a four-year bachelors) I got 25 schools and 139 programs with direct entry options at universities at the top. Presumably, this reflects the lower number of pathway operations in Canada or the strength of ApplyBoard connections in the country.

For the USA (visa status F1 and as a UK national) it was 91 schools and 1000+ programs but with INTO’s Undergraduate Pathway at George Mason University at the top and their two-semester business pathway at Suffolk University third on the list. Digging further down the list it became clear that the pathway operations were featured relatively heavily rather than the ‘direct admission’ I had searched for. This, couple with the UK experience, might suggest that pathway operators are early investors in the aggregator model in countries where they have a foothold.

Studyportals

The recent linking of Studyportals with Times Higher Education Student is one of the most apparent signs of league table compilers looking for ways to exercise their aggregator power over student interest. Studyportals pages currently appears to favour the QS World University Rankings as a yardstick for university ranking and it will be interesting to see if the allegiance shifts. It’s the sort of decision that reflects the impetus behind deciding what information to present to students and how transparent an aggregator is about who is paying to be represented.

A helpful feature is the ability to adjust the information received to reflect a currency of your choice and also the actual rate being charged for your nationality. This is particularly important for EU students who, in 2021, will be charged Home tuition fees by some UK universities rather than international fee rates. This is available on the home page but it might be better if elevated to make this more apparent – I totally missed it in my original analysis.³

I signed up and completed most of my profile in the Mastersportal*** (there is some personal information I preferred not to share). When I looked at the ‘Recommended for You’ section of my profile I was offered 18 programmes of which all 10 in the UK were through online delivery. This seemed to ignore my stated preference for on campus study.

There was no explanation of how these had been selected or favoured but three were from Nottingham Trent University. So, I returned to the main Masters portal to search for Business and Management at the top level and found that Nottingham Trent University was a ‘featured’ university. When I searched at this level with ‘on campus learning’ enabled the online NTU options disappeared.

Some Thoughts

The mystery shopping was not comprehensive or even exhaustive but serves to highlight some of the issues that emerge in a complex and dynamic sector where nuance can mean a lot. My insights are likely to be better informed than a non-native English-speaking student encountering the systems for the first time and the world of HE as a newcomer. My contention would be that the limitations of the systems and their biases could be made clearer to users.

On the upside, both sites were relatively easy to use and the links to information about the universities were generally well managed. I did not research aspects of the service that students pay for and it is possible that these would remedy some of the points I have highlighted. The volume of information on the sites is overwhelming and there would seem to be scope for agents to offer a service that moderates the information on behalf of students.

The sector is becoming familiar with operators showing quotes and testimonials from students who have done well through using the sites but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the volumes looking at them. It might be more interesting to know the extent to which they are mystery shopping their own sites (rather than drinking their own bathwater) with non-native English speakers. Students who have succeeded are a much more forgiving audience than those who did not make it through the system.

The march of the aggregators will not be disrupted and probably does bring benefits in offering greater accessibility to students. But the potential to overclaim coverage, distort perceptions of quality and act as a limiter of student choice rather than an enabler is obvious. As this part of the sector matures it is to be hoped that, as with recruitment agents, the best operators prevail and become the choice of most potential students.

It is also to be hoped that universities recognise that they have responsibilities when lending their brand names to third parties and that their very presence as part of an aggregator portfolio lends credibility to the entire endeavour. They may prefer the word ‘featured’ to something like ‘promoted’ or ‘advertised’ but they should accept that honesty and integrity in the way they are represented is their decision rather than that of the aggregator. For universities in the United Kingdom the option of making UCAS a wholly-owned, comprehensive and managed service for students remains an option that could become an exemplar of responsible self-regulation.

NOTES

1. As with all my blogs I am happy to have authoritative comment on the outcomes and where these add value or correct a clear error will reflect any resulting changes. The purpose of doing the work and writing it up is to try and improve things for students while making observations that colleagues in the sector might consider.

2. Search Terms Used

*Business and management in the UK, 3-year, full-time on campus, Bachelor of Arts.

**US Citizen, educated to high school level in the UK with B/C GCE A-level grades, with a Tier 4 UK student visa and 9 IELTS in all categories. I confirmed my interest was direct admission to UK universities for a three-year bachelors in business, management or economics starting between August and November 2021. I placed no constraints on tuition, living costs or admission fee.

***UK citizen resident in the US. Interested in Masters level study in Business and Management in the UK starting in between 6 months and one year. Preference for attendance on campus. Tuition fee and living cost budget set at 150,000 (so not a barrier). Bachelor’s degree in Business and Management securing a 2:1. With 5 years of work experience. Native speaker English level.

3. In the original of this piece it was indicated that rates on the Portal were quoted in Euros and showed international rates and that this might have particular implications for EU students looking to study in the UK (where some institutions have chosen to offer EU students lower tuition fees than other international students in 2021). This has been removed to recognize that at the base of the home page of the Portal you are able to adjust your results to reflect the actual rate being charged and can do so in a denomination of your choice. If this information is put into your individual account it is also adjusted.

Image by Hier und jetzt endet leider meine Reise auf Pixabay aber from Pixabay

Canadian Pathway Drive – Back to the Future?

Interesting times in Canada as Navitas and others try to muscle in on international student interest in the country’s lure of immigration and citizenship. The latest to cross my desk is in Newfoundland and Labrador where Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) looks to be in discussions with Navitas. A response to the proposition from the university’s alumni network is a little like being transported back to the union and faculty resistance to UK pathways in the early 2000s.

It’s also a good moment to look at the prospects for pathway growth in Canada over the coming years. This is about the likelihood of resistance by faculty being successful and the possibility that the private operators may get diverted. History has also shown that, for either side, short term gains and potential may not always convert into long term success.

A Canadian Problem or Opportunity?

The scant MUN’s Minutes of Vice President’s Council from October 2020 confirm that a Pathway Proposal feasibility with Navitas has been ‘endorsed’ by the Council. A response by the MUN Faculty Association Executive (MUNFA) at the end of March 2021 highlights seven ‘concerns’ as a sighting shot. To borrow from a son of Canada one side of the discussion might be “rockin’ in the free world” but the other are suggesting “there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead”¹.

Drivers behind MUN’s interest may be varied but the economic case for international recruitment is likely to be high on the list. From 2012/13 to 2019/20 it saw operating budget cuts of $39.5m along with further capital budgets being lost. Since 1999 the provincial government has had a tuition fee freeze for students from the province but out of province and international students can be charged more.

Reports suggest this is a scenario that is also being played out in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba as provincial government’s reduce funding for higher education. The conditions are ripe for pathway operators to find partnerships from hard-pressed institutions. Magnifying this attraction is the benevolent visa, work rights and immigration policies that has driven international student interest in Canada over recent years.

The Past In A Different Country

The MUNFA arguments are all very familiar to anyone who followed the progress of INTO University Partnerships (IUP) in the UK as it took its new 50/50 partnership model into discussions with potential partners in the early days. Much of the debate is played out in the media but another good source is the website of the University and College Union (UCU). There may be something for all sides to consider in the arguments made and what eventually happened.

The campaign against IUP at the University of Essex is well documented and laid out in a triumphant Fighting Privatisation Toolkit summary. It charts the story (from the UCU point of view) from first skirmishes in December 2007 to a university announcement in October that the teaching would be kept in-house. But as American baseball legend Yogi Berra told us, “It ain’t over till it’s over” and in 2017 the University announced a partnership for a ‘pathway college for international students’ with Kaplan.

Defences were also mounted at other institutions and some university management, for example at De Montfort, even expressed trenchant views about the potential dangers of private providers becoming partners. It was, however, only two years later (in 2013) that De Montfort, under ex-Vice Chancellor Dominic Shellard, teamed up with Oxford International Education Group for an international pathway college on campus.

It may be that INTO’s 50/50 partnership model with its associated terms was the real problem and later deals were modified to make them more acceptable to universities. But it is also true that some institutions in the UK have successfully developed alternative approaches to providing pathways for international students. Institutions that have moved so rapidly to deliver universal online education in the past year might care to consider how they apply that agility to accepting international students who are short of requisite language skills.

Lessons from the US and UK for Canada

UK universities have, to a greater extent, fully embraced the pathway model with long established groups Kaplan, Study Group, Navitas and Cambridge Education Group having around 50 universities in their portfolio. Newer players such as QA Higher Education, GUS and Oxford International are growing and well ranked universities continue to gravitate towards private partners with Aberdeen, Cardiff, Aston, Southampton and Queen Mary all finding pathway partners in the past two years.

In the US, however, the story is quite different with many pathway closures in recent years from Navitas (5), Study Group (6), Cambridge Education Group (4) and INTO (3) more than counter-balancing Shorelight’s slowing growth in new partnerships. It’s always difficult to be certain from the outside what is driving a closure but it’s reasonable to assume that the decline in international students going to the US has made it less viable for the commercial partner to continue. At its worst that exit leaves a university with no infrastructure, no foothold in the market for international students and potentially a poor reputation overseas that will be difficult to overcome.

There are material differences in the number of institutions and the private/public make up of the university sectors in the two countries. It’s arguable that Canada is more like the UK in terms of numbers of institutions, it has a degree system that offers flexibility, and it is relatively inexpensive. But the progress for the pathway providers has been very slow and success may not come quickly enough to ensure rewards.

Riding the Roller Coaster

As the world emerges from the pandemic there is almost certainly going to be a renewed appetite for student mobility but it is a quite different higher education landscape to just two years ago. The US administration has changed, the UK has seen growth from India outpacing that from China, and Australia, while wounded, is looking for ways to recover. Past performance is no guarantee of future results should be a watchword for pathways looking to Canada as much as caveat emptor should be a guide for Canadian universities talking to private providers.

Colleagues have speculated on Canada as being in the ‘squeezed middle’ as the US and UK open their doors more widely to students. It may also be of interest that while the numbers of scholars in the US from China were lower in 2015/16 than 2019/20 the number from India was slightly higher. There is also every reason to believe that the attractiveness of the US has already increased amongst potential students and this could pay big dividends as the country’s vaccination program increases pace.

The historical evidence from the UK, and to a lesser extent from the dash for growth of pathways in the US, is that resistance from faculty and friends of MUN may succeed in the short term but is futile over the longer term. It could, however, be enough for them to delay the seemingly inevitable because the private providers will turn their attention to other opportunities if the attraction of Canada begins to fade. Universities that have already signed on the dotted line may find that, as happened in the US, pathways are as willing to walk away as they were to sign up in the first place.

Notes

2. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay