Since the turn of the 21st century, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report, the world’s middle-class segment has seen the biggest growth, with population size nearly trebling during the 2000-2019 period. Meanwhile, the rate of internet penetration shot up from 16.8% in 2005 to 53.6% in 2019, according to the Telecommunication Development Sector (a special agency of the United Nations). Ready for one more statistic? According to a UNESCO-sponsored report, the global population of college students has more than doubled since 2000.
All this might seem like an ideal environment for growth in the education sector. The reality, however, is significantly more complicated. Public and private organizations alike face challenges in selecting the right geographical markets for expansion, creating the right educational offerings for each locality, and making the appropriate digital investments for education delivery. The upshot is that in education, a robust strategy is more critical than ever.
With the advent of mass higher education and growth in internationally mobile students, the global higher education market has witnessed a massive boom. Globalization has paved the way for “inclusion,” and higher education’s role in changing mindsets is critical. However, the rapid increase in demand has posed a series of new challenges that need to be addressed more effectively.
For example, affordability in higher education is a concern for students, parents, and policymakers. Over the past 30 years, the inflation-adjusted cost of a bachelor’s degree has gone up by two and a half times. At the same time, the inflation-adjusted wage growth has been much more subdued. Furthermore, to achieve the rate of GDP growth recommended by the World Bank to elevate people from the basic levels of abject poverty, the number of higher education seats would need to increase at 7-8% per annum over the next decade. This implies the need to double the number of seats in the next 10 years.
TNG Consulting’s Global Education Practice (GEP) serves public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit educational institutions. We also work with investors and foundations that are involved with the education industry. We combine primary research with advanced analytics and strategy consulting to help clients realize growth opportunities in new sectors and geographies, including untapped developing countries. Our knowledge bank contains lessons from over 700 engagements in 90 countries — lessons that we bring to bear in helping you formulate strategies of your own.
The plan is to become one of the world’s foremost education consulting firms through leading on-the-ground engagements in numerous countries and industry subsegments. Our 150-plus specialists travel around the globe to provide education-sector consulting services to investors, operators, and philanthropists across various markets; is to lead multiple on-site engagements in all education segments: early childhood, K-12, and higher education.
Nxtium Group has in-depth experience in the higher education space to help with those challenges and many others the sector is facing now. We advise clients in all areas of public and private universities, colleges, and technical, vocational, and training institutions.
Our Global Education practice works with public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit institutions of higher education. We also work with private equity investors targeting the higher education industry. Across the board, we take a bottom-up, data-driven approach to identifying opportunities for sustainable growth — at home and around the world. Clients engage us to:
Examples include new ways to deliver education, new types of degree- and nondegree-based programs, and new segments of students to serve. We can also support your efforts in transnational education via strategies for building pathway programs, introducing digital offerings, and setting up a campus abroad.
We bring insight into the needs of traditional and nontraditional students, both as they exist today and as they’re likely to play out in the future. This can touch on facilities, digitization, postgraduation employment prospects, and more. We can also shed light on how much students are willing to pay for higher education, along with other factors that go into a student’s choice of institution.
From operational efficiencies to public-private partnership models and strategic reduction of structural costs, we work with you on ways to remain financially sustainable in a consumer-based education market.
With sustainable growth and profitability as strategic imperatives, we provide an aggregated Introduction of both regional and global education markets, local market demand, and the competitive landscape. This helps reveal commercial opportunities and relationships, which is an essential step in establishing and strengthening regional and global presence.
There’s a rapidly growing appetite for investment in the education sector, which has proved to be one of the most resilient industries. At the same time, more education companies are using acquisitions as a way to scale. We work closely with our private equity and corporate clients throughout the transaction cycle. Our support ranges from identifying attractive companies to performing commercial due diligence, as well as an increasing portfolio company value growth and providing exit support.
We help clients transform insights into actionable, tactical initiatives that are in line with their goals and objectives. We accomplish this by conducting deep-dive market assessments, using powerful analytics, and combining an understanding of local markets with an awareness of global trends in the
education industry.
We assess opportunities for clients aiming to increase their offerings via expansion into adjacent education subsectors such as edtech. With our understanding of the education industry’s size and magnitude, we also help clients create business plans for new opportunities, taking into account
specific objectives and priorities.
We tap into our partnerships across the education network — in innovation, talent, capital, and impact. Our deep global network puts us in a unique position to support our clients in strategy development, private equity investments, mergers and acquisitions, and other areas.
The digital revolution is closing in on education. Electronic media is supplanting costly printed textbooks. Online platforms are making round-the-clock instruction available to anyone in the world, be it taking up a new language or taking in lectures from famous scholars at world-class universities. At the same time, augmented and virtual reality is taking digital learning beyond the lecture format, immersing students of all ages in the events of a different place and time.
And with the advent of artificial intelligence, cognitive algorithms will soon take on time-consuming tasks such as grading exams, identifying performance gaps, and personalizing lesson plans — leaving faculty free to engage students via inquiry, insight, and debate.
Exciting as it is, however, breakthrough technology isn’t enough to guarantee success in the education industry. An education technology (edtech) offering must also be fairly straightforward to acquire and implement. Its value to students and educators must be clear. And the market for it must be big enough to sustain a profitable business — now and for the foreseeable future.
TNG combines primary research with advanced analytics and strategy consulting to help institutions and incumbent companies strengthen their presence in the digital arena. We likewise work with investors and entrepreneurs to identify investment opportunities and ways to maximize their returns.
Institutions and incumbent companies engage us to:
This includes assessing your organization’s digital health in light of the latest edtech innovations and solutions at each stage of the student life cycle. We can also put together a playbook for closing any asset or capability gaps.
We can work with you to identify technology investments that can yield new revenue streams, additional market share, an improved student experience, and/or better student outcomes.
We help you evaluate existing and potential competitive differentiators and then prioritize opportunities for the use of technology according to best practices in each education subsegment. We also can assess barriers to edtech adoption and ways to overcome them.
We can set up mechanisms that educators can use to gauge the value of an edtech application. Importantly, this includes working out how much influence the application is having on both the teaching and learning experiences.
Not so long ago, globalization in higher education mostly meant studying abroad — usually at a different institution — for an academic term or two. Today, transnational education (TNE) can take many other forms. For instance, in addition to traveling abroad to study for a three- or four-year degree, students might earn a foreign degree online, at the local campus of a partnering institution, or even at a local outpost of the foreign institution itself.
These innovations are a response to the growing worldwide demand for educational choice, cultural exposure, language proficiency, and professional mobility. However, meeting this demand can be tricky. It takes extensive networks and expertise to tap into the TNE student pool. It also takes carefully crafted programs that help international students get the most from their experience and put them firmly on the path to success. On top of that, it takes insight into nuances such as currency markets, immigration quotas, regulatory environments, and the role of TNE in your long-term organizational goals.
Fueled by growing household incomes in developing markets and a thirst for high-quality tertiary education, international student mobility is a trend that is here to stay. Universities around the world as well as stand-alone pathway operators have been investing in their products, services, and capabilities to ensure they can attract their fair share of international, full-fee-paying students.
TNG’s Global Education practice has an extensive understanding of the TNE market. We have advised pioneers in TNE in developing, understanding, and monitoring collaborative arrangements and TNE programs to achieve substantial growth.
We work with educational institutions, pathway providers, and other stakeholders across the TNE continuum. Public or private, we can help you achieve sustainable growth with a view toward mobility trends, growth levers, and key risk mitigation strategies.
More specifically, we support your efforts to:
We can pinpoint the most attractive source countries for your organization — by offering, value proposition, and alignment with each target country’s regulatory framework. Then we can help you build a strong recruitment engine in each source country via internal resources and/or external partnerships.
Sheltered or integrated classes? Mainstream or differentiated curriculum? In-house, sole-source, or multi-partner structure? Whatever the goal, we can evaluate the costs and benefits of the available options — and, from there, build an effective framework for the future.
We help you develop an in-depth understanding of students and competitors by country, including the effect each can have on your organization’s go-to-market strategy. We also work with you to craft a differentiated value proposition, customize it to student needs and use it to attract target students with global education aspirations. Finally, we can support decisions around international locations and online delivery.
Getting the K-12 system right is critical to a nation’s development. When primary and secondary education is successful, they can drive powerful social change with the ability to create the leaders of tomorrow. However, improving capabilities and outcomes requires strategic focus and timely interventions and improvements from both the private and public sectors.
Providers have struggled to keep pace with demand. Some have grown their networks, only to bump up against shortages of qualified teachers. Others face dwindling enrollment, often a result of declining birth rates in the localities they serve. Then there are state and local regulations, rapidly evolving standards, and the ever-present issue of access. Last but not least are the needs of parents and students, which can vary significantly from one community to another.
TNG’s Global Education practice team has extensive industry experience across the primary and secondary educational market — advising operators, investors, and foundations. We help our clients by providing them with relevant research and strategies for deploying their resources to achieve optimum success.
Our clients include public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit K-12 school operators. We also work with providers of ancillary services (such as educational courseware and testing services) as well as private equity investors targeting the K-12 industry. Across the board, we take a bottom-up, data-driven approach to identifying opportunities for sustainable growth — at home and around the world.
Clients engage us to:
This involves laying out the programs, facilities, and staffing that a community needs and can support, all based on sound data and analysis. We can also help you make enrollment and financial projections, as well as arrive at effective strategies for pricing and technology.
We can help you understand a given locality’s regulatory, talent, and competitive environment for K-12 education. From there, we can assist you in developing a go-to-market strategy and operational model that delivers against cost, revenue, and profit objectives.
We work with you to craft a differentiated value proposition, customize it to parent and student needs, and use it to attract families with global education aspirations. We can also support your efforts to develop scalable options via independent investment (including acquisitions) or public-private partnerships.
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