This week, the for-profit leader in global higher education Laureate Education announced that it “has acquired NewSchool of Architecture and Design, based in San Diego, California, and has finalized its acquisition of Kendall College, based in Chicago, Illinois.” Up to now, Laureate’s focus has been entirely on offshore institutions, and it has a physical presence in 18 countries - but not the US. Do these new US acquisitions mark a shift in Laureate strategy?
I think the answer to this question is - no. I believe these acquisitions simply reflect another step in the roll-out of the existing strategy. In a previous post, Interesting activity at the for-profit/non-profit interface: Laureate, I noted that Laureate had begun to seek US. accreditation for several of its off-shore institutions. In the press release announcing the accreditation of Laureate’s Glion Institute of Higher Education and Les Roches Hotel Management School (both Swiss) by The New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, Laureate CEO Doug Becker noted that such “accreditation represents one of the highest standards for the assessment of universities”. Thus Laureate is using internationally recognized US accreditation to support its strategy of branding itself as a high quality, medium cost higher education provider. I think they strengthened this part of their strategy by adding to their portfolio two existing, accredited institutions in the US. Of course, the two institutions also need to fit into the existing network of universities in a way consistent with what we have seen of Laureate strategy, and we can hypothesize how these new purchases might be viewed in this context.
Kendall College, primarily a culinary arts school, is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Kendall joins Glion and Les Roches in Laureate’s portfolio of culinary and hospitality schools. Both Glion and Les Roches, as noted above, are accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Institutions of Higher Education. Les Roches already has been cloned into Spain and China, and Laureate obviously sees “hospitality” as one that has great potential for growth in the future. Several of the Laureate universities also have culinary and hospitality programs, and one imagines that Laureate will be using these three schools - and their US accreditation - to lead in the strengthening and branding of existing university programs and the initiating of new ones.
TheNewSchool of Architecture and Design is accredited by the National Architecture Accrediting Board and the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. Laureate does not have any other stand-alone architecture schools at this time (so far as I can tell), but several of its universities have architecture and design programs. Thus this accredited program serves as a compliment to the existing Laureate programs in architecture, and could perhaps be positioned to play a leadership role in increasing the desirability and brand of programs throughout the system.
This addition of US schools of hospitality and architecture also serves another goal of Laureate - providing added value through opportunities for students to gain a truly global experience by attending campuses in more than one country. Hospitality and architecture are two areas of study where the ability to attend a school in another country for some part of the program could be particularly enriching professionally. Indeed, the websites for Kendall, Glion, and Les Roches already describe the mutual study abroad opportunities now available. I find no mention of NewSchool on any of the other Laureate university sites, but that is not surprising since the NewSchool relationship is more recent than that with Kendall. It will be interesting to see if Laureate has plans for significant growth for these two new additions to the family.
As a final indication that Laureate’s move into the US does not indicate a radical shift in strategy, I note that the previous week, on 7/8/08, Laureate announced the purchase of the Universidad Tecnológica de México, one of the largest private universities in Mexico, and the Universidad Latina and Universidad Americana in Costa Rica. The student population of these three universities combined is about 56,000. NewSchool and Kendall combined have about 2,000 students. Seems that Laureate still has a solid emphasis on offshore institutions.
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