ABSTRACT
This chapter moves on from where the last left off. Here we look again into the world of multinational edu-business and begin to explore the buying and selling of education services, and materials and educational institutions, and the relationships of these activities to the general dynamics of business growth, business performance and profitability. Again this will be discussed in relation to the implications for education policy, although in this case from the perspective of corporate strategy, corporate finance and private equity investment. There are three sections to the chapter. First, some examples of corporate consolidations and private equity purchases related to edu-business will be explored. Second, the corporate growth and global scope of Pearson Education, the world’s largest edu-business, will be outlined. Third, I will look at the ‘commercialisation’ and ‘privatisation’ of British universities, and others, as they involve themselves in ‘for-profit’ offshore campus ventures in South-East Asia, and the increasingly convoluted relations between ‘public’ universities and private higher education companies.
