Streamlining the business of education

'Applying a business mentality to the education sector' is not a phrase you hear often, if ever, in New Zealand tertiary education, but a newcomer is doing just that: talking the language of business to draw focus to its educational services.

Australian-based education management company Campus Group Holdings is this month admitting its first intake of degree-level students to its Upper Hutt campus where they will be taking courses from Australia's Ballarat University.

The campus is the sixth in the CGH stable of campuses - four are in Australia and one in Fiji - where universities run courses in joint ventures with CGH.

Chief executive Kevin Ryan said his company's focus was on developing strategic partnerships with institutions and developing and distributing pre-packaged educational products and curriculum for use in those partnerships.

Its strategy was to be a "distribution- or supply-line" to get students to go to the universities that CGH had formed partnerships with - to be "an invisible link" between the students and the universities.

Although in New Zealand CGH has leased the spacious campus grounds of the now-defunct Central Institute of Technology (pictured), in Australia it has put many of its facilities into downtown office blocks: enough space for teaching and computer rooms and libraries, but without the added extra expenses of things like playing fields and gyms.

"It's a bare-bones model to keep costs down and focus on the teaching because it's a very competitive industry and everybody is trying hard to get students - and it has worked well for us," Mr Ryan said.

CGH currently has 12,000 students on its books.

"Our competition are universities, many of whom have tried to set up new or overseas campuses on their own but without any real business expertise - and many have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in doing so.

"Our model is to look at where the students want to study and then to open facilities in those places and charge the prevailing rate."

The international student market is CGH's niche and teaching is pitched at a level that allows students from a range of cultures to learn at a similar pace in one class.

The company also markets its Global Acceptance Certificate - a pre-university preparatory programme - which has been accepted at more than 80 universities.

Mr Ryan said the company's growth came mainly from opening new campuses, and it was investigating possibilities in the US and more recently in the UK.

The Upper Hutt campus has capacity for several thousand students, though its aim for the first intake this month is for around 100 students.

Mr Ryan said 3000-4000 students was the ideal size for the CGH model.

CGH leased the Upper Hutt site from the government in 2002 and at the time was given permission to operate courses in conjunction with Chosun University of Korea. Now, with Ballarat University as it partner, CGH has gained NZQA-accreditation to provide degrees in Business, Commerce, Computing, Information Technology, Management and Business Administration.

The New Zealand campus, run by CGH subsidiary New Zealand International Campus (NZIC), also teaches diplomas in business subjects as well as in tourism and hospitality in a joint venture with tertiary institution New South Wales Technical And Further Education.

Upper Hutt is the only CGH campus where more than one education institution provides courses. The other campuses are run in a joint venture with one - Central Queensland University (CQU) - and, Mr Ryan said, from the students' point of view they were studying at a CQU campus.

"We supply the infrastructure, the university oversees the academic side of things and the link is invisible to students."

Because of the range of education products available at NZIC, students do not yet have that seamless approach. Mr Ryan said it was a possibility going forward.

"Whatever the arrangement, the point is that the standard of education will be the same as if the students were at the parent institution," he said.

The CGH website.

The NZIC website.