For-Profit Higher Ed in the Developing World

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting article about for-profit institutions in the developing world

Taking a page or two out of the successful Western for-profit’s playbook, Hayes stressed the importance of market research -- of knowing students’ problems and solving them, whether they are about the time or location of a course, or short-term financial pressures

Another key, he said, is branding. “A brand, if nothing, else is a promise to your marketplace,” he said. “Since education is a service, in essence, we’re basically marketing something that you can’t touch, you can’t feel, you can’t see.”

Riccardo Scavazza, vice president of operations, said that much of the growth has hinged on the success of marketing to low- and middle-income adults who didn’t have access to postsecondary education before the boom that’s happened in Brazil’s for-profit education market in the last decade. Essentially, Anhanguera and its handful of publicly-held competitors have created a market where there wasn’t one. In 2006, the IFC loaned $12 million to a Brazilian private equity firm to invest in the institution.