This week Study Group has announced three new HE ventures in the UK and US on the back of its 2014 full year report showing 4% growth in EBITDA. The partnerships with the University of Law, Coventry University London Campus and Merrimack College will help to fuel further growth in the higher education division and offset decline in its ELT entity Embassy English.
The company’s EBITDA reached £36m at the end of 2014, and maintained 2013’s EBITDA margin of 14%.
“We have held margins in the business flat, which given the amount that we invested last year in a number of areas to help with growth, we’re pretty pleased about,” Study Group’s CEO, David Leigh, told The PIE News.
Growth has been attributed to a 30% increase in new student enrolments, mostly in HE entities
Growth has been attributed to a 30% increase in new student enrolments, which Leigh called the company’s “key sales metric”, mostly in its HE entities.
Operations in Australia and New Zealand showed 30% new enrolment growth in their international study centres and 44% growth in career college enrolments.
Meanwhile, in North America, the opening of two new international study centres in Vermont and Maine has contributed to 103% more new student enrolments.
The new venture with Merrimack College, a private liberal arts college outside Boston, will help to fuel further growth in US operations, Leigh said.
The international study centre – Study Group’s seventh in the US – will begin by offering pre-Masters programmes, with the possibility of expanding to other courses over the course of the 10-year deal.
Reflecting its performance in 2013, Embassy English had the weakest performance of Study Group’s divisions, hampered by economic conditions in source markets and a complete changeover of senior staff.
“It continues to be a challenging market, in large part because lots of source markets from which we historically have got a large number of students have been really challenged,” he said.
“The Russian rouble today is worth about 50% of what it was six months ago,” he noted. “That had a big impact.”
However, Leigh said that Embassy is already receiving positive feedback about the relaunch of its summer programme under the brand ‘Best Summer Ever’, and is optimistic that business will pick up under the new management team.
“ELT continues to be a challenging market, in large part because lots of source markets from which we historically have got a large number of students have been really challenged”
“There’s a lot to do but we feel pretty positive that we will be able to turn the business around,” he commented.
Embassy opened a new centre at the University of Law’s campus in Bloomsbury in central London in September, which will also host Study Group’s two new UK partnerships.
The foundation year at ULaw, Study Group’s first partnership with a private university, will enable students to progress directly to undergraduate study to complete the programme in three years.
From the same location, Study Group will provide foundation and pre-masters courses and an international year-one programme enabling students to progress to undergraduate study in any subject bar law at Coventry University.
