AdvTech to train health, tourism workers

Group will continue to expand schools and tertiary campuses in South Africa

Private education group AdvTech, the owner of Crawford Schools and Varsity College, will add health-care faculties to its tertiary institutions and provide more skills for the tourism industry as it sets out to tackle the unemployment rate.

In an interview, Roy Douglas, who stepped down as CEO in February after a decade at the helm, said: “Faculty expansion is seen as a good opportunity for growth. We think there’s opportunity in the healthcare sector.

“I’m not saying that we would look at a full-line medical school, for example, which does require a significant level of investment and a number of diverse sectors to be in place. But we think that there are a number of careers in health care in a broader sense which would provide great job opportunities for young South Africans.”

One of those areas is nursing, on the back of an ongoing shortage of such skills in South Africa, and also the demand for [people with nursing qualifications] in other countries like the UK and Australia.

“If we skill people, there is an opportunity for them to find employment locally or abroad. One in eight nurses is working in a different country from where they were trained. We could actually just start to open up the opportunity to train nurses. I think it represents a huge opportunity for everyone.”

The group is in discussions with large multinationals as well as local corporations to set up a health-care faculty that will not only focus on nursing but healthcare workers in general.

AdvTech, which also owns culinary and hospitality colleges, also sees an opportunity to provide skills for cruise-liner businesses that are highly popular both here and abroad.

“We have started this initiative to work with the cruise liners ... to start to uncover some of this opportunity. There is one cruise liner that has indicated to us that they are looking for 600 people a month. So this to me is one of the ways in which we can look to try to solve some of the unemployment problems in South Africa because our own economy certainly isn’t going to do this,” said Douglas.

Despite South Africa’s economy being under pressure, AdvTech has recorded strong performance across all its businesses, with increases in enrolments the fundamental driver of its performance.

The company has 32,786 pupils at its schools in South Africa, up 5% by the end of February this year, while its tertiary institutions have 52,718 students an increase of 7%. In the rest of Africa, Kenya and Botswana have 8,224 pupils combined an increase of 4%.

Revenue from South African schools increased by 13% to R2.8bn. In the rest of the continent, revenue increased by 14% to R381m. Revenue from tertiary institutions rose 10% to R2.9bn.

Douglas said the public sector in South Africa was battling severe headwinds. “The tragedy is we don’t seem to be making progress, and higher education is also starting to show signs of great stress. It is not surprising that we are seeing a rapid growth in private education, as parents seek out better education for their children,” he said.

AdvTech has seven faculties with 291 registered and accredited programmes in areas such as finance, education, law and engineering. It is preparing its institutions to be recognised as universities and waiting for the higher education department to issue a second draft of regulations setting out the criteria for an institution to qualify as a university. None of the private education providers are allowed to call themselves universities, even though they offer full degrees, including postgraduate programmes.

“We continue to ensure that our organisation meets what we believe would be a reasonable set of criteria to be termed a university. We have very clear goals and objectives that we’ve set in terms of what we want to achieve. We are obviously watching the process in the department and continue to engage,” he said.

AdvTech, which also has recruitment businesses, will continue to expand its schools and tertiary campuses in South Africa and plans to open a Rosebank College branch in Ghana. It sees its business in the rest of Africa and new expansion plans producing significant growth for the group.

“We are quite confident that, if we’re careful and selective, there are enormous opportunities for us in Africa. So we are and remain quite bullish about how we can realise those opportunities and continue the good trend that AdvTech has established,” said Douglas.

We are quite confident that if we’re careful and selective, there are enormous opportunities for us in Africa. So we are and remain quite bullish

Roy Douglas former AdvTech CEO