Navitas seals deal for SAE colleges

Private provider moves into multimedia course offerings globally. Navitas chief executive Rod Jones wants to put one thing to rest – his acquisition of the $289 million SAE group is not to cushion his company against the downturn in international students. It was a question he was asked often by reporters who accompanied him on a media tour around the SAE Institute and Qantm college in Surry Hills, Sydney, last Thursday. The Navitas takeover of the SAE group, which offers courses in audio engineering, game programming, film production, interactive media and graphic design in 49 colleges in 19 countries, has been completed. It plans to add digital journalism to its suite of subjects on offer in its Sydney institute. “This particular acquisition is something that has been going for about 18 months. We began talking about this before the downturn. We bought it because it is a bloody good business it is in the right space and fits well with what we do,” Jones said. Jones said Navitas acquired SAE because it offered high-demand courses and had been growing over the past three years. SAE attracts domestic students and is dual sector. It has a 90 per cent domestic/10 per cent international student ratio, the reverse of Navitas. But he said the takeover was not an attempt to insulate Navitas against the downturn, which he predicted was coming to an end. He said SAE fitted nicely with what Navitas did. “Someone else starting from scratch is starting from a long, long way behind (Navitas) and SAE is in exactly the same spot (as Navitas).” At present the Sydney institute offers undergraduate degrees, but it plans a postgraduate offering next year. Students can access the government FEE-HELP scheme. On the tour with Navitas was Tom Misner, the founder of the SAE Institute. He told how he began in 1976 just offering audio classes to about 10 students in his Surry Hills studio and accidently invented audio engineering education. Both he and Jones are of the one mind that over-regulation and a university education sector that has been slow to change, held back development in certain fields and by so doing created space in the sector. Misner is particularly proud of SAE’s capacity to upgrade technology quickly. Jones said until now people like him and Misner were not listened to by government and bureaucrats. “For the first time, government and bureaucrats are beginning to hear what the industry is saying … There is a real will within government, bureaucrats and industry to find a better solution and TEQSA is part of that.” Jones said that private providers are always seen to be on a different level to other providers, universities and TAFEs included. “We have been able to lift ourselves to a position where we have gained respect, particularly from the university sector and the bureaucrats. We are now a group they do come and talk to, the universities – begrudgingly for some – are confident in what we do and respect us.” Navitas will make a submission on the draft Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) legislation, which was published two weeks ago. Jones said he welcomed TEQSA for several reasons. One was having a national regulator. It will be good not having to deal with six or seven or eight regulatory authorities, he said. “It’s costly and whilst they all work under the same ministerial protocols, every state interprets them differently.” Navitas also welcomes risk-based assessment and will be looking for detail on moderation of quality and self-accreditation standards. Jones said he was happy with the proposal to have self-accreditation carried in the Provider Standards. Some members of Universities Australia would prefer self-accreditation standards be enshrined in main legislation not in the second tier. Jones said he had no issue with regulations around equivalent outcomes and said this should be an expectation of anyone delivering in the space . SAE is now one of the world’s largest media technology training institutes. It offers a range of post-secondary education opportunities to some 8000 students, including certificate, diploma, degree and masters programs across three major fields of study: audio production, film production and interactive media. In Australia, SAE has operations in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. It also has a presence in Germany, the US and the UK, and operations in South Africa, Dubai, Singapore, New Zealand and much of Europe. Navitas is a leader in English-language education in Australia and globally and has partnerships with the university sector.